Ayente’s eyes, nearly always fierce, became as a nightmare birthed into the world, when she locked her gaze on the faces of those who knew her. She wrenched the spear out of the dead body of Malach, red drops fell into the dirt and grass nearby while she spoke. She spat words out faster than Archos could follow them. “Tope mal yot iba! Ya mal yot iba! Jope mal yot iba!” She thrust her spear toward Malach, then her mother, and finally slapped her hand against her own breast. Her lips curled back in a snarl that dared her tribe to deny her words.

“No more shame! No more pain! No more betrayal!” She said more slowly. “Let the gods strike me dead if they have the power to make it other than I say!” She held her spear overhead, her legs open shoulder width and she cast her eyes to the sky.

“Strike me! Strike me! Strike me! Strike me!” She demanded of the sky. “Aren’t you there?! Don’t you hate me?! Don’t you rule the Red Ax?! She howled her blasphemy and hatred at the sky above. “Didn’t you love him?!” She swept her spear down and opened up the throat of Malach, blood slipped out in a trickle as her tribe looked on in mute horror.

“I deny you! I deny you! I deny you!” She howled again up at the sky as tears fled down her face so fast that they were a rain on the ground at her feet, her heart pounded and the hairs on her limbs stood on end. A tiny part of her quailed and shrieked at her to fall to her knees before the heavens. “Haven’t you always hated me?! And all like me?! Have you no power after all?! Strike me or I will take everything from you! Like you took everything from me?!”

“Come down! Come down and kill me if you can!” Ayente shouted her challenge to the gods Malach and those before him had always taught her tribe to fear.

Finally she fell quiet, silent, except for long, slow, heavy breathing that saw her breasts rise and fall from the emotional exertion of the moment, she seemed to be the only one among her tribe that was ‘not’ holding her breath.

The sound of her heavy breathing kept the moment frozen in time, until Ayente slammed the butt of her bloody spear into the ground beside her foot and put her right hand on her hip. “The gods are dead, or never were, or are too frightened to come out. If any wish to speak for them, come with your ax, but remember I was taught by our chief… and one other teaches me still.” She cast her eyes toward Archos, and her rage filled voice became lovingly gentle, and her ice blue eyes softened like the melting of the same.

The tribe passed their eyes from dragon to woman and woman to dragon, questions hovered behind their anxious looks, and she felt the beat of the moment shift from danger and fear, to curiosity.

“I know… questions…” She said when nobody moved. “I… Archos and I… we had a misunderstanding. He never intended to kill me, to eat me as the price of his help. He helped me because…” She pursed her lips as she struggled to find what to say, and found no easy words.

“Because he thought me worth helping. And because he thought me worth helping, he thought my tribe worth helping. The Red Ax did not show itself so, under Malach. It will show itself so, under me.” Ayente looked at one face after another, they did not hold her stare.

When the last of them looked at the ground, she gestured with the bloody spear to where Archos stood. “Now… by my order, you may retrieve the meat and prepare it. Tonight we feast, and we confirm my place as chief, then I will tell you how we gained this meat.”

The aged members of the tribe looked at her with trepidation, but they did not look at her face, least of all the rage filled eyes that drifted from the tribe, to the corpse of her mother.

The surviving members of the Red Ax tribe began to obey, and Archos moved aside to allow them to draw the fenrisu bodies and the two onikoslof bodies from off the sled. The pup continued to growl, and with some reluctance, Archos swept out his palm and snatched Fen’Biter up from the place where it planted itself in defiance of the humans.

He held the little pup a little out from him while the tribe began to work, they pulled the bodies over one by one and, taking knives of stone in hand, the men began to strip the fur from the flesh, and cast the furs one by one to the women, who piled the furs together, and sitting in a circle, they began to chew the fat away.

Ayente took up her spear and abandoned the tribe that found comfort in routine, letting their eyes wander to her and to the dragon as they worked. When not muttering to one another, they also cast their eyes to the bodies of the pair Ayente had slain. She held out one hand to Archos, and he gently laid Fen’Biter into her arms. He licked her face and wagged his tail eagerly, and she looked up to her companion to speak in his own language.

“I know better your face now, you wondered at my words to them before. I said it stops with him, her, and me. The yesterdays are gone, my tribe will change. Some of them are ready, others are not. Do you know who?” Ayente asked, and moved to stand beside him, casting her eyes over the laboring group.

Archos inclined his head toward one of the shame children. “All your brothers and sisters in shame, they bear obsidian blades. They are with you.”

Ayente looked up to him and gave a weak smile. “Yes. That is my thought. The Rex Ax is divided by our blades. The old, they use the old stone. They will not change without force. The young, they are two tribes, not one. I was… not loved well by all, some… yes. Some saw and longed for my touch. In secret moments in the dark, they could touch my shoulder, my hair… look my way before bringing life to the tribe. It wounded me, and all the shame children, to have to stand away while those we loved as children, brought new life to us as women. Some of them who loved a few of us, they bear obsidian also.”

“But the ones who use the old stone, yes, that is my thought. They are reticent because it is new. They hold back, if they hold back on the stone, they will hold back on you.” Archos said to her in his own tongue.

Ayente kept her eyes turned up to him, Fen’Biter wiggled in her arms, sensing the sudden tension in her shoulders.

“I have not known you long. But I know that look.” Ayente said quietly.

Archos lowered her head to look down his long face at her. His scaled lips shifted with every motion, “Yes, a thought occurs of home, one I fear holds for this place. Think nothing of it for now. Go, join your people… but first… perhaps address them.” Archos inclined his head toward a face he didn’t recognize, with one he vaguely did. From where they stood, the bodies of Ayente’s mother, and Malach, were clearly visible.

‘I wondered where Raena was… but who is this…?’ Ayente wondered, handing the little pup back to Archos while Raena’s face stared at the scar faced Ayente, and took an instinctive step back.

Ayente stopped at a half step, she approached only a little closer as the slender male took position in front of her. His hand was on his knife, but he didn’t take it up. “Raena… Raena I am Ayente, you know me… you know me…” The blue eyed woman spoke softly to Raena, holding her arms apart in a motion of embrace.

“Your mother… Ayente, your mother… Malach… what happened…?” Raena took another step back, Ayente’s eyes were wet when the question came, and she stepped forward again, a small step, but a step. “And your face, your face…?”

Ayente smiled proudly and reached to her necklace to hold it up. “I killed an onikoslof, one of the gods of the caves if the Cave Children speak the truth, and it died by my spear. Archos and I, we fought together, we killed both, it got me, yes. The bloody tipped claws around my neck belong to the one who did this to me.” Ayente touched the lines that raked diagonally across her face. “I may never be beautiful, but I was never as beautiful as you before either. I… we fought. Then, the fenrisu… we fought them. We live, the tribe will eat as never before.”

Ayente swallowed, holding out one hand while placing the other to her breast, “I… yes, I killed Malach. He lied, Raena. Archos showed me the truth, that he lied about everything, about me, about you… about all of us. We were never cursed, we were never a source of shame. The gods never hated us, never despised us. Malach lied… he always lied. And my mother, my mother tried to kill me to protect him.”

Ayente’s voice cracked… “My mother… my own mother, she who bore me, nursed me, raised an ax to kill me. I knew she always hated me, but when I was finally to free myself of Makine and his lies… my mother… my mother…” The stress of her words began to weigh on her, and Ayente’s knees shook, the moment, the harried minutes that it had been, the weight of a lifetime bore down, and Ayente fell to her knees.

“Please… Raena… Raena…” Ayente’s face twisted and she bit her lip, “He used you… all of us, all the shame children… don’t you see? He used you for himself, used me, all of us again and again. He can’t anymore…”

Raena stopped, rooted to the spot when Ayente went to her knees. Her coal dark eyes darted to Seyi and a soft hand rested on the wrist that clutched the knife. “Seyi… did you not hear me say her name? This is Ayente. This is the one I spoke of.”

Seyi’s eyes softened, his hand relaxed its grip and he let Raena go around him and come close to Ayente, no longer stepping back, she approached instead. “Ayente… your mother… did you hate her so much…?” Raena crouched and put her hands out to cup Ayente’s cheeks.

“Wouldn’t you? When did a day pass that her loathing was not evident. She nursed you with the milk of kindness, but for me it was sour and bitter. I was her blood, and still…” Ayente snapped her fingers, “a mere word of Malach, and she took up an ax to kill me.”

Raena pursed her lips. “Ayente… as I said to Seyi before, between you and Malach, you are the more trustworthy. So what I ask now, I ask in trust as one who shared the breast of your mother, a friend, and a shame child, we are in triple trust. Tell me… exactly what Malach said to her.”

Ayente closed her eyes and cast her mind back, dredging up the moment in time that had come and gone, the minute in which her mother had lived and died, and a fraction of a moment before when Malach spoke to her.

“He said, ‘Strike down your daughter, and I will bless her soul so that she is redeemed in death!’ and then she took up the ax, I swung my spear behind me, opened her throat to the air, and it was done. She choked on her blood or lost it or both.” Ayente stared with shaking blue pupils into the dark eyed and dark haired companion of her youth as she spoke, then bit her lip when Raena’s hand covered her mouth in shock.

‘Oh by the gods… Ayente… Ayente what did you do, do you not know… have you not seen… have you missed the meaning of your mother’s act…?’ Raena’s eyes squeezed tight and driven by impulse, she tugged Ayente into her embrace and squeezed the smaller woman tightly as one would a lost child.

‘I must bury this secret, never speak of it… never tell her. It’s too cruel… too cruel…’ Raena thought, and squeezed as tightly as she could, to her surprise, Ayente’s muscles barely yielded to her tight hold. It felt like hugging a stone. ‘Have you grown so strong… while I was rutting to save myself by Malach’s will?’ She wondered at a loss, ‘I left you almost completely alone but for private moments to spare myself the scorn that was heaped on you… and you became this somehow…’ She finally drew back and placed a kiss on Ayente’s forehead.

Ayente looked up at her quizzically, raising an eyebrow in uncertainty at what Raena had done.

But Raena had not finished, “I do not mourn Malach… but he was the voice of the gods… doesn’t this bring down their wrath… aren’t we…” She bit her lip and stopped when Ayente vigorously shook her head.

“I will tell all later, but there is nothing to fear. You said I could be trusted more than Malach, then prove it, trust me now.” Ayente replied, and let Raena help her to her shaky feet. The dark haired orphan gave a tiny nod, and looked over her shoulder to where Seyi stood watching, his eyes going from the exchange between the two women, to the behemoth of a dragon whose eyes swept the area like a watchful predator.

Seyi’s mind raced like a gale force wind. ‘What do I say to this… when brother returns… what has happened here? Raena spoke well of this one… but…’ He stared at the shorter woman with the ripped marks over her face. He watched the way she spoke, listened to her words, and felt the power that lay beneath, and the rage that went with it. ‘Onikoslof claws, and marks to match on her face… if she got that close to one, is she stupid? Did she so long to die?’

When the two women got to their feet again, Raena extended a hand out to him, and curled her fingers toward her body, summoning him over.

Seyi approached, hesitating for a moment.

“So you are Ayente.” He said flatly.

She appraised him as a woman did a man, though slight of build, he was fit, not without marks on his front, and had good, clear eyes that appraised her not as a woman, but as something else she could not quite place.

“I am. And that…” She pointed behind her, “Is Archos. He is my friend, and we have shed, and shared, our blood.” Ayente’s voice, sullen before, shot up with pride. “Stay with us tonight, Seyi, tonight I will be confirmed as the new chief of the Red Ax, and tomorrow you may carry my words to your tribe. I am sure Malach granted you words of poison, but I will give you good words, and our tribes can find some common ground between us.”

Ayente clapped him on the shoulder, and as soon as Ayente turned around and Raena walked with her, he reached over and rubbed his shoulder where he was sure a bruise would be forming eventually.

“Raena, take your place among the women and chew the fat from the furs, I will introduce our guest to my hope.” Ayente gave a pleasant smile to the dark haired woman and patted her gently on the arm, after a moment’s hesitation, Raena did as was requested, while Seyi followed her to where Archos waited, holding his sword with the tip pressed down into the dirt, and the little barking wolf pup flailing at the air with its legs, cupped by the body in the dragon’s palm.

Ayente held out her arms and Archos extended the little wolf to her. It went eagerly into her arms, and began to slobber at her face. She felt the hot breath of the little beast, and the feel of his rough little tongue, and turned away with a little laugh. Seyi felt his blood run cold and hairs stand on end as the girl just ahead of him laughed while her mother’s body lay lifeless only the kick of a rock distant from where they now stood.

'Who can laugh so close to the body of their mother?' Seyi wondered, though he kept his face neutral through the proof of her hatred for the dead.

His already cold blood turned to ice when the dragon spoke like a man, his scaled lips revealing the teeth, his tail tapping up and down into the ground so softly that the blades of grass barely bent at its touch.

He glanced briefly away to watch as men blooded themselves cutting apart the meat and preparing it, blood slicked hands moved with practiced ease, while a few feet away, women in a circle around a growing pile of furs gossipped among one another while they chewed fat.

Ayente drew their eyes when she reached out to touch the dragon's scales at the back of his enormous palm. It struck Seyi so forcefully to watch the naturalness of the act. She simply reached out with a steady hand, and laid her own on his. No fear, no hesitation, as easily as one would a brother, a father, a lover, a long trusted friend. And the dragon's deep set, terrifying eyes fell to her with comfortable ease. "Archos, I will join our women, and start to tell the story of our journey out there and back again."

"Will they permit you?" Archos inquired, and Seyi noted the way its scaled brow rose up at one eye.

'Similar to us in some way.' Seyi set that to memory as he watched their talk.

Ayente cast an anxious eye in their direction with a sudden jerk of her head, then slowly brought her eyes back up to the dragon. "They permit Raena, and the few other young ones... which they have not done before. In the before now, I would have been shooed away. As were they. But at this moment...?" She waved a hand widely out toward where Raena took her place in the circle. She took a long end of the onikoslof fur in hand, and brought the edge to her mouth and began to chew. Nobody told her to leave. "Perhaps they submit from fear, perhaps from hunger or gratitude for food and furs. But they obey me for now. So it is not whether they permit me. It is 'who will stop me?" Ayene let out a savage, deep throated laugh, thick and rich as the soil that birthed a forest, she threw back her head and ran her bloody fingers through her blonde hair, leaving faint red streaks that, when Seyi caught the hard blue eyes, reminded him of a hungering fenrisu.

"Then go." Archos inclined his head politely to her, “I will speak with this one." Archos replied with the bare motion of his lips that gave his rough, gravel like voice a softer tint.

Seyi began to watch as the woman walked toward the circle, and her hand, still stained with blood, fell to an unobservant shoulder. The woman looked up, an elder with long white hair, deep tan wrinkled skin. The woman cast her eyes up to the source of the touch, flinched, her mouth moved, but no words came out, the light touch of Ayente's hand folded over the shoulder and remained there for a moment... and then she moved over to make room.

The eyes of the Spirit Horse man shot back over from the moment to watch how Archos responded, the muscles of the monster were tense ones, and his hold over the thing he held jabbed point down into the dirt went from loose to tight, to loose again when Ayente seated herself with Fen'Biter wiggling in her lap.

The wolf pup shifted the entire conversation, and the awkward moment passed into one of curiosity as Ayente began to tell her story. As her body relaxed into its place, Seyi noted that the dragon relaxed as well. 'A weakness? Or more? No, something to know, for now.' He then resumed his introduction, speaking of his people as the dragon peppered him with questions along the way. To his shock, despite staring up into the massive head and the large teeth more than once, the relaxed air around the monster set him more at ease than he thought possible, and eventually he lost all track of time until the sun began to descend.

The tension among the males of the tribe was abundant by then, though the fascination among the women with Fen'Biter and Ayente's story had allowed their tension to ease, when the hour for the blessing of the food came, and Malach's corpse remained unmoving near that of Ayente's mother, the tension went ever higher.

Ayente however, did not let the eyes cast back to the corpses go unanswered. She stood from her place among the flames and began to walk the inner circle, the fire cast her shadow out over those who faced her, and made her appear part of it for those who were on the other side. She held her hand outstretched, and foreseeing her intent, Archos took up her spear and cast it underhand toward her. She snatched it from the air and walked with the blood tipped black glass above, tapping the butt of the spear on the ground as if it were a walking stick. Behind her, Fen'Biter followed on soft pads.

In this way, she spoke, "You have questions. I will answer them." She then retold the story of their hunt, and traced her fingers over the settling wounds on her face, she explained the hunt, the kill, the battle against Fen'Maki and the acquisition of the pup she had named Fen'Biter. As they sat, and her shadow swept them, she loomed taller than she was. The flame glow licking at her face gave her scars an even more fearsome appearance, and her blue eyes showed no mercy to discomfort when they locked on another.

The slow steps of her feet disturbing the dirt or bending blades of grass accompanied her words like faint music, until she finally reached her intended point. "Now I must be confirmed as chief. Our chief is dead, Malach is dead..."

"Because you killed them..." An old man spat with venom from where he sat, and Ayente turned toward him.

She spoke with slow certainty, but her hold on her spear tensed. "Makine killed our chief. Not I. Yes, I told him to fight. It was my belief that it was the right choice. I own that it was my saying, but he believed as much as I. Had he come to the plan first, he would be just as dead. And yes, I killed Malach. Malach lied, to all of you, to all of us. The gods were a lie to steal position, pleasure, and food. He was not the voice of the gods, if he had been, he would have known my intent. They would have warned him. That I live, and he..." She gestured with her spear to the pallid corpses cloaked in darkness well beyond the flames.

"...does not, should tell you that much."

"You want to lead the tribe... while you kill those in it?!" The old man snarled out again, and Ayente planted the butt of her spear hard into the ground and put her other hand on her hip as she held his eyes in hers.

"Yes. Malach was weak. My mother was weak. Weakness is the sin they were guilty of, the root of all sins. He was lazy and dishonest. My mother, a coward who feared the gods, Malach, and Makine, more than she ever loved me. Their weakness undid them, it was only my hand that brought them the ends they were due. Turn it around, old man. You would eat the food I bleed to bring you, but speak against me? You would wear the furs I labored to bring back, but even as I clothe you, you tell me I am unworthy of your faith and loyalty?"

The old man closed his lips and shook with rage, unable to meet her eyes, he stared at the ground instead, willing it to open up and swallow the target of his wrath.

Ayente filled the empty void of silence with her voice, she raised her spear up toward the star covered night sky, "Who lived in shame they did not make for themselves, stand up! Who fought beside me, stand up! Who hunted beside me, stand up! Who shed blood with me, stand up!"

Seyi felt goosebumps form on his skin, the scratching sound of feet over dirt reached his ears, and the survivors of their defeat by the Cave Children, rose up. unsurprisingly, so did several women, and most of the young men.

"You all know me to my soul..." Ayente's lower lip trembled and her voice cracked, "All I have done, all I have ever done... I did for this... the only tribe I know, the only people I know. I could not give in to Malach's will... I could not... you all saw into me so many times... so very, very many times. In those hours, did you revile me as Malach did, as he said the gods did?! I know many of you offered food to the gods through Malach, trying to trade it for my redemption..."

She swallowed twice before she could continue, "Always he would say no, that the gods still hated me, did he not?"

Murmurs of acknowledgement at the undeniable came from those who stood.

"I once lay with Malach... offering myself to him to bless her..." Raena said quietly, "When it was done, he said that there would be no curse on her during that hunt. I gave myself to him on many hunts... often though, I wondered why. Why did the gods hate her, who worked so hard for us? Why should she be despised for her birth when the gods themselves made her as they did?"

A slender woman with matted dark hair and a small child in her lap stood up. 'Keesa...' Ayente looked with surprise at the woman who bore a daughter for Malach.

"I once shared a longing look with Ayente, after my redemption... and Malach saw it. That night he called me to his hut, and hit me. Ayente and I played as children, and I set her aside, I tried to cast her out of my heart when Malach planted life within my body... I saw how it wounded her. Yet when I was battling the abyss to bring life to his child, herb for the pain found its way into my drink. I thanked all... but none gave it... I never thanked you... even when that told me it was you..." Keesa lowered her eyes and stroked the hair on her daughter's head. "You took a risk for me when I would not speak to you, and when I dared look your way, Malach would raise his hand to me and tell me not to bring your curse to his child. Now he is dead... and I can say this." Keesa stepped from her place and approached the scarred Ayente, her slender legs navigating the path between the seated members of her tribe.

Ayente stared at her with longing eyes.

"I am sorry." Keesa whispered. "Thank you. And I am sorry." She said again, Ayente stood like a statue, and Keesa's slender arms slowly wrapped around Ayente's body in an embrace, carefully avoiding the spear, she drew Ayente's body against her own.

Archos watched the moment unfold, finally it clicked and he tapped his talon tips together. 'That must be Keesa, Ayente spoke of her prophecy stone...' He thought to himself, and watched the slender woman step away when the embrace was lightly returned.

"I will follow you." Keesa added, and murmurs swept the tribe again. The eldest of the elders were tense, but the bold action had its effect.

Ayente wiped her eyes furiously with one hand, raised her spear again, and slammed it down hard. "I bleed for you! I will fight for you! I will die for you! I will despise none of you! You are 'all' my tribe. If your mother was covered by force, you are as much my brother or sister as if they were covered in love or by simple desire. Follow me, Red Ax, and we will begin again! Stand, if you will walk at my back!"

Archos watched beside Seyi from outside the circle, as the Red Ax divided itself in two.