“She won.” Seyi whispered. “She won.”

“Did she?” Archos asked with a cockeyed look down at the human who, unlike most beyond Ayente, stood close to him without evident fear. ‘He is very brave, very foolish, or very wise.’ Archos thought of the slightly built male.

Seyi nodded and his arm went up, his hand open with finger tips toward the seated tribe. “Do you see them? The old of many manies of moons will not accept her. The young do. What is a tribe without its young?”

“I see. She has their future. The old are more numerous, but they need the young to live and carry on their ways.” Archos scratched under his jaw and pondered his words. He felt icy hatred rising out of the aged who stared at Ayente. She refused to move aside, while Fen’Biter nibbled at the fingers of Raena and yelped in general ignorance of the silent tumult.

Ayente did not miss a beat, her eyes narrowed over the aged who refused to stand for her. “You rejected me all my life, I am not surprised that you reject me now. But I tell you this, your rejection? Meaningless. Who will stand against the killer of the voice of the gods?! Who will stand and oppose the bearer of the claws of the onikoslof?! Who will fight the slayer of fenrisu! Put another up here who you will follow, if not me.” Her eyes fell from one to another.

“If none will stand against me, then you have no choice but to follow me… or wander off without me. But they…” Ayente swept her arms out wide and for the first time in all her life, many of those who knew her, saw her smile with absolute joyful radiance, “they will follow. Those who bled with me, played with me, fought with me, hunted with me. If you grandfathers and grandmothers of the tribe, who eat my meat, chew the fat from the furs I brought you, will not support me?” Ayente dropped her hands to her side and then folded them behind her back, “Well you tell me… what do you plan to do? How will you feed yourselves? Pray to the gods? Do it. I killed their voice. They cared nothing for him, what makes you think they care for you?”

She closed her mouth and then the corners of her lips turned up almost imperceptibly. “I have said enough. I am ‘asking’ for all of you to follow me. But that is a kindness, a kindness I give out of the love I have long given… but which you aged ones have long held back. Now I tell you, you may not love me. But you will obey me, you will follow me, and I will see you saved, even if I must drag you out of the dirt you came from.”

She then walked out from her place where the fire still rose and crackled, and taking Fen’Biter up from Raena’s lap, she returned to Archos. “I have said enough. Tomorrow it begins.”

Archos saw Seyi turn his clever, sharp eyes upward, and Archos’s deep set look saw into them words that crossed the boundaries of their races. ‘No. It doesn’t.’

Archos put his talon to her face, and drew the smooth back of it across the center scar that raked over her face. “You did very well. You were very brave. In our hunt, our fight, and this night. You earned your rest. So go to your hut, and I will join you later. I wish to observe.”

She bowed her head. “I am not the one I remind you of.” She whispered and her small, calloused hands caught his wrist at the base, they were not enough even together, to encircle it fully, “But if I am even a shadow of one you admired, then I am proud. No more shame.” When she let his wrist go and he drew it away, she looked over at the bodies that had been left out. “I should tend to them.” Ayente’s gaze was transfixed, her body began to shake as the tensions of the recent events, all the pent up fear, began to shed away as if she’d been in a brutal fight and survived.

“Even… cruel as she was, though she despised me. She nursed me at her poisoned breast and without her, I would not live. And even terrible as he was… Malach was still one of us. I shouldn’t sleep until…” Ayente’s lower lip began to tremble and the iron eyes became pools that in the dark, well beyond the tribal fire, only Archos could see.

Archos hooked a talon over her shoulder, the sharp point dug into her skin only slightly through the thick dark furs she wore that kept back her nakedness. He pulled with a slightly insistent force that compelled her to step where he drew her. “No. Go rest, they will not be less dead tomorrow. You have done enough.”

“I… yes. If you say. You, I trust.” She brought her hand up, gazing up at him with unflinching eyes of shining blue and put her hand on the black scales of his chest. After a moment, he understood. ‘Yes, that space, that is where she thinks my heart is. This has some meaning to them on a deeper level.’

His mouth opened a little and the corner scales of his mouth pulled back in imitation of her smile. “That is good, now go rest. Trust me, it is for the best.”

She left, her footsteps, small as they were, were clearly heavy and weary from the great toll the day had taken on her. The straw blonde hair swayed faintly in the breeze, and the smell of death from the bodies hung pungently in the air. Fen’Biter wiggled in her arms, but she held it fast until she entered her hut.

Seyi felt his heart pound in his chest so near such a large monster. Yet the ease with which its tail swayed and the clear and odd affection it held for the small human woman… and her strange devotion in turn, helped set him at ease. ‘I know of no monster capable of that. If it can do so, it can think, if it can think, it can plan, and if it can do that, I am likely safe as long as I am no threat.’ He folded his hands behind his back in imitation of Ayente’s final stand before the tribal fire.

He looked almost straight up to the dragon, “You know the eymalyn?” Seyi asked in a quiet voice, his fingers clenching and unclenching as he tried to keep his thoughts private when spoken aloud.

Archos looked down at him and shook his head. Seyi cursed. “It is… do you sleep with Ayente?”

Archos nodded slowly.

“She sleeps easily with you, no fear?” Seyi probed a little further.

Archos again raised and lowered his head.

“She believes you will not hurt her in her sleep, kill her, eat her?” Seyi asked, “Even though you are large, not human, and…” He looked Archos up and down quite pointedly.

Archos again slowly nodded.

“That ease, that knowing, is eymalyn.” Seyi explained and smacked his lips several times, glancing around into the shadows as if fearing to be interrupted.

Archos felt the sun rise in his mind as he understood. “Yes, we call this word ‘trust’. ‘I see, eymalyn. ‘Eyma’ and ‘palyn’ the word for good, and the word for love, good love is trust. Poetic.’ Archos snorted heavily with the dawning of his comprehension.

Seyi raised his chin in the direction of the fire where others still argued. He pointed up to Archos’s chest were the humans seemed to think his heart was. “Eymalyn.” Then nodded back in their direction and lowered his hand. “Kitelyn.”

‘Bad love. Mistrust… or hate.’ Archos didn’t need the story to understand the meaning. “I know. I know. It will be settled in the morning. You, rest. Feast. The new chief of the Red Ax will have words for you to carry home.”

Seyi slowly walked away, and watched while the dragon made his way back to a hut and disappeared inside.

Ayente was already curled up asleep in his hut, having forsaken her own. He watched her, the long slender legs seemed like sticks to him, and yet? ‘And yet you have seen her run. Jump. She moves like she is stronger than her body would appear.’

The slender legs curled up, bending at the knee so that she was folded in on herself, appearing even smaller than she really was. Her slender shape at odds with everything he was familiar with.

A faint breathing came and went from her lips, her small chest went in and out with the rhythm of sleep. ‘So much like us that way. No matter how strange she is, we share the breath of life.’ He didn’t linger over that recognition, but instead left to go to her own hut. There he held his talons out. ‘I wish I were a better mage.’ He mentally cursed himself, but went to work anyway. “Earth. Move.” His hand passed over the flat ground, and where it did, the earth rose up, not greatly, but into a slow, vague outline reminiscent of a human female about Ayente’s size, save for a hollow place about the chest.

When it was done, he left, and went to where some sides of meat and furs were already stored and awaiting use. He snatched one of each up, and returned to the hut. There he laid the meat in the hollow, and then laid the fur over the top so that it would appear a figure was sleeping beneath.

He then hovered his hand over the fur, “Create. Chalk.” A simple, useless spell learned by students who forgot things to write with one too many times, a stick of it suitable to his palm appeared. He clenched his grip, the chalk stick snapped with an audible ‘click’ noise. He did it again, and again, and again. Then he rubbed his scaled palms over it, creating an outline of faint white dust over the interior of the hut. He repeated the process several times, and then quietly left the crude structure, closing the fur behind him by taking a cut hole and sliding it over a stick branching out so that it would appear occupied.

He then returned to his hut, and sat down beside the sleeping Ayente to wait until morning.

Night passed with nothing within his hut but the sound of steady breathing, but Archos listened with great care. Ayente’s own hut was very close. When the fire died down, the arguments did, and people moved off to their huts of dried mud. He however, smelled fear passing by his hut. The fragrant odor of one acting in terror of their own intent was all too familiar.

His lip curled up and teeth instinctively bared, but he said nothing. Fen’Biter stirred, but a faint scratch at the back of his ears, and the pup was whimpering happily in his sleep again.

The fear bearer moved on. Archos continued to listen. The corners of his maw drew back, when he heard the squelch of a blade opening up flesh. ‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five…’ Archos tapped one talon of his right hand on the ground while he waited to stop counting the faint sound of repeated stabbing. ‘One stab is business, five is fear, ten stabs is pleasure, one hundred is hatred.’ Archos mentally recited the expression he’d heard in his early years. ‘If it wasn’t a hundred stabs, it was close.’ He felt the thought pass through his mind, and with great ease, he began to relax.

Archos waited. ‘Human faces are very expressive. Very easy to identify smugness, hatred, affection, all of it, just by looking. But their eyes do not seem to be especially good ones. That false Ayente wouldn’t fool a blind dragon in any conditions… but it seems it was good enough in the dark to fool one human. Their instincts were good, go in while the target is asleep, stab them in the chest, and leave like nothing is wrong. But still, not good enough.’ His idle musings were interrupted by noise outside.

Shouting. Noise. Ayente stirred beside him, her body going from barely moving to reminding him of the coiled springs of massive carts used to haul goods. She sprang to a seated position, her blue eyes wide with alarm. Her heart already pounding as it was kicked into action by the chaos that began outside.

Archos’s massive hand was over her face in an instant. She felt the great warmth pulsing behind his scales, her vision obscured, but also the words died at her lips before she could voice them. Her racing heart began to ease almost immediately, and to show him she understood, she slowly moved her hands up, and holding his wrist, she gently pushed the touch away.

Her deep blue eyes turned up to him and she cocked her head with a silent question.

“Listen.” He whispered in his own tongue so that none would understand even if they heard.

She nodded, slowly, and did as he said. “The gods have spoken to me! They have said Ayente is not to be chief! They tell me she was allowed to slay Malach as he was to be a living sacrifice! That his death would convey his power to me!” Ayente recognized the voice quite readily, and gritted her teeth.

‘Damn them… not even one day and the lies begin again!’ She snarled and tried to shoot from her seated position, up to her feet. She got halfway before the talon at her shoulder stopped her. Fen’Biter was stirring at her side, stretching out at the paws and yawning with a tiny maw, indifferent to the tribal politics unfolding close at hand.

“The gods gave a knowing to me!” Ayente spat into the dust, the sound of walking feet and muttering from members of the tribe filled her with revulsion as they drew close to another liar despite her efforts the prior day.

“They say to me that one among us has killed Ayente in the night! One who stayed with us as a guest, to whom we gave trust! That he has killed her, the gods tell me he did this as an offering…” The shouting voice was interrupted by a wail from Raena.

It was followed upon hot on its heels by other cries of outrage and dismay.

But the shouting man would have none of it, and shouted over the cries of dismay. “Bring out Seyi! The killing guest!”

Ayente struggled to rise under Archos’s grip, fury built in her, she growled and bared her teeth, she felt his talon shake over her as she tried to force herself up.

“Not yet.” Archos said without looking at her. “Beym!” [Patience] He snapped in her tongue, and hearing the rough whisper and the building anger within, she felt herself calm down.

‘They say I am dead? How can I be dead if I am here… what could… how?’ Confusion stampeded alongside anger in Ayente’s heart, she felt her fingers twitch with the urge to violently storm out of the hut and pronounce herself alive. Still, she forced herself to hold fast, and touched Archos’s wrist gently, and when it moved aside, she stood up more slowly.

Seyi’s shouts and protests were ignored as he was dragged out of his guest hut. “Where is your knife, Seyi?!” The ‘new voice of the gods’ shouted.

“In my hut, where it should be!” Seyi cast his gaze around, two large men were holding his arms, sweat sprang from his brow. “I did nothing! I didn’t even know Ayente! I met her only yesterday! Why would I kill her!”

He stared at the old man with burning anger in his deep brown eyes. “Go and see!” He spat out at the old man and felt the weight of the tribe’s confusion and anger around him. ‘This is bad, this is very bad.’ He cast his eyes in the direction of Ayente’s hut. ‘Did the dragon not understand me? I thought for sure he did? Is he gone, why has he not emerged from his hut?’

His eyes fell to Raena, and to his relief, she dashed from the pack and thrust herself in front of him. “He could not have killed Ayente! He lay with me last night, and did not return to his own hut until he could barely walk!” Her hair bounced vigorously with her shaking head.

“His knife is not here.” A man said from behind them after emerging from the hut.

Seyi started to stammer, but could not form whole words.

Raena’s shrill voice pierced the air and she shook with anger. “Besides, nobody has even visited Ayente’s hut yet! You do not even do this, because one who says he has secret knowing from the gods, tells you it is so?!”

“Have you learned nothing?! Did yesterday reveal nothing to you?!” Raena cried out, and tears of outrage ran down her cheeks. “I too, felt it must be so and wailed right away when I hear the saying that she is dead, and the word comes from the gods… but Malach was a liar… so why should I believe you?!”

The younger members of the tribe were nodding in general agreement with her sentiment.

“If she were not dead, surely she would have come from her hut by now. But yes, we will go, and see the body, the gods say that Seyi’s knife is in her chest still.” The voice of the gods proclaimed with such earth shaking confidence that even the doubting agreement that Raena wrung from the younger members, began to still.

‘No… not Ayente… did she not suffer enough, to die this way?’ Raena wondered as a creeping fear began to eat her from within.

“Bring him!” The voice ordered with brusque arrogance.

And within the hut, Archos nodded. “Now.”

Ayente emerged from the dragon’s hut and stretched in front of it. “What’s all the noise about?!” She shouted loudly as they were passing by, and every heart froze as one.

“You’re alive?!” Raena shouted at the same moment as a quietly weeping Keesa.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ayente asked innocently as if she had not been listening to the chaos beyond. She grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and pulled the arm across her body, savoring the feel of the stretch. Then repeated the soothing sore motion with the other arm. “I am chief of this tribe, I will not die on my first day.” She snorted with such a pretense of ignorance that it kept the dismay going.

The self proclaimed voice of the gods had his eyes darting left and right in a panic. “The gods protected you…” He whispered, but Ayente could see in the old man’s eyes as his face locked with hers, that he felt a rising fear of trickery. His body, squared and straight, held a faint slump as if the wind had been knocked out of him. His darting eyes seemed to seek escape.

The two who held Seyi’s arms, began to relax their grip.

Seyi sensed the change and shook them off. “You are alive… but then… where is my knife?”

Archos ducked his head beneath the frame of the door, swept aside the fur covering, and emerged behind Ayente. He pointed to her hut where her spear still sat outside. “It is in the false Ayente I made last night.”

Muttering and shuffling feet rose like the buzzing of flies. “Follow!” Archos ordered with the same brusqueness the pretender had used earlier, and the stone’s toss distance from where they stood, he took them to her hut. “Do not enter, only look.” Archos said, and swept aside the brown deer fur hanging in front.

There stood Seyi’s knife, in the center of what would be a human chest.

Heads crowded to look, and Ayente forced herself to the front to see. The fur covered what appeared to be the shape of a body, the smell of blood and its wet stains on the fur were clearly visible with the morning light streaming through. With trembling fingers, Ayente slowly reached for her spear. The feel of the wood in her hand helped the pounding heart to ease, but rage built up in her mind.

The only thing that stopped her, was the curiosity of the white dust in front of where the ‘body’ lay.

“That is no body.” Archos said with a hint of smug self satisfaction, his jaw faintly tilted up and his tail rising and falling in a way that reminded Ayente of Fen’Biter’s happy wag.

“That is but a mound of earth I raised in the faint shape of one. At the chest, beneath the fur, there is meat I took last night, so that the killer would believe he stabbed flesh in the dark.” He explained, while wide eyes stared from him to his handiwork.

“Seyi, that is your knife, isn’t it?” Archos asked with an almost humble bowing of his large head.

The wood of the handle was dark, where those of the tribe had lighter wood to work with. “Yessss… but I… I didn’t try to kill anyone!” He shouted, his head shook violently while his hands made fists, before he could demand an explanation, Archos raised his taloned hand up.

“I know. You were… you have no word for this. But made to a false knowing. My people call it ‘framing’. Where a person who has done nothing, is made by another to appear to have done something.” Archos explained and scratched under his jaw.

“Someone… stole your knife, likely while you were with Raena, used it, and left it here so you would be thought to be the killer. All in all…?” Archos shrugged, “It was a fine, if crude, effort.”

Archos pointed to the white dust in front of the fur. “This is chalk dust, whoever walked in, made those impressions. Does the foot match that of Seyi?” Archos asked the question with a greatly amused chuckle. It clearly did not. The footprints were small, and Seyi’s feet were not.

“What is more, Seyi, sit. Show us the bottom of your feet.” Archos ordered, and Seyi sat down, stretched out his legs, and let Raena and Keesa take the ankles, and hold them up.

Seyi stared up at the bright morning sky, ‘I will not die today. This is a very nice day for it, but I know now that this will not be the day I end.’ He swallowed and relaxed completely at the dawning understanding. A cocky smile formed on his boyish face.

“There is no dust, whoever entered there, they would carry the white dust away with them on their body.” Archos pointed at the ‘new’ voice of the gods, whose eyes were now wild with fear.

“Don’t listen to the monster! I carry the word of gods to you! Malach’s power is within!” He protested and reached within the furs he wore to grasp for a knife.

“Check him!” Ayente barked the order like she was born to give it, her eyes fell on the two men who had been holding Seyi, her back was straight and her eyes filled with wrath overflowing into words.

They immediately grabbed the old man’s arms and held him fast. “How dare you?!” The old man shrieked and shook his head. “I will call down the curses of the gods! You will be shame children as she is! Cursed ones! I will curse you!” He howled the threat, and the elder parents of the two men wailed denials from where they stood at the back of the tribe, but it was insufficient to even slow Ayente’s hunting brothers even for a moment.

They pushed him bodily down to the ground and down onto his back. A heavy, youthful foot from each, pinned him down to the dirt at the shoulders. His legs kicked and flailed desperately, his curses and sputtered threats filled the air.

Gasps however, all but broke his spirit, as there on the bottoms of his feet, lay a dusting of white that could only have come from standing over the false body.

Age wore out the will to struggle, but not the voice of anger. “You listen to a cursed child of shame and her monster?! You would make her chief?! Have you all lost knowing?! The gods will curse us all?! She killed the voice of the gods! She killed her own mother who bore her! She destroyed us as Malach promised she would! I wanted to save us! Save us! I will be the voice of the gods!” He thrashed again under the feet of the big hunters, shouting and screaming while the tribe looked on, ‘lost’ about what to do.

“In my world, they called what he did, or tried to do, ‘assassination’. It is why Tascaros is dead.” Archos’s gravelly voice carried. “There is only one penalty for it.”

Ayente didn’t look up to him, though her hand touched his side with understanding at the sense of loss she felt certain that only she could detect coming off of him. She then hefted her spear and approached her killer. “I can guess the penalty.” She said and under the witness of the tribe, she took her spear in both hands and thrust it into his throat with such violence that the spear went through the flesh and into the ground beneath.

The spear stood up at the angle of the thrust while the dying assassin gurgled out last words that none could comprehend, his bowels emptied unceremoniously and the light of hatred, fear, and who knew what else, began to leave his eyes. Blood spurted and founted from the open wound and fell on the feet of the two who held him down, and the body went limp.

Ayente wasted no time. She looked around at the tribe, a few feet away, Seyi was already almost risen to his feet with the help of Raena and Keesa, a few voices gave off the sounds of weeping, most bodies were trembling still at the tension. “A follower of the old ways did a new thing that none should do! This was a terrible thing! To kill the chief when they sleep? None has done this before, and now none can be the first… ‘assassin’ again!” She slapped her chest hard with one hand and held her palm there. “I bring food. I bring furs. I bring an end to shame.”

She stepped onto the body of the dead man so that she was a little taller. “I bring a powerful knower, Archos, to help save us… what must I do, to drag you from destroying yourselves?! I want only for our tribe to grow! To be happy! To be safe!” Her eyes filled with loving tears and she choked back a sob so filled with sincerity it was easy to forget she stood on a corpse to be seen.

“I do all that I do out of love for you… that is all… my brothers and sisters who I grow up with… my chief who treated me as if I were his own. Let this stop with the dead beneath my feet! If any wish to challenge for leadership…” She put a hand on the spear and yanked it free, then slammed the butt of it into the dirt and put her unarmed hand on her hip, “then let them stand now in the light! But if nobody will challenge my right to rule, then be silent forever more.”

A collective swallow was loud enough that she could hear it. “First, we burn the bodies, give their flesh to the sky, and then…” Ayente swept her spear out toward the dragon, “he will teach you his knowing.”

She hopped off the corpse and approached Seyi. She raised her deep blue eyes to look into his own and looking upward at him as she did, she rested a hand on his shoulder. “A great wrong, a false telling, was done to you by our tribe. The one who did it is dead, but that does not atone. Ask one thing of me, and as chief, I will do it if I can.”

Seyi’s eyes felt lost within the ocean of icy blue, fear crystalized in him as he saw the endless wrath and a lifetime of hate that was forced into her by her people, now had the power to be turned outwards. Briefly he turned to his memories of Makine.

‘I have heard he is her brother, now there is no doubt. None. But if his anger is a campfire, she is a forest fire.’ He thought to himself, the thought secured his decision about what words to give his tribe. A fragment of him denied it. ‘This is madness, this is far outside of what they sent you to do… if they deny it when you come? What then? This will set us to odds with the Cave Children. Makine will…’ He stilled the thought.

‘Will do what that he does not already do? His men steal our women and keep us from the good waters and the mountain safety. We already cast spears at one another… and perhaps he is already weakened badly after the fight with the Red Ax! Vyka is good but…’

He slowed his thoughts again as Ayente’s eyes brought him back to the moment, brimming with hopeful expectation. A faint smile formed at the upturning corners of her lips, inviting, even warm.

He slew the indecision in his heart and took the chance. He glanced at Raena, recalling her promise to her, then rested his own hand on Ayente’s other shoulder, and replied.

“I have lived my life by chances, watched over by Kelo for all that time. But more than his watchfulness has kept me alive, Ayente. I live because when I see how things are and are not, I take them and make them what I want. I see things new here, which is dangerous. But with danger comes different, and with different sometimes comes better. If you are chief, and offering your promise to make the new wrong, right, I ask this.” He squeezed her shoulder, and felt it barely give in his mild grasp. ‘Strong.’ He thought, and continued.

“Malach, for all that he was, wanted to join our tribes, I believe this is for the good. Let our tribes meet, let us trade mates. Your sons will be our sons, our daughters, your daughters. Let that peace of one people come and close the gap between us. Can you do this?” He asked without breaking his eyes hold on her own, and suppressed the fear he felt rising up at the fury just below the surface of the scar faced woman.

She smirked, “You ask me, the chief, to join our tribes and be chief no more after, to atone for what was done to keep me from being chief at all? You are bold, Seyi, very bold.”

Seyi bit his lower lip, acutely conscious of the spear still in her hand. The ease with which she wielded it told of ample skill, and he took a long, deep breath. “Malach would have gained a position as the voice of the gods alongside our own shaman but… I know, I can promise no status for you.”

Ayente threw back her head, and to the shock of the onlookers, she began to laugh as if she’d heard the funniest joke in all the world.

“I care nothing for being chief. Status, authority… what is this to me? I said what I meant, and meant what I said. All my work has been for the tribe. I will meet your asking, on one condition.” All hint of laughter cut off in an instant, and the hand she kept on his shoulder grew tight enough to ache. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fingers tense on the wood of her spear.

“What is this you ask?” Seyi countered, suppressing the wince of pain where her hold had tightened, barely able to believe he was looking down at her.

“You heard my declaration. No more children of shame, no more cursed ones, that I will not bend on. These are ‘all’ my people.” She swept her eyes around her, “none begged to be born, and none will be cursed for how it was so. None of them will be outcasts, none of them will live as I, or they, did before. If you cannot promise this, then…” her grip fell away and her arms opened in front of him, “then I cannot give you what you want. It is beyond my power.”

Seyi’s eyes fell to the dirt, the dead hand of the old man fell into his view, and the dragon was still there out of the corner of his eye. The death of Malach, his disbelieving incomprehension at his death by her hand, grim memories of his own tribe’s shaman came to the fore. And with it, cynicism replaced any fear of the gods.

“Bring the black stone, as much as you can, and I believe… I believe we can make it as you say. And if we cannot… then I will still consider the wrong done to me, atoned, and I will instead, offer something of myself at your request. Will that be enough?” Seyi asked hopefully, raising his eyes from the dead hand to meet her own again.

“That will do for a start.” Ayente replied, and held her arm out to him. He clasped his forearm to hers, and they shook vigorously, while at their backs, a faint wind picked up, caught their hair, and carried it in the direction of Seyi’s tribe, billowing it like dancing leaves.

‘This… this is going to be a very interesting day.’ Archos reflected, keeping the smile he felt, hidden within while he watched revolution unfold before his eyes.