The next day, shortly after dawn, I climbed the ridge towards the Basin. Dera had been particularly insistent and had set me a very precise appointment a few days earlier. In the end, I thought that I could take advantage of my visit to take the temperature of the camp. Sesh's worried words had stirred me up more than I had at first thought, and I almost expected to find that the barter circle had turned into an entrenched fort occupied by decorated warriors. The rain had ceased again, giving way to a dull and plain sky, and I was getting tired of the hesitant showers of autumn. I was looking forward to winter coming for good, and I only hoped that it would be dry, that we could end once and for all with this unbearably wet in-between.

On the way, I came across a few lost sheep and halfway through, an unknown cavalier passed me trotting. His mount was one of those small, stocky, rough-haired horses that are bred in the foothills of the Horned Mountains. The beast was so light on its feet that I barely had time to hear it approach. I watched the rider disappear, then resumed my journey, sometimes thinking of the others, wrapped in the warm hay of the Ronna farm, but especially of Brindy and the smell of her long hair. If I had managed to keep myself busy lately, I still missed her terribly. Despite all my efforts, since I had confessed my thefts, I had only managed to get a few cold, flat remarks out of her. I found her attitude towards me completely incomprehensible and I was determined to tell her about it soon, but the opportunity had not yet come. My worries left me when I attacked the ascent of the ridge. In the distance I saw my chaig friend and raised my hand to greet her.

Her silhouette, small and motionless, stood out clearly against the sky where the path reached the top of the hill. Dera was camped on one of the granite ridges that at this point pointed out of the earth, like the forgotten bones of some monstrous creature buried there, under the crest of the Basin. I was astonished to discover her alone, but when she jumped from her perch and came to meet me, I was struck even more by her attire. Her pants had been replaced by a long dress of soft, light skin, with here and there a few polished bones to close them. It was the first time I saw her dressed as a girl - or at least as a child from Brown-Horn could expect to see a girl dressed - and if it's true that in the clans we didn't usually stick with such conventions, I admit that it still had a strange effect on me. In addition to the dress, Dera wore a chitin necklace that sometimes cast a sumptuous bluish reflection. Her red locks had been dyed. I had time to find her pretty before chasing away such a strange thought.

Dera greeted me with a tense smile, and her manner was nervous and clumsy, as if she was worried about what I might think of her appearance. In this uncomfortable atmosphere, we exchanged a few words of welcome that contrasted with our informal habits. Nevertheless, she eventually took me by the arm, as she always did, and we headed down the hill towards the Basin. I was relieved to see that at first glance nothing seemed to have changed since my last visit. A few yurts were missing, but that was normal for this season. From what I could tell, the strangest thing at camp that day was Dera's inexplicable behaviour. I understood that there was something unusual going on, but the uneasiness between us embarrassed me to the point that I didn't dare ask her exactly what it was all about.

As we reached the the first yurts, as if I had formulated my questions aloud, Dera offered me an explanation. "I've prepared something for us, Fyss," she said in a voice that, for once, wasn't confident, but seemed to seek my approval. When I pretended to slow down to question her further, Dera grabbed me more firmly and forced me to move forward again.

"The customs are that we don't talk about it before, so that your heart can speak the truth when it has to speak." I couldn't understand a word she was saying, let alone the solemn tone and sustained vocabulary that accompanied her gibberish, and it was a very disoriented Fyss that she brought under the fold of her family yurt.

I was surprised to be greeted there by the darkness. No candles were shining, the flap of the chimney had been pulled as if on a rainy day and the darkness was stretching its undulating claws from the periphery. In the center, where the fire was burning in the glowing hearth, there was this unique halo of light that reverberated in the sylph-like swirls of smoke. At first I thought there was no one there, which surprised me so early in the morning, then my eyes fell on the silhouette of the grandmother, who was waiting on the other side of the embers. I had never seen the old woman leave the furs of her bed, and until then, in my mind, she had been part of the décor, a bit like a piece of furniture that had to be fed from time to time. The skin she had dressed in was similar to that worn by Dera, but colorful ceramic beads adorned her sleeves and chest. Around her, on the edge, the shadows of utensils and bunches of herbs hung here and there, creating strange chimeras, and I suddenly felt as if I had entered another world.

The old Chaig had a toothless grin when we appeared. In the darkness, with the flickering glow of the hearth, her wrinkles seemed so deep and her skin so matt, that her smoky face suggested to me the surface of a ploughing field. Dera led me to the center of the yurt. On the series of flat stones placed in front of the old woman, on the other side of the fire, I saw that she had placed a small dark bowl, an ivory stylus and a more complex instrument that vaguely resembled a nutcracker made of bone, the use of which was unknown to me. With a crumpled hand, the grandmother beckoned me to come and sit on her left, facing the fire. A little lost, fluttering my eyelids like an owl, I complied. As I settled down, Dera did the same on her right. The grandmother turned her crumpled face towards me, and stared at me for a few moments, before reprimanding her granddaughter:

"He's badly dressed."

I was about to answer the old woman in crude terms, even though it was true that my cloak was full of stains and that my pants were not much better, but Dera's high-pitched voice rose, drowning my protests in a nervous but continuous flow :

"But you said I shouldn't tell him anything, otherwise he would have known and then everything would have been ruined and his heart wouldn't have been able to speak the truth properly, Grandma."

The old woman shook her head, before reprimanding her granddaughter with a soft and hoarse intonation:

"You still have a lot to learn, my little girl. It is customary not to talk about it, and we must not talk about it. But you should have asked him to come to you in his best clothes. That way he could have known what you wanted him to do. His mind would have had time to meditate and, if he had wished, he could have refused your invitation, as if he were refusing a simple meal. What will you do if he turns away from you now?"

As I still didn't know what it was all about, I coughed loudly to remind the two women of my presence. Their discussion had made me nervous, but had also sharpened my curiosity. I wondered what my friend had just gotten me into. My attention was captured by the mystery, and for the time being, one adventure replacing the other, the work Sesh had entrusted to me was being consigned to oblivion. The grandmother turned to me again, and in the darkness beside her I could see Dera's sparkling eyes pointing straight at me.

There was a very long silence, and I tried not to move under her gaze. The old woman finally nodded her head, as if she had finally got used to my shabby appearance, and she suddenly grabbed my hand, while on her right she simultaneously grabbed Dera's hand. I had the unpleasant impression of being trapped in the claws of an ancient bird of prey and my first reflex was to get out of the way, but something in her attitude pushed me to accept the situation. Her veiled retinas stared at mine, her voice was broken and made trembling by the years. I understood that she was making a constant effort to remain intelligible:

"My little girl has decided that you deserve her first brand. Do you think you are worthy of this honor? Do you agree to bind yourself to her with ink and wear it on your skin, for the rest of your life?"

When I heard these words, I looked around me in perplexity, first staring at Dera's frightened face, then at the bowl of dye and the bone instrument. I finally grasped the meaning of all this staging. Among the clans, the body is considered as an open book in which one records the important events of one's life through the art of tattooing. The living skin is the only material where they accept to inscribe explicit marks. Their pictogram "writing" knows no other existence than on the bodies of men and cattle. If the clan members receive de facto birth tattoos, which indicate their clan and their lineage, all the other inks are voluntary choices. Thus, each individual can decide to publicly display this or that high fact, but also the state of his or her relationships with others. Relationship marks are evolving motives. They tell a story, and can be modified to reflect a change in status. A tattoo can start from a friendship, become a relationship between lovers, and then announce the birth of mutual children or the sharing of a home.

Being globally aware of all this, I was conscious of the immense privilege that Dera was giving me, and of the extent of the affection she intended to show me through this means. My pride swelled. Her first mark, the first tattoo she herself had decided to wear, was a recognition of her relationship with me. Of course, it had to be reciprocal, and I too would have to submit to the marking. Otherwise, I would appear as the living contradiction of Dera's tattoo. Her peers might then consider her attachment to an individual who had not agreed to share her mark as something futile and dishonorable. Being a poor judge of the state of one's relationships with others is considered a particularly despicable defect by clan people. I took a deep breath. Dera stared at me with big, begging eyes, her hands twisted under the pressure, and she couldn't stand it any longer :

"Please, Fyss! Say yes! Say yes!"

"Shush," the grandmother whispered in a dry voice. "You mustn't interfere, my little wolf. It is his heart that must speak." I deliberated for a brief moment, not because I thought I would refuse this demonstration of friendship, which had even moved me a lot, but because I had been told that the tattoos were quite painful. Finally, taking my courage in both hands, but not really knowing who to talk to, I stared at Dera, whom my brief silence had brought to the brink of tears. I tried to adopt as solemn a tone as possible:

"I say yes, huntress."

Dera screamed with delight and wanted to get up, probably to kiss me, but her grandmother grabbed her hand and, with a tremor, she forced her to sit down again. The old woman then picked up the ivory stylus. Before I could react, she cut the inside of my palm hard, giving me a hiccup of surprise and pain. In contempt, my torturer shook her head and pinched her mouth. After having inflicted the same fate on Dera, who endured the cut in silence, the matriarch joined our two hands over the bowl. Dera's grip was inflexible, she looked at me with wet eyes and smiled with all her teeth. Our united blood dripped and mingled with the pigments. In a religious silence the old woman untied my cloak and the patched shirt I wore underneath. Dera clenched her jaw and let her dress slide down to expose her chest. She had chosen the location of her mark. As I had no previous tattoo there, that was where I would wear it as well.

The grandmother then grabbed the bone tool. She dipped one end in the bowl, then placed it on Dera's flesh, just below her collarbone.

The instrument clicked, I saw my friend squint, and a small black dot appeared on her amber skin. Then it was my turn, I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw, another click sounded and the painful sting made me jump.

The work thus continued, slowly, one sting for Dera, and one for me. The clattering, the pain, the crackling of the fire, all this quickly turned into a strange trance of which I remember only furtive details: the moving shadows, Dera's bright eyes, the stifling silence and smoke, the rhythm of the burning stings. The union of blood.

The respective marks progressed as one, the geometric interlacing twisting like two snakes. When the last dry bite of the needle finally resounded, our bodies glowed with sweat. With our hair flattened, our eyes half closed, it was a renewal to leave the grip of suffering. A rebirth, in which the world reflected in waves, in foaming gullies. Other sensations came back, little by little.

I was aware that I was very hungry. Our hands were tied in a hard knot on the old lady's lap.

Somewhere, from afar, the matriarch declared in a worn-out voice that she had completed her task, and she forced us to swallow a fortifying drink that awakened me somehow. Then, without any restraint, with a crack in all her joints, she pushed us out of the yurt, where Dera's family and a few other Chaigs were waiting for us. An inferno had been lit. Food had been prepared. The rhythm of a big clan drum greeted us.

We blinked our eyes, seized by the cold, and I think we really took possession of our bodies at that moment. We both gazed at each other with bewildered eyes, but still could not quite separate ourselves from each other, while the approving hooting of the small crowd turned into a rising united song. In the shape of a descending arrow, from the left clavicle to the middle of the pectoral muscle, on our reddish flesh tinged with blue-black interlacing, was inscribed the first mark of Dera.

My friend's exhausted face, straight and proud in front of her people, radiated blissful happiness. We left together the rhythm of pain to embrace the rhythm of music and voices. I smiled stupidly too, because I understood with some astonishment that this unexpected celebration was not only for her, but also for me. Our twin pictograms clearly stated: "Dera, daughter of the Chaigs is the friend of Fyss, son of Brown-Horn." The congregation stopped chanting and converged on us in disorder. I was congratulated in the arms of several complete strangers. Rue and Mesh congratulated me, and Vaug gravely declared that, even if the custom forbade his parents to welcome a child without lineage during the night, their home would always be open to me during the day.

The small meal was quickly started, we all dined together in front of the yurt, while the day was coming to an end. I carefully emerged from the fog. It was the first time in my eight years of existence that I had been the object of such attention from anyone and at first the situation tensed me up considerably. I was always afraid of making a mistake that might humiliate Dera. However, this uneasiness eventually dissipated almost completely. There was nothing solemn about this meal, it was simply a snack among friends to commemorate the first real choice of one of their clan daughters, an encouraging sign of independence and willingness. Dera's grandmother looked with interest at my unusual birth tattoo while we enjoyed a flatbread dipped in salted sheep yoghurt. Despite her extensive knowledge of clan signs, she was unable to decipher it or even determine its provenance. Admittedly, my attention was drawn more by the profusion of tempting food than by any sign I had ever seen myself. However, afterwards, I often noticed her glancing at my back and whispering.

With Dera, I shared a roasted poulard and honey cakes on the steps of the yurt. We chatted about many things, and my friend told me the latest gossip. As far as she knew, no violence was brewing among those in the Basin, and the catastrophic outcome Sesh had spoken of seemed far from reality. All this was the work of a handful of excessively brave teenagers, whom the other warriors considered immature and stupid. Most of them had already been put in their place by more experienced men, and Dera didn't think they would cause any problems. Nevertheless, she expressed real concern to me about the disappearances. As a result, many families were preparing to leave for the wintering earlier than usual.

I was relieved to see that our exchanges had returned to normal, and were accompanied by bullying and false insults. Yet when our eyes met, there shone something new, a knowledge that was not there before. Implacable, a union of fierce loyalty born out of pain, but also the complicit happiness of having agreed to face it together. Feelings of which I had not suspected the depth were emerging between us. I felt happy, and full, and I shared my friend's radiant pride.

Nightfall was there when the guests finally dissipated. I had been shivering since the sun had begun to fade and Vaug, always kind and attentive, had finally brought me back my clothes, which I put on with gratitude. Dera pulled up her dress and offered to escort me to the edge of the camp, which her parents exceptionally accepted. She left me after a brief embrace. Our hands were in the dark, and instinctively bonded in the painful grip they had shared in the afternoon. We both grimaced, because the wounds had reopened, but it didn't matter. Dera looked terribly serious, and I think her chin was shaking a little. Then, without a word or a glance back, she took off and left me there, between the lights of the Basin and those of Brown-Horn. With a sore chest and a wandering mind, I set off again for the farm.