Chapter Seven
Dekani slept in the mammoth’s pelvic bone. It was safer then it might have seemed. Dragon scent covered the area. And scavengers did not like dragon scent, it was strange and frightening. And hunters did not bother with dragon scent, unless it was weak and sick scent. So Dekani slept, her senses alert and focused on the dragon that slept in the skull.
And when morning came, Dekani still didn’t leave. She was afraid, yes, but her limited reasoning and thoughts came up with this: the sky hunter that wasn’t hadn’t killed her yet, so it wouldn’t kill her. It was a safe place, here, so she would stay until she left. When that would be was unsure, but it was Dekani’s plan.
It wasn’t a correct one, but for the moment, it would do.
In the dim light, Dekani climbed the bone pile. Dragon scent over powered everything, and there were no noises except from the skull, where the sky hunter that wasn’t slept. When Dekani tasted the air, she tasted the coming chill. Her eyes scanned the land, and located distant, blurry shapes. Her ears twisted toward the shapes, and her nose lifted into the air.
Nothing. She could see, but not hear or smell or taste. It wasn’t right. It disturbed the young hunter, causing her to pace along the raised ribs. It didn’t occur to her about the missing bones; to her they didn’t exist and never had.
Her nails scraped along the bone, and she hissed into the air. When nothing happened, she hissed again, louder and longer. Finally, she drew in as big a breath as she could and hissed as loud and long as possible. Then she sat down and watched the brain opening. She would wait for the sky hunter that wasn’t, and then she’d lead it towards the prey shapes in the distance.
Yes. And then they would hunt.
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Nakomii slowly woke up. For a moment his muddled mind wondered where he was, as it always did, before he fully woke up. Then he struggled out of the small hole to the open air, and looked around.
He’d eaten the rest of the carcass he’d brought back, and kept an eye on the dirt clod. When it hadn’t gone anywhere except to a further part of the bone pile, he’d ignored it and went to sleep.
Now, he felt foolish. It was obvious the dirt clod was gone. He sniffed around where the dirt clod had sat, then tilted his head.
Strange. It hadn’t left. It had climbed…
Looking up at the ribs, Nakomii wished he could blink. The dirt clod sat on one of the ribs, and was staring at a spot in the distance. Slowly following its scent footprints, he made his way up to where it sat. Turning his gaze to where the dirt clod stared, he gasped.
The dirt clod jumped, stood up and stared at him, all in one motion. Nakomii felt stirrings of envy, even though he did his best to tramp it down. He would never do anything like that. Looking at the dirt clod, Nakomii felt the strangest urge to throw it in the pond again, just to see what would happen. But no, he wasn’t thirsty, not yet. And… he was almost eager to try hunting again.
He walked down to the skull, and from there jumped down. Rustling his wings, he watched the dirt clod, before taking a few steps towards the herd of prey. It remained on the bones. Shaking his head, Nakomii turned away and walked his fastest toward the herd. A slight thump behind him, and the dirt clod’s scent moving upwards to walk just behind him, and Nakomii smiled.
It was smarter then it looked.
Twitching his tail, he walked on.
The herd was moving toward the two, one of the few species that actually went toward the mountains and dry snow instead of away. Many of them were big, with curving tusks jutting from their mouths. A few young wandered on the inside of a circle made of the adults.
Mammoths. A large female group.
Nakomii stopped. He and the dirt clod were far enough away to avoid upsetting the mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers of the calves. Worried, Nakomii resettled his wings and moved his tail from side to side. Beside him, the dirt clod watched the large creatures. Its scent didn’t hold any emotions, and Nakomii found himself wishing he was away, far away, from all the strange happenings that had hit him, one after another, after he’d left the mountains.
The extremely old of the mammoth group trailed behind, their tusks curving in front or broken. Which gave Nakomii the strangest idea…
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Dekani turned from the large herd when the sky hunter that wasn’t spread its wings. Walking away, she stopped when the furthest edge of a wing started to blur. Then, she blinked as the sky hunter that wasn’t jumped into the air. Its wings pushed at the air, and she followed it with her eyes as it disappeared into the sky.
That was strange, and it confused Dekani. Why had it done that? She was uncertain, turning back to the mammoth herd, as if the females there would be able to comfort her. But they couldn’t, because she was a hunter, and they, for all their size and apparent untouchability, were prey. And when the sky hunter that wasn’t dove down from the sky at them, landing on one of the old one’s large back, they stampeded.
Dekani was curious. The sky hunter that wasn’t acted right for a sky hunter, attacking with claws, teeth and wings. But the running prey wasn’t right. Turning around, Dekani started to run.
It was foolishness. For all their apparent clumsiness, the mammoths were fast. In a panic, they ran away from the strange hunter that dropped from the air upon their backs, towards the seeming safety of open plains. The small thing in their way was ignored, possibly trampled. The mammoths didn’t know, didn’t care, and didn’t think.
Dekani was lucky. She’d managed to avoid getting stepped on. She managed not to get hit by swinging trunks and overprotective mothers. And, as the last of the mammoths passed her, she turned to watch the sky hunter that wasn’t with the mammoth he’d hit.
It was on its side, and the sky hunter that wasn’t was just watching it. Blood was spreading from the throat, the scent making Dekani dizzy. But it didn’t overpower the confuse scent from the dragon. Dekani just looked at it, then moved to the throat. Cupping her hands, she licked the blood off before holding her hands at the throat again. Time and again, she liked her hands off before putting them back at the ripped throat. Not long after she started, the sky hunter that wasn’t started licking the throat.
Dekani was slowly becoming full. She was almost completely smeared with blood, her face and hands coated with the drying life liquid. Her eyes had a hooded, full look to them, and she looked at the large creature, a strange shade of gray-red, with the intent of falling asleep.
Thunder from the sky hunter that wasn’t jolted her out of her fatigue. She ran around the out flung trunk and head, to hide behind the large crown of the dead mammoth. Confusion scent mixed with blood scent and dragon scent, and Dekani climbed the skull, hanging onto the hair to get up onto the cheek. The dragon was staring at the kill with the most perplexed look. Dekani wasn’t sure why.
When the dragon tried to drag the kill by one leg, back towards the bone pile, Dekani slowly came to the conclusion that the sky hunter didn’t want scavengers to get at the kill and was trying to take it to the sleep place from before. The moment she understood, she noted something else. The mammoth was too big to move.
And she knew the solution, even though she didn’t quite understand.
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Nakomii gave up after a few minutes. In several ways.
He decided that he would never make the dirt clod understand even the simplest speech, that he’d never move the kill, and he’d have to share the kill with scavengers that were already creeping towards the carcass.
So when the dirt clod came tumbling off the head of the kill, hissing and darting towards the closer scavengers, all of which were bigger then it was but smaller then he was, he simply watched, thinking that the dirt clod was doing nothing but waste energy. What was the point of making such a big kill, something that confused the dragon to no end- he’d actually managed to kill something by diving on it- only to leave it for the scavengers.
Once the dirt clod had driven the scavengers off to a distance, she made her way back to the kill. Toward the long nose, Nakomii noticed. And it was, what? He could see it, but couldn’t believe it. The dirt clod was cutting the kill up with its claws. As the last tendon snapped under the dirt clod’s claws, it dragged the nose over to him. Despite the size and surely weight, the dirt clod handled the nose easily. Piled it on his back without trouble. Then pointed to a short distance away.
And then he understood. Barely, but he understood. He could smell confusion radiating off the dirt clod, so guessed that it understood what it was doing even less then he did. But it was an idea!
With the dirt clod keeping most of the scavengers away from the kill, Nakomii tore large amounts of meat off the bones, even taking large pieces of the pelt. He could only remember the stuff he had lined his old den with; leaves, bark, fur, some sort of fuzz from plants, bird feathers if he found them… Lots of stuff. And there was a lot of fur here. He’d line his new den with it.
Through the night they worked, the dirt clod driving the scavengers away from the ever growing pile, Nakomii taking large chunks of meat to the pile. Once there was a sizable amount on either side, large amounts of meat left on the bones and the best of the pick in a pile, with more then half the pelt that slowly stiffened in the air in Nakomii’s pile, He stopped taking meat from the carcass. The scavengers went to work at the meat on the bones, while the two hunters, Nakomii and the dirt clod, started to move the pile over bit by bit.
It took them two days. When they grew hungry, they ate. Thirst was quenched by blood. Exhaustion preyed upon them both, though they only rested for minutes at a time. And as the bone pile slowly rose in their sight, neither of the two could help but feel excitement.
The kill, and transporting over half of it, was important to them. Slowly, they were becoming closer, helping each other as they worked. When the meat froze, they didn’t understand except that it was easier to carry, because it didn’t squish as they held it.
Nakomii relaxed as the last of the meat was placed in a pile between the pelvic bone and skull of the bone pile. The dirt clod went back to the one side, while Nakomii fell asleep just outside the skull. The dragon scent was not enough to keep scavengers away, but while Nakomii slept deeply, the dirt clod woke up in time to drive them away.
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Dekani was slowly learning how to think. She was becoming more vocal, and certain thunder sounds from the sky hunter that wasn’t started to mean different things. And the sky hunter that wasn’t was growing. So was Dekani, which surprised her the first time she noticed it.
She had been taking one of her own kills back to the bone pile. She had been walking on all fours, the large rabbit held in her teeth. A large scavenger that in some ways looked like a sky hunter had run at her. She’d dropped the rabbit and stood up, her lips drawing back from her teeth as she growled. No longer did she just hiss, she growled as well. And she’d looked the scavenger in the eye, growling and hitting it with her hand.
The scavenger had turned and run away, leaving Dekani to blink. She’d looked down at the tail, she realized in her own way. Before, she had looked at the tail, not down. Feeling strange, she returned to walking on all fours and carrying the rabbit in her mouth. She ignored it for a time. She was able to do that.
But when she noticed the sky hunter growing, slowly but surely, she wasn’t sure how she felt. The reason was obvious to her. They ate when they were hungry, slept when tired, and hardly had to work or worry about food. The first snows had piled up against the bones and meat, supplying a ready source of water. And since there wasn’t any scent from the frozen meat, scavengers didn’t try to take the meat away. Dekani slept near the sky hunter that wasn’t for warmth, and three times out of five brought back something that had once been alive, was still warm. She shared with the sky hunter, sometimes.
So she noticed the sky hunter that wasn’t grow, his shoulders eventually reaching the top of the meat pile. His head was a full six feet off the ground, his shoulders five feet. His hips were only four feet, but it was better then when they’d been a foot off the ground, his head only three feet off. And Dekani could dimly remember when the sky hunter’s front legs being skinny, like sticks, but now they were muscled and he moved better.
And though she couldn’t see it, she could feel the changes in herself. She could see the ropes of muscle, more then before the lynx attack that had almost killed her, bulge and shift with her every movement. Muscles in her legs and rear, on her back and shoulders, all flexed and shifted, the dry, dirt splattered covering stretched thin.
And she itched, all the time. She could see the sky hunter itched too, but he rubbed against the bones, or scraped his own claws, horns and teeth over his scales. Dekani was wary of scratching her own nails and teeth over her own body.
Eventually, used to the cold, she started to roll every day. The thin powder of snow on the ground combined with the rubbing against the ground and Dekani’s skin cleaned her. And, as winter slowly drew away from the lands again, her skin started to peal.
Nakomii’s scales were shed, and Dekani found it interesting. When her arm started to peal the same way, she stared at her own arms and hands with interest. Around the same time, the last of the old kill meat was eaten, Dekani started to use her own claws and teeth on her body, and the sky hunter stopped growing.
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Nakomii topped six feet, seven inches at the head, his body sloping down to the hips. And when the last of his scales shed, the new scales glinted a dark green, almost black. His front limbs had muscle on them, not as much as the rest of him but he no longer pranced when walking. Over the winter, as he walked more, simply doing his best to hunt, and actually making a few kills, maybe one out of ten, his legs had added muscle. Still malformed, still small for his species and age, he was no longer patheticly small and twisted.
His hips pulled his body back, and at times he ran as he once did long ago, when he’d first seen the tiny Dekani. Only without flapping his wings. When he ran like that, his wings were pulled as close to his body as possible, his front legs tucked against his chest while he leaned forward and sped along. He brought down a small, weak herbivore that way, ending the creature’s life. It had been frozen in mud, easy prey for a slow hunter.
Dekani slowed her growth as winter ended, warm breezes and the first soft rains waking the earth. And since there were no trees to block the drops, she slowly grew clean.
Her skin was revieald as white. Her hair, tangled and coated with mud, had nails dragged through it time and again, turning a pale gray color from the rain washing away the worst of the dirt.
Dekani, after her first burst of growth that winter, when there had been food plentiful and her stomach had stopped curving in towards her spine and her bones had stopped sticking through her skin, topped a near five feet. And after the last of her skin finished pealing, she too had a new look. As pale as newly fallen snow, her scalp started to itch.
The abundance of food that grew and grazed kept the two hunters healthy. Nakomii shed a layer of scales from the hollow spikes from his neck first, and Dekani, that fall, shed a large amount of hair in clumps. Or seemed to. Hollow hairs, scales really, came off whenever she scratched, but she never seemed to loose hair. Evenually, that winter, her hair became as pale white as her skin, maybe a touch lighter.
The two didn’t manage to kill another mammoth, but they didn’t need to. Dekani started to hunt bigger animals, not caring if they were hunter, scavenger or prey, and Nakomii, when he caught and killed, tended to kill creatures around the same height and weight as he.
That spring, Dekani started to think like Nakomii did, with words mixed with scents, sounds, tastes and sights. But mostly with words.
It wouldn’t be long before she started to remember her own name.
