Divine Lessons

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The first thing he noticed upon waking was the hot, heavy weight of someone lying on his bed beside him. The second was the soft, innocent scent of cub sweat teasing his nostrils. Both were things that he had not experienced in an eternity-not since...

Growling, he rocketed up off the mounded fur and set to pacing the floor, watching with scorching eyes as the unwelcome thing occupying his bed slept on. He had not remembered this much in many long years and had not wanted to ever again. That part of his life was past. It should stay in the past. The cub could have run anywhere, anywhere, or drowned crossing the Rnys, and yet the gods had deemed it fit that he, who had begged them for nothing more than a life and death in silence and solitude, should be the one to care for him. There was only one reason for a killing-time. It was to cleanse the tribe of sickness, which left alone might blossom into an epidemic. And there was only one sickness which held that kind of power over male and cub-bearer alike.

The Deathfever.

Slowly but surely, the anger drained from him. He should not take it out on the cub, and in any case, he was not so much angry as soul-tired and despairing at heart. He wished he knew what sin he had committed to merit this punishment. Perhaps there had been none.

Who can fathom the mind of a god?

Diëaré, what do you want of me?

He had no skill in healing. Even the corolaité did not know how to heal one with the Deathfever, how was he to nurse this little one through it? He would be forced to watch him die of it or stain his heart with the blood of yet another innocent cub. Perhaps it was only the memories of his brother haunting him through the cub, but he did not want the little one to die. For the first time in years he had somehow become attached to another living being, and for what? To watch him struggle against the fever-madness in vain, become something that none of his family would have recognised, until his little body simply burned itself to death? No one that he knew of had ever survived the Deathfever, and this was only a cub, too small to resist for long.

As if agreeing, the cub stirred and whimpered, translucent eyelids fluttering restlessly. Already he showed signs of discomfort in every little movement, his sweat too profuse, if not yet too badly tainted by the sluggish, sour scent sickness brought with it. Dark, redbrown eyelashes flickered open, then settled back, only to fly open once more on wide leaf-green eyes.

"Hush," he said hoarsely and more gruffly than he had meant to. He attempted to mend this by asking, "Are you hungry?"

The cub's eyes flickered over towards him; it nodded its head slowly. Probably disoriented and more than a little bewildered, he thought, watching the cub sit up, tuck its long legs under it, and begin looking all around at the room.

"You are not afraid to be alone?" he asked briefly.

A shake of the head this time, sending mussed curls into wild swipes across the cub's bare neck as its attention returned to him. Its sleep-rouged mouth curved into a lopsided smile, but still it said nothing.

"Good," he told it, and went out the doorway into the frosty morning. He would hunt for them both, and then he would look for what herbs he might find still alive that could be of some use. His mind was made up; he would see the cub through as far as was needed.

If the gods were giving him a test, who was he to refuse it?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Soft, warbling music echoed off the walls when he returned, hares in hand, to his den. It was the little one, humming an uneven and obviously improvised tune as he sat in the middle of the floor, slicing tough lengths of spider's-web roots into smaller chunks and dropping them into a bowl dug out of the storing niche in the corner. His first thought was to punish what instinct toned by long years of solitude told him was a thief, but when the cub cast a tentative smile toward him from behind long, tangled lashes and held up the bowlful for his inspection, he did not have the heart to follow through. Instead he nodded shortly, dropping the two animals on the floor by the knife the cub had been using.

"Meat," he grunted, taking up the knife which he had chipped himself out of brittle black stone and slicing through the skin and fur at the base of the dead hare's skull. The cub watched intently, small hands pressed against his own too thin knees for balance, as he stripped away the skin from the flesh, then the flesh from the bone, laying it piece by piece in his lap so as not to get it dirty on the stone floor. When he had finished and the meat was as free of blood as it would be short of a good washing, he reluctantly beckoned the cub closer.

"Here." Dividing the heap of torn lumps into two even shares, he handed one over and pushed the cub towards his bed of dried bracken covered with animal furs. He never sat on his bed to eat, but the cub he was sure shouldn't be left to sit on the cold floor with sickness running in its body. He tried to remember who had taught him so, but couldn't. He supposed it must have been his da.

The cub smiled and obeyed, glad to do anything he set it to, and he spared a minute to thank the gods that at least they had sent him an agreeable charge. He was not used to dealing with others in general, but he was not at all sure what he might have done to a dependent who could not take orders.

While the cub ate, he himself laid aside his portion and busied himself stretching the hares' skins on the wall to dry out, the side where the flesh had been attached facing outwards so that he could scrub it with snow and scrape it with his knife before it had a chance to rot. Only when it was satisfactorily cleaned did he scrub his own hands in clean snow and sit down to his breakfast on the floor. He had to admit, as he and the cub finished off the meat and the cub's neatly chopped contribution, that the roots were a good addition to the meal. He usually just ate whatever meat he had caught at a sitting, preferring to save his store of vegetables for times when the hunting was scarce or there was a storm out and he could get no game.

When they were finished eating, he put the cub to bed. It didn't appear sleepy, but it was ill, and he didn't know what else to do with it. On snowy days like this one, there wasn't much else to do except sleep. The den needed very little in the way of cleaning. No one but he himself had ever laid eyes on it while he lived there.

He was lonely sometimes, and he admitted it, but it was no more than he deserved. He did not even deserve the peace and quiet he had asked for, though he had thought for a long time that he would get it, and after the cub was gone, if he had not caught sick himself, he would go back to striving for that peace in the days and weeks and perhaps even years that stretched before him. Cold winters aside, it was hard to survive outside a pack. There were many animals larger than the wolf kindred, and many that would take advantage of one found alone, the same as they would any other creature; the same as he did himself to creatures smaller than him. Beyond even those considerations, there was the simple need of a pack animal for other animals of its kind. It was hard, very hard, to go on without others.

Of course, it wasn't as if it mattered. There were things about every decision that were wrong-that their maker didn't enjoy. There were times when he liked to be alone, and there were also the times when he wished for the long past warmth of family and home and cubhood. He had come to realise and accept that adulthood was not so much having power to make things good for oneself as learning to endure what life already was.

He had been an adult for too long now. He would endure this turn of events, too.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>