The End of the World

As they spoke, he began to move slightly, daring to step a bit closer to the water -- and Kuwindwa herself. He was reminded of the nights he spent lying awake with Sunniva and Sabine, talking about what sort of things they might become someday. Perhaps they might become reindeer, the very creatures that gave them life, and they might someday become the hunted instead of the hunters. Perhaps Sabine might someday have the eyes of the hawk, and be able to see farther than he could ever imagine. He missed them both, quite deeply, and the memories made him long to see them again.

'Beautiful,' was her initial response, and his grinned widened into in almost playful expression of joy. Simply to be able to speak about his own beliefs and what drove him forward brought a sort of passionate excitement, for Kuwindwa's interest was genuine and undeniable. The silence followed for a moment as she drank in what he had offered. It was all he had ever known, and all he might ever know - though he thirsted for knowledge of lands far and wide, and was driven by the relentless search for more, what he had explained to her was something engrained in him, something that would never change. She explained a bit about her own background, that her pack had been upholders of justice. Fighters who defended the weak. This was strange to him. Were the weak not meant to die out? He himself had only been taught to survive, and those who could not would simply die. "Honorable," he'd echo with another small smile. "Do you not think the weak ought to learn to defend themselves? As my parents would tell us, oma apu paras apu --your own help is the best sort of help." His inquiry was genuine and not at all combative. Being honorable, and selfless, was not a trait he'd ever had. But she seemed to share his own values of the preciousness of life, which elicited a short wag of his bushy tail.

"You explain it more nicely than I could," he chuckled. His words had briefly grown more excited and he found himself resisting the urge to slip back into the language he'd been taught at birth. "What do you mean, though - incomplete?" His head would cock to the side as he began to pace a bit further, beckoning her to join him as the water lapped at his paws, though he maintained a solid hearing distance from her. "What is missing?"