Mokessa crouched behind two trunks wrapped in a mantle of moss and pale fungi. Her shape struggled to vanish into the darkness. The stone arm, a gray, misshapen mass, seemed oblivious to night and flesh alike, a false thing too heavy to be hidden.
She saw the bare-skinned ones walking among the huts.
— Mokessa — Huyn said, his voice almost bodiless. — It was her…
At the center of the clearing, a bare-skinned woman passed before a bluish fire. Tall. Lean. Her shoulders marked by toil. Dark hair fell in thick strands down her back. The others made way before she even reached them.
Huyn recognized her by the way the camp bent around her.
She was the bearer.
The one who carried the flame.
The woman approached an injured man, nearly hidden in the shadow of the entrance. He was missing an arm, replaced by bandages of leaves, fibers, and dark green herbs. He was conscious, and Huyn had the impression that he was recovering too quickly. A surprisingly strong breath of life.
— He survived — said Huyn.
The bare-skinned ones conversed, their voices short and repetitive, steeped in an unknown purpose. Some sounds were pleas; others, perhaps, labels of identity. One of them gestured toward another and uttered a word Huyn could not decipher. A dry laugh followed. The other answered with a light shove, almost a touch.
They were strange creatures.
No tail. No fur. No shame in living close to the ground.
But they had bonds. Huyn noticed that with a certain discomfort.
The "bare-skinned ones" made frequent physical contact. Hands rested on shoulders. Fingers explored wounds. Arms wrapped around smaller bodies. They were simple gestures, intimate in their closeness. The Mogushai also touched one another, but in the treetops there was always a subtle distance between them. On the ground, however, the "bare-skinned ones" nestled into one another for warmth, like unprotected embers.
— Do they have young? — Huyn asked.
— I haven't noticed a single one yet. What madness is this? Who are they? Where did they come from? — Mokessa grew increasingly intrigued. — Did they arise at the end of the Eternal Winter?
Huyn felt a prickle of unease bite into his chest.
— Do you think they will bring the great cold back?
— I need Mogu to give me that answer, Huyn.
— If Mogu is alive, where is he?
The wind shifted. His fur warned him.
It came from behind and brought a new scent. Mokessa sensed it before he did. Sweat. Mud. Crushed leaves. Bare skin.
She turned brutally, but not quickly enough to stop the encounter.
Two humans emerged behind the trunks.
They had come along a narrow trail between tall ferns, carrying small bundles of dry branches in their arms. One was broad-shouldered; the other younger, almost too thin, with sunken, watchful eyes.
Both stopped at the same time.
For a moment, no one breathed. The distance was too small for them to mistake the shadow for any animal and too small to pretend they had not noticed her.
The older human opened his mouth. Huyn felt the scream before hearing it.
Mokessa moved. There was no warning.
The stone arm came out of the dark like a piece of mountain hurled by the night. It struck the older man's face from the side, just above the jaw. The sound was not of flesh. It was like a thick fruit being crushed by a rock. His body spun, the dry branches flew, and his head struck the trunk with a crack.
He collapsed without finishing the scream.
The second human dropped the wood. Fear opened his face.
Mokessa advanced. Huyn watched the scene without doing absolutely anything.
Mud gave way beneath her foot as her tail stretched out to keep her balance. The stone arm rose threateningly. The young human, trying to retreat, tripped over his own legs. From his mouth escaped a frightened utterance — perhaps a call, a name, or a desperate plea.
Mokessa caught him. He raised his arms to protect himself, but the blow came from above.
The stone struck his skull, and a dry crack echoed through the forest. The young man fell like a freshly cut plant, before the root could even react. First the knees hit the ground; then the face. Then silence.
Huyn stood motionless.
The camp continued living in the distance. Blue fires trembled, with no sign they would cease.
Someone laughed in the clearing. An adult voice — or an adult with a broken voice — called to another by the strange sound the bare-skinned ones used. One hut received more leaves. The woman of the blue flame remained near the one-armed wounded man. No one looked toward the darkness behind the trunks.
Night swallowed the bodies. The forest, forever hungry for secrets, "closed its lips."
Huyn stared at Mokessa with almost no reaction. She stood between the two dead men, breathing through her nose. The stone arm hung at her side, stained. Human blood ran through the mineral cracks like red water streaming down ravines. In some places, the liquid did not soak in; it only gleamed over the granite.
— Leader… you… — Huyn tried to say something, but his words died.
He knew this day might come, but he had never imagined it would happen in such an unexpected way.