     Copyright 1991 by Bill Grobe/ Anime Pro Productions. All rights reserved. 
     Skiltaire Copyright 1982 Mark Merlino

     The use, reproduction and redistribution of this work in any medium
     or by any means, including electronic media or means, except in
     current unaltered form is STICTLY PROHIBITED without the express
     written consent of the Author and of Anime Pro Productions. Any
     other use or presentation of this work and the material presented
     shall be treated as COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT and shall be answered by
     the author within the fullest extent of the Law and International
     Copyright Conventions.


rstone@ mirror.umd.edu
FURRYMUCK- 138.74.0.10 8888-Roci_Stone
B.Grobe 215 E.Orangethorpe Ave. #183,
Fullerton,Ca 92633
(714) 871-2544 (Voice/data)

     The Littlest Skiltaire 


     The Convention was an outright failure, and the "Furry Party" had become 
no more than a bunch of Humans servicing their egos. Bill-San retreated gladly 
to the lobby of the run down hotel. A pair of overstuffed chairs had become 
his old friends. This time Bill took the seat nearest the phone and waited. 
 
     Shyia brought tea and komochi, as she had the nite before. Her leap into 
the chair opposite him was as fluid and graceful as Bill could imagine. The 
rice cakes and tea were good, but Shyia's company was even more welcome. She 
fixed those sapphire eyes on him and read his soul. 
 
     Thou art troubled, Bill-San. Speak it to me, please..Shyia sent to the 
Human, showing respect for his newly gifted psyonic talent. 
 
     Bill smiled. There was no hiding anything from the caramel brown and 
silver Skiltaire. He gave up trying. 
 
    "Tell me about him.." Bill spoke distantly. 
 
     Shyia smiled. "Has he not spoken of himself?" She asked. 
 
     "Not four words together..What is he hiding?" Bill asked. "I mean, He's 
so.." 
 
     "That is the Savage Way, Bill-San. After these years, know ye all of My 
Darling Ryokyo?" 
 
     Bill shook his head. He had never gauged the depths and breadth of his 
White Feline Soulmate. Shyia nodded as well. "You see..Tis' the same with 
thyself and Roci." Shyia said easily. 
 
     "Everyone has a past. Tell me where he was born.." Bill asked point 
blank. 
 
     "My ears burn.." Said a familiar voice. Roci leapt into the chair from 
over the back! As he landed next to Shyia, the Male Skiltaire bowed to her and 
then to Bill-San. Bill rose for a moment, returning the bow from the waist. 
For some reason, Bill had always felt this proper, but he wasn't sure why. 
 
     "If you would speak of me, let my eyes see the words before they touch my 
ears." 
 
     "Very Well, Cousin..So mote it be!" Shyia said aloud, looking at both the 
Skiltaire and the Human. 
 
     Sitting in the padded chair, Bill lapsed into a state of gentle shock.  
 
     "Cousin..Aunt...!!??!!" Bill stammered... 
 
     "Let this be your first lesson in the Ways of Roci Stone." Roci said with 
a smile as he hugged Shyia close and gentle. "She whom you see is my most 
favored. If not for her, I would exist not." 
 
     Bill looked at Shyia expectantly. The cool diplomat blushed red as a tea 
rose in the soft lite. 
 
     "You may speak of it freely, My favored Aunt. I shall withhold nothing 
from Bill-San. How can one lie to one's heart and soul?" Roci said frankly. 
This time, it was Bill who blushed. 
 
     "Have ye the strength to undertake a journey with us, Bill-San?" 
 
     Instantly, Bill knew what Shyia had asked, and his answer was just as 
quick in echoing thru the  minds of both Skiltaire. Bill relaxed his body, 
making his form relax in the chair, his hands locked together in front of him. 
He made of his conscious mind a blank, and all his sub-conscious followed a 
moment later. As he relaxed, the twin sends from his Pridemates overflowed his 
senses.. 
 
 
     He struck his head softly on the low rocks, and crouched low, making 
himself as small as possible against the rear wall of the cave. Flickering 
torch lite cast an uneven, wavering lite over the scene. The sooty dark smoke 
from the torch sought the highest point inside the rocky chamber. Bill had to 
fight to hold back a cough, fearing it might interfere with the drama that was 
being played out on the smooth stone floor in  front of him. Bill forgot his 
cough as soon as he saw a familiar pair of eyes! 
 
     "Now, My young Shining One shall ye know the pleasure and pain of birth. 
Remember well what ye shall now do.." The Elder Skiltaire said to the bright 
eyed younger female. The silver in the young mustelid's stripe seemed to 
project the torch lite about the cave as she dipped her cocoa coloured paws 
into a small stone vessel. Her mother took another and poured steaming water 
over her daughter's paws. 
 
     From the floor, there came a short cry of pain. Once again, Mother sent 
to daughter an age old but ageless wisdom. 
 
     "Behold, thine Aunt's moment is now..!!" she said softly, helping her 
sibling reach down to assist in the birth. 
 
     Bill watched in silent, almost reverent fascination. He had seen film and 
all the books of a moment like this, but now, even removed from it as he was, 
Bill felt himself swept up in the singular moment of life's beginning. 
 
     He stood up, giving him a better view of the crowded scene at the far end 
of the cave. 

 
     Young Shyia and her mother stood over the aquatic female, their paws a 
flurry of activity. In a moment, there was a sharp, high tone, and the group 
was lit by the momentary flicker of a lite blue aura. 
 
     That's one..!! Bill felt himself think. 
 
     Shyia passed the newborn Skiltaire to her mother, her young paws 
trembling with a combination of wonder and uncertainty. Her mother looked down 
at her daughter with a proud look only a mother could give! She took the new 
life in her time skilled paws, and rubbed the baby gently, to stimulate the 
new heart and lungs to their life sustaining work. She placed the newborn on a 
soft pad of twill heated from beneath by the same fire that had warmed the 
water. The sightless but active baby gave a small churp and fell safe and warm 
into the first sleep of a new life! 
 
     "MOTHER..HELP!!" The Young Skiltaire said quickly, her voice panicked. 
The elder Mustelid turned from the happy scene to face a moment of crisis! 
 
     "Be calm..You must turn him, my daughter.." A mother's eyes and a mid-
wife's knowledge combined to tell Shyia's mother that the moment of birth had 
been turned, even as the newborn was, into a dangerous moment of breech! 
 
     Shyia let the ease of her mother's words crush out her rising panic. She 
turned quickly back to her stricken Aunt. Somehow, she knew instinctively what 
she had to do. Her small but strong paws slid easily into the distended 
opening. In a moment, she could feel the newborn and the Mother's struggle. 
The young Skiltaire took hold of her unborn relative and moved him gently, 
changing his position inside his mother. Almost at once, a strong contraction 
left the second baby resting in Shyia's paws!! 
 
     The young Skiltaire nearly fainted! 
 
     Across the cave, Bill watched the scene unfold, tears flowing down his 
cheeks! 
 
     Shyia's expression changed suddenly. The fear in her eyes by torch lite 
was as ancient and final a fear as anyone could feel. 
 
     "Mother...He's...dead.." Shyia whispered, her gem like eyes pooling with 
tears. 
 
     The look mother gave daughter was set with age old resignation and deep 
sorrow. She shook her head... 
 
     Bill looked on in terror, feeling that some part of him was in mortal 
danger! 
 
     "NO!! I WON'T LET IT HAPPEN!!" Shyia cried. "I WON'T!!" 
 
     She took the small, warm but still body between her young paws and 
massaged briskly, while her mind reached inside to touch the new life she 
could feel sliding away into the final blackness. It was almost gone!! 
 
     Looks of desperation shot between mother and daughter. Shyia conceived a 
desperate idea. Without stopping to think, Shyia held the stillborn baby close 
to her. She built a small but potent charge on her paws. Reaching out quickly, 
she grounded it with a touch between the Baby's eyes! The spark crossed the 
small gap, carrying not only electricity, but all a young girl's hope! 
 
     For a moment in time, three lives became one as another hung in the 
balance.. 
 
     Into the dark stillness, from between the Young Skiltaire's paws, there 
came a faint, blue-green aura! As she held him and hoped with every bit of 
herself, Shyia felt the baby move! 
 
     "Mother!!" 
 
     The Elder girl smiled at the younger, as the two shared a moment beyond 
price or description. Her Mother nodded, dark eyes glowing without the torch 
lite. Shyia rose from her place, cradling the reborn Skiltaire in her paws as 
if the child were in part her own. Gently, she placed him next to his sibling, 
and then fell crying into her Mother's waiting arms!! 
 
     "My darling daughter..My darling, brave Shyia..You too have become a 
mother this nite. Henceforth, you are girl no more...My shining one has become 
a full female." 
     
     Her Mother's praise came on a gentle fall of tears and hugs, and Shyia's 
weeping came from a mix of relief and joy..! 
 
     "Come now, Shyia.." Her Mother said. "K'a'lia must rest now, and so must 
we." 
 
     Shyia's mother moved gently,picking up the young and laying them near 
their mother. She then covered the family with a thick woolen blanket. Shyia 
watched with concern, tucking in the lower edges of the blanket as her mother 
smiled. 
 
     They left the cave arm in arm, walking out into the star filled nite. 
 
     From his place out of time, Bill felt himself sink to the floor of the 
cave. The hard chiseled stone didn't bother him. The warmth of what he had 
experienced became his blanket against the nite. In a moment, he too was 
asleep. 
 
     In the Hotel Lobby, the slight Human sat still in his chair, sweat 
pouring from his forehead and soaking the chair back. Shyia and Roci shared a 
concerned thought. 
 
     Bill-San? Do you wish to go on, or should we stop now? They sent softly 
together. 
 
     The Human's answer returned to them on a broad wave of energy that seemed 
to sail him free of the body which sat in the chair. It made both Skiltaire 
tingle all over! 
 
     Shyia and Roci exchanged glances, and returned their sending thoughts to 
their shared memory of their past together. 
 
     A moment later, he felt the dawn on his face and stirred gently. He awoke 
to the sounds of laughter and morning birds outside the cave. He rose from the 
stone floor feeling strangely exhilarate. He stepped forward from his 
unobtrusive spot. He didn't wish to intrude, but he had to enjoy the sight of 
the Mother and her family! 
 
     All three lay together, a tight ball on the pad of material and the 
blanket. While K'a'lia slept, both young suckled loudly. He knew better than 
most that he ought not, but for a moment Bill found himself wishing with his 
whole being that he could take his insubstantial hand and touch the family 
gently. He knew he could, but he would have to wait for another moment in 
time. For now, the sight of the new family set his heart racing with a 
sensation that couldn't be summed in words! As he stood, watching the scene, 
he heard a lite rustle outside the cave. 
 
     Bill felt his own slightly wild instincts pull at him as he eyed the cave 
entrance with a sudden burst of protective suspicion. It gave in to modest 
embarrassment a moment later, when Shyia looked carefully around the edge of 
the cave, toward the sleeping family! 
 
     Shyia padded into the cave, and stood, watching and feeling the family 
before her. It gave Bill the chance to admire her in the strong, yet filtered 
lite of a new day. The Shyia that Bill knew so well had always been closed 
muzzled about her youth. Yet, as he watched the young Skiltaire before him, 
Bill could see the grace and deliberation of spirit that were the hallmarks of 
the slightly older Shyia. 
 
     Her caramel coloured coat was a bit lighter, touched with traces of 
coffee brown underfur. The beautiful stripe that would one day become radiant 
silver was already beginning to show itself in places along her back and tail. 
But Bill was transfixed, as he always had been, by the one thing about Shyia 
that was as constant and unchanging as the stars seemed to be. 
 
     For a moment, young Shyia turned sharply, looking directly at Bill's 
location in temporally unoccupied space. Even tho Shyia's sapphire eyes saw 
nothing in the space Bill felt those eyes and the fire in them weld him to the 
spot where he stood! For a moment, the Human feared discovery. But the Young 
Skiltaire that he would come to know so well simply smiled slightly, and 
turned back to the family that needed her. 
 
     Shyia, He thought to himself, not knowing that she could feel his 
thoughts on a sub carrier of the send, You are beautiful! 
 
     There was a sudden burst of warm energy along one channel of his 
thoughts. Without using his limited senses, Bill could feel the older Shyia 
blush! Bill smiled, and became a quiet spectator again! 
 
     K'a'lia moved gently beneath the thick blanket. Shyia brightened. Bright 
dawn, she sent easily. The traditional Kurushani greeting felt good as the 
tired mother stirred to tend her new family for the first time. Shyia looked 
on with eager interest while trying not to gawk. K'a'lia looked up and smiled 
gently. 
 
     It is well.. she sent at the young girl. You may draw nearer, if you 
wish. 
 
     Shyia took three steps forward, loosing her battle to hide her mixture of 
excitement and curiosity. The new mother's smile broadened. 
 
     Come..Would you aid me? she asked on a thought wave. 
 
     Shyia never moved more quickly! 
 
     Take the younger, he wants cleaning..Hold him sure while I feed his 
brother. 
 
     Shyia picked up the smaller of the two babies with a seemingly practiced 
touch that was both gentle and loving. Instantly, their minds met, sensing the 
mutual bond of sameness and security. The young male let out a gentle and 
familiar "Chirp" and nuzzled deeply into Shyia's waiting paws! She pressed him 
closer to her chest, allowing the thicker fur to help the newborn retain heat. 
The undersized baby was asleep after a moment, as if he had not left his 
natural mother at all. 
 
     K'a'lia looked up and smiled admiringly. 
 
     "You have the gift, my girl.." she spoke aloud, adding to the complement 
with the texture of her words. 
 
      Shyia looked at her elder and blushed, embarrassed to have stepped so 
boldly into a role not her own. The look that crossed her youthful muzzle was 
a combination of regret and gratitude. 
 
     "I take no offense at you, my darling Shyia..Your instincts are strong..A 
better mother their could not be..Do not fear to use your feelings." K'a'lia's 
words came on a flow of gentle strength so typical of her giving nature. Her 
aunt had held Shyia not so many summers before. They were as close as Mother 
and daughter, and now her elder had opened her most priceless gifts to her 
young, inexperienced heart! 
 
     "The days ahead will be difficult for the youngest one, for he is weak 
and small." K'a'lia offered. Shyia nodded, nuzzling the littlest Skiltaire 
even closer to her coat. 
 
     " I shall have much to do with only one..Might I ask your help with the 
smallest?" K'a'lia asked. 
 
     Shyia could scarcely believe her ears!! In a single, wonderful moment her 
innermost wish had been fulfilled!! K'a'lia read the shocked pulses of thought 
that the younger Skiltaire sent back almost involuntarily, and laughed out 
loud at young Shyia's wonder and confusion. 
 
     "I would trust naught other with him, my bright niece.." K'a'lia added 
with an answering nod that proved she was serious! 
 
     Shyia's wave of youthful exuberance turned her heart and mind into twin 
sky rockets that shot out far beyond the cave! 
 
     K'a'lia could feel her reaction a full ten feet distant, without even 
using her natural gifts! She smiled again. "So mote it be" she said. "I make 
you his Karakami." 
 
     Bill knew the word in his adopted language, and it's profound meaning 
made him tingle. 
 
     Shyia was now something far more than cousin to the sickly baby. The term 
was a mixture of foster mother and godchild, implying the mother's absolute 
trust in the young Skiltaire's ability to undertake caring for her child. 
 
     Shyia smiled oddly as her head swam. She laid down gently beside her 
aunt, allowing the smaller baby to nuzzle between a pair of warm coats as both 
K'a'lia and Shyia joined in cleaning him! 
      
     Bill's warm sensations at the scene flowed back across the thought bridge 
to both Skiltaire. Bill felt the galaxy eating power each could put behind 
sent thoughts modulate a bit. He watched in fascination, feeling a pang of 
disappointment, as the thought picture he had been painted into dissolved 
suddenly in a blur, as if someone had thrown a pail of water on a chalk 
picture! 
 
     After a multi coloured burst of prismatic hues, another image filled his 
senses, planting him like another flower on the blue-green grass of a small 
hillock. All around him, Bill could sense the bright, still air, and warm 
orange-white sunlite that marked the spring time. Not far away, he could see 
and hear a mixed group of young at play. They were watched over by an adult 
Skiltaire. As the boundless energy of the young let them romp and play over 
the whole meadow, a part of the group gamboled up the hill, rolling gently 
into and thru the clusters of late spring Snowflowers. Even tho as he stood 
there, he was no more than a thought on the breeze, Bill stepped aside gently, 
and let youth and vigor have their heads as the young playmates wrestled 
playfully across the field. 
 
     The Skiltaire left his charges for a moment, to race up the gentle slope 
after the rambunctious youngsters. The uniformed and armored male was the 
Largest Mustelid the Human had ever seen, excluding the Savage who was his 
friend and more! 
 
     He flashed across the grass and up the hill with a movement that could 
shame a cheetah! He stood next to Bill and watched the kids for a moment. He 
was larger than any otter, better toned than a fisher, and looked like a 
badger in his fur markings! Bill had seen Savages aplenty in his Kurushani 
travels, but always from a distance. The sight of the magnificent wolverine 
like warrior stole Bill's breath away. 
 
     Were all Savages so rugged and handsome? 
 
     The huge male waded into the tightly bunched group, zapping each and all 
with heavy charges of power, some of which left the soft grass brown and 
scorched! The Elder Skiltaire's voltage sent the youngsters flying as if each 
of them had been wrapped around a hand grenade! Even as they tumbled and 
rolled high in the air, sent sailing like light kites in gale, all the young 
laughed loudly!!    
 
      Each landed akimbo, sprawled on the soft spring ground. The Elder 
snapped to attention, and each of his charges scrambled for a moment before 
becoming statues under his unforgiving glare. 
 
     "This is not the time for play. You are here to train!" He snapped 
sharply. "This is our Sacred Ground. You may have to defend it one day as your 
fathers and grandfathers did. You must learn to fight. An Enemy will not play 
with you. If I were your enemy, You all would be dead, and the Sacred Ground 
of Kamiyama would be mine!" The Elder's harsh attitude hid his caring for the 
young. Bill felt a spear of sympathy as each of them dropped their eyes. 
 
     "Today, we shall climb to the High Point. You must use all of your skill 
and strength. If you do not arrive together as a group upon the plateau all of 
you must re-climb it. Let us begin.." 
 
      "Master?" 
 
     "Yes, My son..?" 
 
     "One of our group is not here.." 
 
     "WHICH??" The Elder intoned sharply. 
 
     "The second son of Tal and K'a'lia, Master.." 
 
     Master Trainer Han growled his displeasure. Tal was his most honored 
friend. But the Teacher could not show favoritism. 
 
     "So mote it be..! He snapped, and marched his young charges by twos into 
the high, rocky slopes. 
 
     Bill knew the terrain as well as any Astreli, for he too had been re-born 
on the Sacred Mountain. He watched the small squad of Skiltaire troop slowly 
across the grass, up a slope and out of the small green valley. He knew as 
well as any hunter that beyond the ridge just outside the valley lay the 
serpentine path that lead almost straight up at times to the first rocky 
outcrop on the face of the mountain. From the meadow, it was more than five 
thousand feet higher! 
 
     As the group left his sight, Bill found himself scanning the expanse of 
field below for anyone that straggled the group. The taller grass in the 
depression below the hill was taller by far than a standing Human. To a small 
Skiltaire, traversing the grass on the edge of the field might seem challenge 
enough! 
 
     Bill let his mask fall away, so his own wild instincts could find flow 
within him. Almost at once, he felt something move several hundred feet below. 
The tall saw grass deflected a bit, showing a slow, but steady path thru the 
sharp edged weed that guarded it into the soft, green of the valley! 
 
     At the edges of the Human's vision, he caught sight of an unusually small 
form. While his coat was hidden in the grass, Bill could have been blind and 
still seen the brilliant streak of orange-red that gathered and leapt again 
and again, forging ahead slowly thru the nearly impassable foliage! 
 
     Bill watched, admiring the youngster's sheer determination as he cleared 
the grass and set out at a dead run across the meadow! The Human watched him, 
transfixed in admiration and wonder. As he watched the young Skiltaire, Bill 
felt something distant yet familiar touch his memory. It was there and gone in 
a moment, but its mark had been left afresh after so many years. Bill thought 
of another lush green place, and another young lad who had struggled there.. 
 
     He found himself wishing he could interject his own cheer for the tardy 
trainee. He felt himself chill as the small but determined youth fought and 
won a slow, visibly agonizing struggle with the steep slope. Bill watched with 
warm heart as a pair of jet black paws planted themselves deeply in the crest 
of the hill where Bill stood. Crushing out the sudden impulse to kneel and 
assist him was the single most difficult thing the Human had ever had to do. 
But the Man had passed thru the Bloodfire. Tradition that re-bound his soul 
tied his hands, but could never stop him from feeling for some part of 
himself, and the young Savage as well. 
 
     For now, Bill thought, all I can do is watch...and remember.. 
 
     Watch he did as the young one pulled himself up onto the top of the hill 
a few metres from where the instructor had stood with his training group. He 
had grown much since his birth, but his small body had scarcely seemed to come 
of age. He was half as big as the youngest trainee in his group, and it seemed 
to the Human that the brisk wind that seemed to rise from the hilltop to greet 
the youth might whisk him away like a loose blade of the spring grass!  
 
     He stood against it for one moment, them as the gust hit its vortex, Bill 
saw something unique. The tardy trainee looked around, being sure that the 
hilltop was his alone. The young wild Skiltaire turned quickly into the wind. 
Bill saw him rise up on his hind legs, forcing it against the tide of air. At 
the peak of the gusts, another sound raced against the wind. 
 
     The unmistakable, unconquerable sound of a Savage's growl!! 
 
     Roci held the sound and the spirit of it with all the strength within 
him. The wind stung his eyes, becoming a hammer which tried to batter his 
upstart voice back inside the small body. But the more the wind mocked him, 
the more sustained and wild sounding the growl became!  
 
     After a minute of full blown challenge, the wind surrendered to Young 
Savage's spirit! The Savage noise crashed down from the hilltop and across the 
fields of sawgrass unchallenged and unequaled before the land and nature! No 
one had seen it, none had shared his triumph save the mustelid and the 
insubstantial man inside him! 
 
     He paused, smoothed himself a bit, and then dropped his muzzle into the 
grass. Tracking by scent was as natural as his heartbeat. The Skiltaire did 
not need his natural electromagnetic tracer. He preferred to let his nose and 
other instincts lead him to the trails of his fellows. His group had been gone 
nearly an hour by the lengthening shadows before the young straggler found 
scent paths and their trail up the mountain. Bill saw the lite of discovery on 
the Skiltaire's face burn into his eyes. The look was prime-evil, as if a 
hunter had found his prey! 
 
     It was a look and feeling the Man knew just as well! 
 
     Challenging the wind seemed to renew him, and He dashed over the ridge 
with a speed and vigor of one much older. As the small Human watched the 
private memory, known until this time only to Roci himself, he did not feel 
the tears that rolled down his cheeks in the hotel lobby as his substantial 
heart made him a part of the flow of insubstantial events! 
 
     Bill felt his mind being pulled at slowly, as if something beyond him 
called him to another time and place. He went willingly, knowing better than 
to resist to motivating force behind the cascade of past images that were 
being shared with him. The human needed no wings to soar upward to a place 
that he knew as well as the young trainees did. 

 
     The meadow became only shadow as Bill found himself on a smooth 
escarpment, carved out of the granitic rock by untold ages of weathering. 
Bill's first instinct was to look for the light and shadows. Time had crept 
forward no more than a half score of minutes. Below him and slightly to the 
left, Bill could see a series of rugged terraces cut by runoff and rock slide 
into the gradually ascending slope. Boulders as large as railway cars dotted 
the plateau as if they were marbles strewn in anger by the temperamental child 
of glacial ice whose tantrums came with every deep winter on the Sacred 
Mountain. The mammoth rocks served now as wind breaks for a small group 
gathered at the base of the mountain. Here they waited, fighting the chill 
wind and bleak sameness as they waited the last of their number. 
 
     Bill's feelings told him before his eyes did that He was near. The small 
mustelid climbed between a narrow passage in twin rocks each the size of 
houses! As He kippered happily down the steep stone stairs, Bill felt a pang 
of regret, for he had heard Master Han's instructions, where the young 
Skiltaire had not. Bill watched as the late arrival walked over to the group. 
Each was as stony and cold a visage as the grey-black rocks they stood upon. 
The young Savage looked up at Master Han, his muzzle the picture of hard won 
confidence in what he had done. 
 
     The Training Master's only reaction was a look of profound 
disappointment. 
 
     The hopeful half smile of youth fell with a landslide crash. Instantly he 
dropped his eyes. 
 
     From somewhere off to his right, a smaller stone sailed by his ear. 
Before he could react, another skipped off of the flat rock in front of him, 
striking him squarely in the chest! It didn't hurt half as much as the sight 
of his own fellow trainee's hurling the stones at him while they mocked him 
with laughter!! The cascade of stones grew into a steady rain, as did the 
hollow echoes of their mockery! He stood still for a moment, frozen with 
disbelief and hurt, a look of shock and dismay on his young face. A third 
small rock hit him in the paw. He shrank away, but did not turn until another 
larger stone struck his back with a knifing pain. Only then did he seek 
shelter behind a large stone slab. It became a target for a fusillade of rocks 
that bounced off of it as harmlessly as raindrops. Behind the slab, tears fell 
from his hazel eyes, a poor replacement indeed for the rain of stones. 
 
     Standing on the escarpment, watching the cruel scene, Bill lost his 
towering temper. Without thinking, he reached down for a stone of his own, not 
to cast with the mockers, but to hurl at them. Bill felt a world of pain and 
shared his frustration as his hand passed right thru the loose stones!! 
 
     "Damnation!!" Bill felt himself say aloud. 
 
     As the dejected young one turned and sulked away back down the steep 
trail to repeat his climb, Bill felt a heavy lump in his throat.  
 
     The human who shared the thought flow found himself wishing to be taken 
back to the grassy place far below, to see him climb again and perhaps this 
time, to clamber over the rocks at his side, but it was not to be.. 
 
     The man's next sensation was standing in the soft glow of a bonfire laid 
under the full moon. He looked over and saw Shyia facing the same direction as 
he, looking out and up at the mountain. As the young Skiltaire kept vigil, 
K'a'lia came between them, placing an arm around the worried young girl. 
 
     "Worry ye naught, Karakami Shyia.." His natural mother said with a re-
assuring smile. 
 
     "Tis the Way of a Karakami, Aunt K'a'lia.." Shyia said as she warmed to 
her mother's sister's gentle touch. "Why must it be so cruel!!" She burst out 
suddenly in anger. 
 
     "Tis the Savage Way, my Shining one..It is the fire in which we forge 
ourselves." She explained. 
 
     "You are not so Savage..Aunt mine, I prey thee, take him to the waterland 
that is your range!" she blurted out. "There he would be happy." Shyia's words 
showed both concern and hopelessness, for Shyia was the first to know it could 
never be. 
 
     K'a'lia shook her head slowly. 
 
     "But Tal, my Soulmate, is of Astreli Savage Blood.." She explained 
gently."Thus the Young must be reared.." she said. "It is hard, my sweet 
Shyia..But rather dwell upon what my youngest shall become. How splendid he 
shall be when grown!" K'a'lia's words served to buoy both the young Skiltaire 
and the man, who had listened as well. 
 
     Shyia's downcast expression changed to a soft smile at K'a'lia's gentle 
hug. 
 
     Their tender moment was broken by a spear of sent pain and exhaustion. 
Bill could not feel as the Skiltaire did between one another, but it took no 
warrior's senses to see the ruined ghost of a figure who limped slowly into 
view on two good paws, his every step as painful in appearance as it was for 
his battered, bruised, and bleeding body!! 
 
     Both female Skiltaire ran forward in horror. K'a'lia was a bit quicker 
and caught her Son as his uninjured legs gave way! Shyia reached out and 
brushed the matted blue-grey fur from before his eyes. 
 
     "Mother.." He gasped, his voice an icy whisper, "..They beat me!" 
 
     Pain stole away the young Skiltaire's resolve and he passed out as his 
mother held him. K'a'lia looked up, her grey-green eyes filled with a sad 
understanding. She shook her head. Shyia raced to the nearby stream. from her 
belt pouch she took a piece of rough cloth and plunged it into the chill 
mountain water. She was back at the battered young one's  side before her 
heart could tell her how angry she was! Shyia rang out the coarse cloth, 
wishing for a moment it might become the vitals of whoever had done this! 
Gently she laid the wet pad across his discoloured muzzle. 
 
     As K'a'lia bore him up and closer to the cook fire, Shyia's anger roared 
like the flames! 
 
     "Yes, Aunt mine..!" Shyia said scornfully. "See how splendid thy son 
looks!" 
 
     K'a'lia turned from her task, crying freely. She forgave the youngster's 
impertinence and instead touched the core of worry both mother and spirit 
mother shared for her son. 
 
     "Is this our Savage Way?" Shyia growled. "So mote it be!! I shall show 
the perpetrators of this what real Savagery is like!" 
 
     "HOLD!" Commanded K'a'lia sharply. Her tone froze Shyia's anger and her 
stride in the same moment. 
 
     "I know your spirit, but above all you must NOT!" K'a'lia instructed. 
 
     "No one attacks my kin, save they answer me in battle!" Shyia shot back. 
 
     "Do you love your cousin?" K'a'lia asked quietly. The still, quiet 
urgency of the question helped defuse Shyia's anger. 
 
     "With all my life and heart, this you know well.." Shyia answered 
quietly. 
 
     "Would you see him worse than this?" His mother asked the brash young 
female. "If you fight for him without his word, then you brand him coward, my 
Shining One. They would dispatch him straight if he were ever among them 
again." 
 
     K'a'lia's gentle words turned away Shyia's indignation. Tho half Savage 
herself, the young arboreal female had much to learn about the wild customs 
and traditions of her Mother's people. Slowly, Shyia allowed wisdom to conquer 
her towering anger. She walked gently back toward the fire, eyes down in 
apology. 
 
     K'a'lia reached out and stroked both Shyia and her stricken son. 
 
     All thru the deepening nite, Shyia attended him, never straying farther 
than a body length from where he lay. As K'a'lia slept fitfully nearby, Shyia 
allowed her sharp mind to unburden her heavy heart. Near moon set, with the 
first rays of the bright dawn, young Shyia had a wonderful, simple idea!  
 
     It came on a burst of thought so pure and strong that it roused K'a'lia 
with a start. 
 
     "What is it, My Bright One, what has touched your mind so well?" K'a'lia 
asked, looking strangely at Shyia. 
 
     "Aunt mine.." Shyia began. "Is it not according to Savage Ways that 
Others may also Teach and Train the Young?" Shyia asked expectantly. 
 
     "Tis true..If kin they be to them.." K'a'lia answered slowly, restating 
the ancient tradition that Shyia had hoped for. 
 
     "Is not Karakami as good as kin?" the young Skiltaire asked slowly. 
 
     "As good as kin and better..This you know.." The Elder answered. 
 
     "Then I might teach him as well, neh?" Shyia asked, closing the logical 
circle. 
 
     "Indeed ye might.." K'a'lia said slowly. "What would ye show him?" She 
asked. 
 
     "As soon as he is healed.." Shyia began with new determination, "...I 
shall teach him much..Beginning with wrestling.." Shyia added with confidence.  
 
     Shyia saw K'a'lia's wild eyes take on a sudden sparkle in the low lite of 
dawn. His mother nodded slowly. She put out her paw, beckoning the young 
female nearer to her. K'a'lia embraced Shyia litely but strongly. 
 
     "I knew my choice of Karakami was a wise one..!" K'a'lia whispered to 
Shyia softly. Come, she sent in turn you must help me heal him. Are you equal 
to it? 
 
     Shyia's excited response came on a wave of energy so overwhelming and 
vital that it nearly swept K'a'lia off of her feet! 
 
     Bill watched the scene unfold, his dark eyes shining with admiration. 
 
     Thru the next day and into evening, the Skiltaire females tended the 
injured male. The bruising and cuts had come from many hard paw strikes, as 
were used in close combat. The welts and swelling beneath the young Savage's 
coat allowed Bill to paint a mental picture of the relentless beating the 
others had administered to the young male. No part of his body was left 
unburdened, front and rear covered with bruises and the short cuts that went 
with Skiltaire claws. Bill noticed there was no trace of foreign fur on the 
youngster's coat, or pressed between the digits of his paws. Nor was there any 
trace of them on his claws as Shyia washed his small black wounded paws. These 
had been bitten, often and hard, trying to goat the youngster to combat. They 
had failed. His natural weapons painted a portrait of one who had not fought 
back when set upon! 
 
     After many combined efforts, K'a'lia and Shyia could only wait for nature 
itself to finish the healing process. Shyia left but once, near noon to bring 
both a portion of food. The third bowl of nuts, fruit and drawn cooked meat 
went untouched. They moved their injured charge to the shade of the cave and 
waited there with him. At mid-afternoon, a shadow fell across the mouth of the 
cave. 
 
     K'a'lia rose easily to meet the huge male Skiltaire, leaving Shyia to sit 
beside her son and tend his wounds. 
 
     "Hail, Han, Chief trainer to the young." K'a'lia said simply. 
 
     Inside the cave, Shyia felt her anger flare again, but she held her 
tongue and her place as well. 
 
     "Where is the second son of Tal?" he asked shortly. 
 
     "He sleeps, esteemed Sensei. Training has sore tired him." K'a'lia 
replied.  
 
     Shyia listened, her tongue pressed hard between her teeth. She knew the 
purpose behind the lie, but that made hearing it no easier. 
 
     "It is well.. The first days are always trying..We hope the son of Tal 
shall acquit himself well in the days to come. Tomorrow is a day of oral 
teaching. He shall come to the Great Cavern at Dawn." Master Han stated. 
 
     "By your Leave, Great Sensei.." K'a'lia answered as tradition demanded, 
but more owning to the respect of the tradition than to the persona behind it. 
 
     The Training Master of Kurusha turned and bounded away without 
acknowledgement. 
 
     Shyia heard K'a'lia growl softly as she re-entered the cave! 
 
     Can he rise in time? Shyia sent urgently. 
 
     He must, my Bright one. And all must seem as naught of this has happened, 
lest he be branded as weak. K'a'lia sent in return. 
 
     Shyia nodded. She picked up the untouched bowl of food and carried it to 
his bedside. She stimulated him to consciousness with a mild charge. He began 
as if to move, but then stopped as his whole body was racked with waves of 
dull pain! His hazel eyes fluttered open weakly, seeming to be in pain 
themselves. 
 
     Mother, he sent. 
 
     Rest and be well, my Son. She sent back quickly. Eat of the food your 
Karakami has brought for you..This has been but one day..There will be others. 
K'a'lia sent sympathetically. 
 
     At the mention of his Karakami, the young male let drop some of his pain. 
He looked up at Shyia with eyes glowing and smiled broadly thru a sore muzzle. 
Shyia moved the ruff Hewn wood bowl a bit closer, offering the young male the 
scent of what it held. Dates, Cumin nuts and smoked meat were all his special 
favorites! Shyia smiled broadly as the young Skiltaire fell upon the food with 
gusto despite the visible pain that monument and eating brought him. 
Overseeing the scene, K'a'lia suspected that her Son's appetite came not from 
the food alone, but the food bearer as well! She smiled contentedly. 
 
     As he ate, Shyia sent to him as well on a beam so tightly focused, only 
the two could read it. 
 
     Tomorrow shall indeed be another day. She sent to him. For when the 
Teacher is finished, then shall your schooling begin in good earnest. I shall 
teach you. Shyia sent. 
 
     The young male looked up from his food, his eyes ablaze with a fire the 
like of which Shyia had never seen. 
 
     What shall you teach me, Karakami Shyia? He sent asking with thought. 
 
     The strength of the stone, and the power of flowing water, my heartfelt 
son. Shyia sent back cryptically. Rest ye well now, for tomorrow we shall set 
about discovering true strength together. She sent to him on a thought pulse 
that warmed his body thru the covers over him. 
 
     The young male finished eating quickly, but carefully. At the first call 
of the nitebird at sunset, he was fast asleep and well on the mend, both in 
body and soul. 
 
     The trio slept together that nite in the cave. Each of them waiting the 
new day for different reasons but for the same purpose!  
 
     The first rays of pre-dawn coloured the sky as Both Shyia and her cousin 
awoke together. Healing had removed most of the obvious damage of the day 
before, but the young male still moved stiffly as he reached out to hug his 
aunt. 
 
     "Churp!" he said in deep gratitude for her caring. 
 
     Shyia returned the hug, holding her little one close and safe for an 
extra moment before they parted. 
 
     "Go to the Great Cavern..Master Han awaits there." Shyia said simply. 
 
     "What of yesterday, Aunt Shyia?" the Young Male asked. 
 
     "Yesterday is a shadow.." she answered. "Today is the sun. Go now, and 
remember, You are as a stone.." 
 
     The young Male Skiltaire shot from the cave as if struck by a bolt of 
lightning. As he raced across the open ground between the hills and toward the 
Great Cavern, his aunt's final cryptic words echoed in his worried mind. 
 
     "You are as a stone.." he found himself saying as he raced toward the 
day's lesson. 
 
     The mammoth expanse of the Great Cavern loomed before him, its ominous 
black maw seeming large enough to swallow almost the whole of Astrel. The 
young Skiltaire smiled. His aunt and mother had spent hours when he was 
younger, telling him dream stories and sending him images of their people's 
history and traditions, rather than made up stories to satisfy tired parents. 
He had known all of this place for a very long time. 
 
     From a place far back among the craggy rocks, the young Skiltaire felt a 
probe sweep outward toward his mind it pulled at him with relentless energy. 
He gave in and used the thought trail to draw farther into the Cavern. As he 
swept the crags and crevices with probes of his own, he could sense several 
forms moving in the broken and scattered rocks that lay just inside the vault 
of the Cavern. 
 
     The stories he had heard and felt so often seemed to whisper a warning to 
him. In this Cavern there once had been hidden a large Pride of Astreli 
Warriors who had used the rocky vault to shelter them for a surprise attack... 
 
     Without thinking, reflex and instinct made him leap sharply to one side 
and upward. As a large stone fell, smashing to bits where he had stood a 
moment before! Before the echo of the rock fall had died away, a half a dozen 
figures leapt from their hiding places, down upon the fallen debris! To the 
youth, it was obvious his attackers expected to find him beneath the fallen 
rubble!    
 
     He crouched low, hidden behind a short stalagmite, and watched. Six pairs 
of larger paws swept the shattered rock splinters aside, and set themselves to 
fall upon... 
 
     Nothing..!! 
 
     The young male seized the moment of complete surprise to perfect 
advantage! He sprang from his elevated hiding place, much as the ancient 
Warriors had done! His landing on top of them had the effect of a cannon ball, 
bowling them over easily as he twisted, moving thru their close group, then 
rebounding off the smooth wall to leap back to his hiding place! 
 
     From the shadows, there came a tide of deep, rolling and unrestrained 
laughter! As the trainees recovered their wits from among the pebbles, Master 
Han stepped into the subdued lite! 
 
     Instantly, the trainees were frozen to their places, Shock and worry 
painted on a half dozen muzzles below as the littlest Skiltaire watched with 
delight from above! 
 
     "Now you see the value of History!" Master Han said with a wry smile as 
he walked up to the surprised group of attackers. "At least one here has 
learned the oral tradition in today's teaching...Come before me, second son of 
Tal.." 
 
     Hidden above, the small mustelid was hesitant to appear. 
 
     "Fear Naught, Those who fell upon you last, are today's victims. The 
tally is even." 

     He rose slowly from his hiding place, seeming like a ghost in the dim 
lite. He padded over the sharp rocks into the light of Master Han's torch. The 
Master Trainer beckoned him closer, to stand at his side! Then Master Han he 
looked upon his other charges. 
 
     "The second son of Tal, whom you would scorn, has today proved himself 
the beginning steps to becoming a Warrior. He used his knowledge and our 
traditions to defeat a larger enemy force." 
 
     Master Han looked at his smallest pupil with a gently approving nod. 
 
     "So it was during the Dark War. All of you have heard your parents share 
the History with your ears, but only one among you took it to his heart, and 
he is the victor today because he used mind over muscle. The lesson is ended." 
 
     Looks of delight and satisfaction melted the frozen and humbled muzzles 
that stood before their teacher. They all turned to go, their embarrassment 
forgotten, along with the painful lesson. Only the smallest held his place 
beside the Master. Han allowed them to go three steps. 
 
     "Wait..!" he thundered at the others. "Those who know the lesson may 
leave. Those who have just learned it shall remain the day in practice!" Han 
fairly roared at his lazy students. Then he turned to the small one. "You have 
brought honor on thyself this day. I give you the remainder of it to study 
what you will and contemplate upon your victory." 
 
     The training Master turned with the second son of Tal, and walked beside 
him back toward the entrance of the Great Cavern. As the two teachers walked 
away, they could not see or feel the dagger eyes that followed both of them 
from the rebuked trainees! 
 
     "What shall you study upon this free day, second son of Tal?" Master Han 
asked gently as they stood together at the cavern mouth. 
 
     "I shall study Wrestling, Sensei..And then ask Karakami to tell me more 
of the Traditions before I rest." He replied, a slight awe in his voice. 
 
     "It is well. You may go, and Bright Dawn to the Second son of Tal!" 
 
     Master Han's kind words sent the Young Skiltaire fairly flying homeward 
with the speed of a happy thought!  
 
     The young one raced into his home cave just as a brilliant sunrise sent 
wide rays of morning light streaming into the cave. His mother was away 
gathering breakfast, so the Young Warrior focused all his renewed spirit on 
young Shyia. 
 
     KARAKAMI, KARAKAMI!!!! He sent excitedly as he raced toward her, almost 
knocking the female over on a thunder bolt of exuberance! He sent the whole 
thing to his Karakami in less than a heartbeat, a band of thoughts and 
feelings so varied and wide, it took the older Skiltaire's mind a moment to 
sort thru and feel it all!! 
 
     Shyia swept the young, panting Skiltaire into her arms and held him 
close. He could look up and see her eyes shining in admiration for the youth. 
 
     For a special student, we shall gather to him a special Feast of Victory. 
She sent back to him on a strong, wide band of thought, calming his mind, but 
suppressing none of the new energy he had found within himself! 
 
     He felt Shyia's send to his mother, calling gently upon her to bring wild 
dates, nuts, and favored fruits. She returned a few minutes later, so heavily 
loaded that she could scarcely move. Shyia took the food, and fell to 
preparing it in a special bowl while son shared with mother his victory! 
 
     Shyia turned with the special breakfast to see K'a'lia reach out and 
sweep her second born happily into her deep embrace! They held each other for 
a long moment, K'a'lia sharing looks and thoughts of near reverence for her 
small son. She set him down carefully and proudly on a flat rock seat before 
the eating slab. Shyia bowed deeply to her young cousin and set the heaping 
bowl before him with a sweeping motion. Then both females stepped back two 
paces and let the Male Skiltaire have his range, as both smiled broadly! 
 
     The young Skiltaire ate with triumphant gusto, and the fire of youth. As 
Shyia watched him enjoy his small celebration, Shyia sent to him softly. 
 
     Eat well and rest a bit, for in a while your Karakami's school shall 
open. 
 
 
     After he had eaten most of his meal and given his frail body a full 
relaxing stretch, Shyia sent to him. 
 
     Very well done. Now, would you walk with me? she asked, mind to mind. 
 
     The young male's exuberant response was to leap over the whole width of 
the table, landing barely a paw's width from her side! Shyia smiled knowingly, 
and Karakami cousin left the cave together. 
 
     Their path led away from the PrideGround. Before the pair had loped a 
dozen strides down the seldom warn path, the young male knew their 
destination. 
 
     Why the quarry, Karakami Shyia? he asked without speaking. 
 
     Tis there you shall come to know the strength of the stones. Shyia sent 
in reply. 
 
     Perplexed but entirely trusting, He kept pace with his aunt as he slow 
lope became a steady, pounding, and joyous run! 
 
     Both raced stride for stride down the serpentine path, over the rolling 
ground, and far from any traveled path. It was here that the ground changed as 
the racing pair topped the foothills and swept onward into a small depression. 
Here the marked path ended, and the land itself seemed to take on a different 
face. 
 
     Both Skiltaire raced right to the edge of the deep, but somehow unnatural 
pit cut from the living landscape around them, than flashed to a halt on the 
edge of the abyss, twin streaks of lightning quick fur. 
 
     Shyia paused and looked at her young cousin admiringly. There were not 
many Astreli who could match her stride for stride for any distance, let alone 
the nearly six kilometres the pair had put between themselves and any who 
might disturb them. 
 
     You run well, Young One. Shyia sent because she found herself panting and 
unable to speak. 
 
     He tried to respond, wanting to make it seem that the marathon run had no 
effect on him. 
 
     "You..too..." he said aloud, trying to keep his tongue in and not seeming 
to gulp for the air his lean body now begged for! 
 
     "I..didn't bell..believe such...was within me." The young male said, 
trying with his whole spirit not to seemed drained by the exercise or the 
energy he had found within himself. 
 
     Shyia reached out and hugged him gently. Behind her shoulder, she could 
hear and feel her cousin draw several deep, sustaining breaths. Shyia smiled, 
and pretended not to notice! 
 
     "Let us discover what else you hide away within yourself." Shyia said 
slyly. "Follow me, Young One." 
 
     Shyia somehow knew this ground better than her homewoods. The young 
Skiltaire watched in simple amazement as his elder led him to the top of a 
steep stairway. He looked down after her and grew dizzy! The steps themselves 
seemed nearly vertical as they snaked downward, nearly out of sight into the 
labyrinthine quarry! Yet, as he tried the first with his forepaws, he could 
feel that each succeeding step was well defined and clean, cut into the 
granitic rock generations ago, and showed almost no sign of weathering! Their 
path downward was part of the living rock, as solid as the predefined blocks 
that jutted irregularly from the cream white and grayish walls! 
 
     He looked back at his aunt and smiled oddly. 
 
     Lead on, Young Warrior!" Shyia said with expectant encouragement. 
 
     The male Skiltaire drew a single, deep breath, and allowed his body to 
slide downward, onto the first of the many steps. There, without looking down, 
he waited for his elder. 
 
     Shyia slid down, standing beside him, completely unaffected. She leaned 
far forward, and looked deep into the pit below. Turning back quickly, she 
swept her skittish cousin close to the edge with her! 
 
     He nearly chirped in alarm, but tamed his sudden fear in a moment at his 
aunt's continued touch. 
 
     "Come, she said easily. "Share this view with me. You too shall come to 
know this place as I do." 
 
     He felt himself relax, almost ashamed at his momentary lapse. He drew 
another, deep, steady breath, them matched gaze with Shyia, whose sapphire 
eyes swept the stone pit like some extra-worldly radar. As his fear passed 
away, his eyes began to see again, and the quarry seemed to take on a unique 
beauty in the early morning lite. 
 
     Countless days and nites of wind and climate had worked to gently polish 
the surfaces of some of the stones. They glinted and glistened, casting their 
own unique reflected lite here and there within the cavernous pit. 
 
     "You pass from one Cavern into another, my cousin." Shyia almost 
whispered, not wanting to break the natural spell she knew was being cast over 
him. "Shall we continue?" she asked after a minute. He nodded silently. 
Suddenly intrigued, the height of the stairs lost its meaning, and the place 
they led to became a goal to be reached. Eagerly, he slid down one step after 
another, falling into a natural stride that let him take the stone steps by 
twos, then threes, as all fear of falling was driven away from him! 
 
     Shyia followed behind him, smiling with satisfaction as he lead both 
deeper into the quarry! 
 
     After a distance that seemed longer, both reached the floor of the stone 
orchard. The pit was wide, but the blocky, semi-carved walls defused the 
britening sunlite, so that a mixture of pure and reflected natural lite 
illuminated the floor of the pit. 
 
     The young Male craned his short neck, straining to take in the majestic 
view of the stone carver's work place. 
 
     Shyia turned to him. "Know you these stones or their like, young one?" 
She asked. 
 
     He smiled. Shyia had told him the history of the stones a thousand times 
it seemed, each nite before he slept! 
 
     "From these stones.." He repeated the Tradition word for word, "..Become 
the base for all our underground lodges." he said, knowing that Shyia knew as 
well as he. 
 
     "Tis well!" said Shyia proudly. "So have you learned." she said. "But 
now, wise one, tell your elder the strength of the stone." Shyia invited with 
a questioning look. 
 
     He began to answer quickly, but halted himself as he pondered deeply the 
question. 

     Shyia smiled, and waited for his words. 
 
     "The strength of the stone..?" he repeated aloud as his young mind 
wrestled with the paradox. "It is solid.." he said slowly at last, fearing to 
give a wrong answer. 
 
     "And?" Shyia asked, her eyes brightening. 
 
     He faulted, unsure which to say next. Shyia smiled warmly. 
 
     "But soft, look about you. Whither do you see?" She asked guiding his 
cluttered mind gently. 
 
     "Some stones are polished, others ruff..?" He half asked, rather than 
stating. 
 
     "Go on.." Shyia answered. 
 
     "Outside they are the same..But within, the face of each is different. He 
said, his voice brightening with the beginnings of understanding. 
 
     Shyia beamed. "And what does this show you?" 
 
     The young male was still and silent for a long, contemplative moment. He 
felt a sort of distant, inner calm settle on his mind as his thoughts flowed. 
A moment came when a bright lite sparked in his eyes. Shyia saw the lite and 
smiled. 
 
     "Fear naught..speak what you now feel...It is not wrong to do so.." She 
encouraged gently. 
 
     "Myself.." He said slowly, disbelieving that so complex a question could 
be answered so simply. "I am as the unpolished stones." he said quietly at 
last. 
 
     Shyia reached out, and took the young Skiltaire into a deep and gentle 
embrace. 
 
     "Now the learning can begin, my small cousin.." Shyia answered with a 
lump in her throat. 
 
     "Karakami Shyia?" He asked gently. "Will you..could you..help polish me?" 
he asked tentatively, unsure if his words or the feeling that flowed behind 
them made any sense in logic. 
 
     Shyia put him down, gently, almost reverently. Instantly he was consumed 
by her jewel like eyes. 
 
     " I cannot do so alone. You must help the work of time, nature and what I 
shall show you. Are you willing to help me begin?" She asked seriously. 
 
     His reply was a gentle nod, tinged with awe and expectation. In the next 
instant, his whole will fell to the beginning of their task together. His 
young eyes flashed with a blaze of fire as he waited the next lesson. 
 
     Shyia smiled at his relaxed, but eager expression. She glanced at him, 
then round about the wide open floor of the pit. After a moment, her plan was 
laid, and she spied the implements she would use. 
 
     "Bring me that stone." she requested simply with a pointed paw. 
 
     He looked on in disbelief. The object of her desire was no larger than 
her own paw, and lay but three steps from both of them! 
 
     Obediently, he raced forward with a short leap, snatched up the mere 
pebble with an admirable display of quickness, and kippered back to his aunt, 
setting the stone in her paw only a moment after her command! 
 
     She smiled. "Well done!" she chirped encouragingly. 
 
     Taking the stone in her paw, Shyia weighed it carefully, gauging the 
weight of the stone fragment to within a gram. She turned the flat stone over 
in her paws once more. Nodding slightly, she passed it before his eager young 
muzzle, but with a dip, forbad him to touch it, or take it from her. 
 
     Shyia wound up her lithe young body like a powerful spring, and in a blur 
of motion that his eyes could not follow, sent the small stone arcing high 
into the air, and far out and up across the pit! It caromed off a huge block 
to land spinning on a stone step far up on the rock wall! 
 
     Shyia and the young male shared expectant looks. "Well.." she said 
casually. "Bring me that stone!" she repeated. 
 
     He begin to move, his own body uncoiling, but he was brought up short as 
his Aunt grasped him firmly by the shoulder and held him where he stood! 
 
     "Bring me the stone." She repeated simply with a nod. 
 
     He tried to move again, but her strong, gentle grip seemed like stone 
itself weighed upon his shoulder. 
 
     "The stone.." she said once more. "Concentrate!" she added gently. 
 
     His eyes gleamed, as he understood her wish at last. 
 
     Inwardly, he felt a burst of excitement. He had wished for many days to 
begin practice of his Will! Now he had the chance! 
 
     He set himself calmly as his Aunt's paw slid from his shoulder. Until her 
wish was made so, he was as rooted to the spot. Far off, he could see the 
small rock, balanced upon the very edge of an ancient stone step. Another 
centimetre would see it drop into another deep chasm cut into the floor of the 
pit.  
 
     He thought he might have to struggle at first, but as his centered 
thoughts deepened, he felt the energetic flow from his mind flow over the 
small stone that was fixed in his vision. It was just within his range! It 
took a moment for him to feel the stone, his vision unblinking as he focused 
all of himself on the task at paw. Calmly, as if the stone was an extension of 
himself, he willed it to remove! 
 
     Shyia watched eagerly as the pebble suddenly lurched from it's resting 
place, and fell from the step! Despite the gap between them, Shyia felt her 
small cousin shudder! 
 
     She steadied him with a gentle touch. The stone dipped close to the 
floor, and seemed to hesitate in it's motion as it came toward them centimetre 
by centimetre! Shyia watched hopefully as it cleared the edge of the chasm! 
 
     Shyia felt the young male exert himself, pouring almost the whole of his 
Will into the task! The small stone zipped untouched across open space, and 
then sank slowly to the floor of the pit within the outline of Shyia's waiting 
shadow! 
 
     The elder Skiltaire looked from the stone, to her kin, and back again 
slowly, her eyes wide and her muzzle open! She bolted toward him just in time 
to catch him as he collapsed in an exhausted heap! 
 
     "We have gone in search of a stone to polish, and found us a jewel even 
more precious!" She whispered to him as she took him from his feet and into 
her arms! As she turned slowly to take her remarkable pupil home, she looked 
down at the object of her lesson, that had become a lesson in Will. Something 
beyond her compelled her to pick up the small stone and tuck it into her 
pouch... 
 
     He awoke warm, but feeling euphoric before a head pain crushed him as 
surely as one of the massive blocks had fallen upon him! As his vision 
cleared, the first muzzles he saw floating above him in the mist were his 
Mother's and Shyia! 
 
     Did I bring you your stone, Karakami Shyia? he whispered urgently. 
 
     "You have polished the stone into a jewel beyond price, my Dear One." 
Shyia said, her young eyes ablaze with pride and admiration. "But rest now.." 
she said sweetly, "..for in my school it is you who have become the teacher." 
She pulled the blanket up close under his chin, and touched him gently on the 
muzzle. He drifted off into a warm and contented slumber, born of the fatigue 
of growing up. Shyia wiped a tear from her eye, and steeled herself for what 
she knew tradition demanded she do. 
 
     That nite as her cousin lay recouping his will and spirit, Shyia went 
with K'a'lia to see the Master Trainer. Both females knew it was not their 
place, but since Shyia had witnessed the phenomenal display of telekinetic 
skill, she was required to repeat what her eyes had seen. 
 
     Master Han looked long and hard into both females, asking Shyia again and 
again to send to him what she had seen and felt, and how it had been brought 
to be. After the fifth time, Han was sure it was real and true. There was a 
long moment of stillness between the trio of Skiltaire as they contemplated 
what had happened. After a heavy time of silence, Master Han spoke quietly. 
 
     "While it is not the place of Females to ask it, I understand well why 
you have come before me. When Tal comes down from Kamiyama, I shall ask to 
allow his second son to undergo the ancient Teachings. But this I cannot 
decree without his father's permission." Master Han said with a touch of 
regret.  
 
     "Oh Master.." K'a'lia spoke respectfully. "You know the Hardship he faces 
from the others. I fear for his well-being." She said, speaking with her heart 
and a mother's urgency. 
 
     Master Han's expression remained unchanged. "If he is one part in ten the 
Savage I feel him to be.." he said slowly, '..then it should be the others who 
fear him." he confided quietly to the females. 
 
     He bowed, low and slow, indicating that their audience was at an end. 
 
     As they walked downcast toward the exit tunnel, Shyia turned suddenly 
back upon the huge powerful Skiltaire. Her words were quick, but not sharp. 
 
     "May I continue to teach him, if he wishes it, Master Han?" The young 
girl's question was asked half in hope, half in desperation. Breathlessly, she 
waited his answer to her disrespect. 
 
     One touch of the Master Trainer's stone hard paws could tear Shyia like 
thin cloth. Yet she held her ground before him. Han's blazing Savage eyes 
seemed to knife thru the upstart girl, testing in truth her own resolve in the 
matter. 
 
     Shyia's eyes turned brite and diamond hard. She held her eyes level with 
her Elder's for a long moment, in a non-explosive test of two iron wills! 
 
     "It is well..You are his kin..This is permitted." Master Han said 
finally, without breaking his gaze. 
 
     Shyia smiled easily, bowed deeply and followed K'a'lia up the sloping 
tunnel. As the Master Trainer turned to the rack, to consult an ancient 
scroll, Shyia could not see his wry smile! 
 
     The days that followed were the new of the moon. A time of rest for all 
in Training, they gave the young telekinesis master time to restore the 
strength of his body and the sharpness of his mind. All the while Shyia was 
never beyond his sight or hearing, so that the young Skiltaire would not have 
to strain the to establish a mental link between them. It gave young Shyia no 
end of displeasure to force him to drink the pungent, heavily spiced tea of 
root and bark, but when the young Male found out that the bitter medicine for 
psyonic shock was a product of Shyia's paws, he guzzled it by the cup, and 
pleaded for more thru pinched and puckered muzzle! 
 
     His youth and fire weighed for him, and upon the second nite, he was able 
to rise and eat with his Mother and Shyia. Meals were a close and vociferous 
time, and Shyia's cousin seemed to be his natural self once more. But all thru 
their meal, the young Skiltaire could feel both his Mother and Shyia look upon 
him with different eyes. He felt no less love or affection, only something 
unspoken that lay between them. Across his heaping plate, he felt strangely 
different somehow. He ate his fill twice over, making up for his days of 
illness. 
 
     After their meal was done, the trio walked together toward the fire 
mound, where the Pridefire would be kindled with the last ray of the sun. 
Shyia's cousin knew that the tradition of lighting the fire usually went to 
the Eldest among them. Since his father had departed to serve his half year 
upon Kamiyama, he had watched nite after nite as his Mother took the torch, 
and put it to the pyre as the sun dipped below the horizon. 
 
     The torch was kindled by a magnifying lens aimed at the ceremonially 
carved wooden torch. Nature worked again, and the torch sparked to hardy 
flickering life as the sun passed from the sky. K'a'lia took it and turned 
toward the firemound, but tonite, she stopped and held out the flame to her 
son! 
 
     At first, he hesitated to take it. It was not his place! Shyia came over 
gently and touched him on the shoulder with a re-assuring nod. He grasped the 
fire with paws a tremble, and paced the traditional three steps to the rim of 
the firemound! 
 
     One step for yesterday, one for the passing day, and one for the day to 
come. Such was the tradition of the Astreli. He paused at the rim of the 
firepit, and cast a poignant look at his family. in the gathering shadows, he 
could see two sets of shining eyes. He cast the torch onto the ceremonial wood 
in a high arc that made the flame seem like a descending comet. As soon as 
fire met wood, there was a hungry spark and the Pridefire seemed to take on a 
life of it's own, just as the Tradition dictated. Soon, the wild lite of their 
fire was joined by others that sprang to life in on firemounds more distant, 
all thru the valley. As the trio stood together in the darkness, it seemed as 
if someone had swept a pawfull of stars down from the heavens and scattered 
them far and wide over the Astreli Valley. 
 
     He stood for a moment, warmed in the lite of the towering flames, and 
sent far distant to the Kamiyama. He waited in hope for a long moment, but 
felt nothing touch him from the far away peak which cast a wide dark shadow 
even in the lite of the Pridefire. 
 
     The next morning dawned clear, brite and hot. He bounded out of bed as 
the first brilliant rays of dawn painted the horizon, for he knew today would 
be a free day. And he hoped it would be the day when he might finally learn 
something else he had longed to know and understand, and that the last few 
days had made a painful necessity--How to fight, well and hard. 
 
     Shyia too was up and about quickly. Such was the advantage of youth. 
Rather than make breakfast for them, K'a'lia passed them a pair of familiar 
belt pouches, each bulging with fruits, nuts and other favorites she knew they 
loved so much! 
 
     She saw them off at the cave entrance and waved as both raced toward the 
quarry with reckless abandon! 
 
     The distance seemed to melt before them. As they raced along, once again 
even pawfall for pawfall, Shyia hid her admiration for the young male who 
matched her stride for stride. It might have taken another of his age seven 
suns to recover his mind after psyonic shock. But her cousin had again shown 
himself to be unique, just as she had always known he was. Today, she thought 
to herself, she would test his mettle again, gently but sternly, to see what 
kind of edge might be honed on the young Skiltaire. 
 
     As he romped alongside his elder, he felt something new touch him. He 
felt it in both his heart and throat. Surprise and excitement mingled, making 
his throat seem tighter, while his heart became a trip hammer that threatened 
it seemed to burst from under his ribs as he raced along! No running had ever 
done this to him before..And then he thought of something Tal had told him 
long ago about when his father had been young. Something that had to do with 
battle, he remembered..Then it came to him. It was instinct, telling him for 
the first time in his life, he was headed for a fight, albeit a friendly one. 
But his father's description stayed with him. A cool sort of chill as the body 
found a new and different rhythm, one that started when you began to grow up! 
 
     Shyia let her smooth body unwind with each stride she took, her willowy 
young shape gathering and snapping out like a whip crack each time she moved 
forward. Her run was meant to test him to his limits, and to tire him before 
their wrestling practice could begin. Soon the ground became familiar, and 
both found themselves racing headlong for the quarry! Rather than stop, he 
flashed ahead and to the right of her on a hidden reserve of excitement! The 
ancient stone steps held no fear for him this time, and he loped down them 
five at a time as he raced down to the floor of the quarry without breaking 
stride! Shyia followed, no more than a quarter step behind! 
 
 
     The young male waited patiently for his Karakami to slide to a short stop 
on the floor polished by thousands of paws thru the years. Young Shyia looked 
over at him and could see the fire of excitement blazing in his hazel eyes. He 
gave her no chance for words, but dove at her with a playful growl! 
 
     Shyia smiled at his expression as she dropped flat to the floor, and let 
the shocked young upstart sail three feet above her head! The Youngster 
recoiled in mid air spreading his paws and twisting his limber body to slow 
himself before rebounding with a wide leap from a smooth place cut into the 
rock wall. Three breaths later, he was an airborne bolt of lightning, targeted 
on his opponent's head! 
 
     Shyia saw him rebound, admiring his form as she stepped exactly one pace 
to the left. She saw her cousin's face fall as he sailed harmlessly by her 
ear! 
 
     This time, he was headed for a jagged cut in the wall, surrounded with 
odd stacks of broken rocks! Instantly, he wished he were one of them so he 
could drop harmlessly to the floor..! In the next instant, he felt something 
pluck him from the air as if he were a fallen leaf! The suddenness of the stop 
made him dizzy for just a moment. When his vision re-focused, he saw Shyia's 
blue eyes gazing at him, filled with care and caution.. 
 
     He didn't rest a moment, but grabbed he roughly, throwing her off 
balance, and both fell hard to the stone floor! 
 
     The heavy impact cushioned him, but at her expense. She felt her breath 
explode outward and her ribs twinge in painful protest, followed by the blunt 
thud of stone against her head! Her coat armored her well, but served to 
dampen only a part of the hurt. The unpleasant sensation wrote momentary pain 
across her muzzle, and clouded her clear eyes, not with pain, but with anger!! 
 
     Her anger amplified as her mind cleared to her the Young Male laughing as 
if her act of prowess had been entirely for his amusement! His smile changed 
quickly passing thru surprise on the way to panic and regret as Shyia growled, 
low and menacing, despite his weight pressed heavily into her chest!! 
 
     He began to think about running away, but his aunt's strong grip crushed 
him into a vice before he could think about moving. He was turned over and 
slapped to the stone floor with a sudden force and speed of a gale wind. By 
the time his first paw could twitch, his slightest movement caused him pain as 
Shyia's body lock crushed out the last ounce of his will to resist! 
 
     Shyia saw the fire in the Young Skiltaire's eyes dim, and he dropped his 
pinned head submissively to his chest, for that was the only movement she 
would permit him without a world of pain! It was as if one of the aged stone 
blocks had been cast off from the high walls of the cavern and crushed him 
helplessly beneath it! 
 
     Shyia held him a long moment, allowing the male to taste defeat before 
releasing him with no outward sign of emotion. As he rose an inch at a time, 
every muscle and bone in his small body whined in protest! She took hold of 
him suddenly and felt him shudder with outright fear! In a single movement, 
she turned the helping touch into a hug, sweeping the Male off of his small 
paws to do it! 
 
     The Fear in his eyes turned to admiration. She looked at him and smiled 
slightly before touching him litely on the muzzle. 
 
     His admiration combined with adoration as he stood there a moment, 
learning his lesson well. 
 
     "Let me guess..." She said casually. "You wish to do that as well.." She 
suggested as she saw her young cousin smile with wonder. 
 
     "Can you teach me that as a first lesson, Karakami Shyia?" he pleaded, 
knowing full well that Shyia could refuse him almost nothing when she heard 
her honored title. 
 
     Shyia smiled, knowing his trickery. This time, for his own good, it would 
not work!. She shook her head slowly. 
 
 
     You are not yet ready, My Fiery Young Warrior. She sent to him broadly. 
 
     The downcast look on his muzzle, hurt Shyia greatly,but she steeled 
herself, ruffled his fur gently and spoke aloud to her disappointed student. 
 
     "Within yourself, you have even more wild fire than I." She said in 
consolation. "When we marry that fire with the might of your body and the 
learning of your mind, none upon this world shall stand before you!" She said 
with rising dedication that lifted both his spirit and hers. 
 
     "Come..She said resolutely. The time has come to begin forging."  
 
     "Forging?" He asked as they walked together across the pit. 
 
     "Your spirit is already forged in blazing fire..Now must we forge your 
body to be in that same crucible." She said as she lead him toward the large 
pile of fragmented rocks that he had nearly crashed into. She stopped before 
the column of broken rocks, and indicated one with a gesture. 
 
     "Bring me that stone." she repeated in a familiar tone. 
 
     "But Karakami, that stone is larger than I" He replied, knowing full well 
to move the thick slab with his mind would kill him. 
 
     So it is, she sent with a nod. But who is more powerful of body, the 
lifeless stone, or yourself? She asked his mind directly. 
 
     "I AM!!" His reply came aloud, on a wave of spirit that Shyia knew could 
move the planet if it was directed well. 
 
     "Bravo! Plaudits to thee!" She responded. "Let us fetch this one 
together." She suggested simply. 
 
     Both Skiltaire moved cautiously around the stalagmite of stones until 
they were able to grip and heft the large sheet of dull white stone. They 
walked out together a few paces in a sidestep before Shyia motioned to set the 
slab down gently on a clear spot on the quarry floor. Shyia patted her paws 
together, shaking the dust from them as she stood back, admiring the placement 
of the large rock. Her young charge looked on expectantly. 
 
     Now What, Karakami Shyia? he sent to her eagerly. 
 
     "Bring me that stone" she repeated as before. The young Male looked 
around his aunt as if her request had been directed at some unseen onlooker. 
There was no one else there. 
 
     Me?? He sent  
 
     "You alone." she spoke in reply. 
 
     "You know I cannot.." he protested, but his words died as he saw her 
shake her head. 
 
     "Relay not always upon your Gifts.." She said. "You must task your body 
as well as your mind." 
 
     It required both of us to remove it..! He sent in frustration. How might 
I do so alone?" he asked aloud, deeply confused. 

     "That stone, young one has the mass of forty small stones. When you have 
learned, you shall remove it with your strength as simply as you did its 
brother with your other gifts." Shyia said, matter-of-fact. 
 
     The young Male looked down over his undersized body in disbelief. "What 
Strength could there be in this, Karakami? He asked, his expectations dying 
along with his self image. "I am small, and weak..easily beaten..You did so 
yourself!" He protested. 
 
     But Shyia would hear none of it. Instead, she walked forward, taking her 
dejected cousin by the shoulders, and locking their eyes together. 
 
     "Come with me.." She instructed. "I would show you something." 
 
     Without waiting for his answer, Shyia fair to dragged him toward a 
secluded corner of the quarry. The place was set off and separate from the 
main excavation by a pattern of half hewn stones. As Shyia led him thru the 
labyrinth, the young Savages ears could hear the trickle of water. They turned 
around one corner and stopped as a place opened before their eyes! 
 
     From amid the striations of white stone, there was a small cavity lit by 
a single beam of reflected sunlite that was scattered into a thousand flashing 
colours by a hearty cascade of water that seemed to flow from the very rock 
that surrounded them! 
 
     The young Skiltaire looked up at the natural wonder, the sparkle in his 
eye matching the sun split spray! He looked at the grandeur of the natural 
waterfall for a moment, and then turned, asking Shyia with a look for an 
explanation. 
 
     "A natural aquifer flows around us." She explained. "One ancient stone 
cutter struck too deep into the rock, and water did flow into this place. Ages 
of water cut thru the stone to form the pool in the floor, that drains back 
into the layers of stone below." She told him carefully as she lead him closer 
to the edge of the clear pool. Their reflections dissolved in ripples as Shyia 
dipped a paw in to drink ,and let him follow suit. 
 
     The sweet, pure water brought a smile to their muzzles as Shyia waited 
for the pool to calm itself. When it did, she took him again by the shoulders 
and leaned him down close to the still water, where a familiar muzzle stared 
back at him. 
 
     "Now.." she bid him in a stern tone, "Tell me what you see." 
 
     He paused, overwhelmed by the simplicity of the question and the 
complexity that lay no further beneath its surface than his own reflection. 
 
     "Myself and the reflected stones above me." He said quietly, not liking 
the picture of the thin, seemingly brittle body the water cast up at him. He 
frowned at the sight of himself in the pool. 
 
     Shyia shook her head. 
 
     "Now I shall tell you what I see, My Young Warrior. Fire, water, and 
living rock. As many fold a wonder as this pool, if you dare to see it so." 
 
     She paused. He was shocked. No one had ever looked at him like that 
before, and it showed in his expression. He strained a bit, looking closer to 
try to understand what wiser eyes than his had seen, where he could not. 
 
     "You have a spirit of fire, and you shall have a body like this stone, 
only greater in strength many times above it. Together, you shall flow like 
this water, and none shall ever be your better. Do you believe I would speak 
you an untruth?" She asked. 
 
     The answer leapt to his mind and muzzle in the same instant, born of the 
same urgency. "Never!" He answered firmly. 
 
     "It is well. I have made you a pact. Will you help me keep these words?" 
She asked plaintively. 
 
     His eyes regained the hazel fire sparked with green that Shyia had seen 
so often and come to admire so well. Both the word and the thought came on a 
splendid, powerful burst of energy that was the core of the littlest 
Skiltaire's Savage spirit. 
 
     "YES!" He answered loudly with a truly magnificent Savage Growl! 
 
     Shyia made no move to embrace him, as she wanted to do. Rather, she 
stepped back two full paces, allowing the Male his range. The gesture meant 
more than ever could be spoken. Shyia's eyes lit with a fire of their own, 
unextinguished by the tears that trickled down her muzzle! 
 
     "Come aid a lady, my male of the Stones.." she said. "Before you may 
remove that one, there are others with which to struggle." 
 
     "Yes, Karakami!" He shouted, as he dashed off to follow her as she led 
him to the far end of the pit. 
 
     They stopped together before another spire of loosely piled stones only 
slightly smaller than the first. 
 
     "To Begin.." she said, "I wish to clear this space for your training 
enclosure. You may remove these stones to the other pile." She punctuated her 
direction with a gesture toward where they had stood before, a great distance 
away. 
  
     He smiled, seeking and suggesting an easier method. "This ground is 
clear. I shall pile them next to the large block..." 
 
     Shyia shook her head. "No.." she said gently but firmly. "It must be over 
there!" Again, she gestured to the distant place where they had stood before. 
 
     He nodded slowly, knowing somehow not to question too deeply what she 
wanted. Obediently, he stooped down, collecting several paw sized stones on 
top on a larger one that lay at his feet. He then lifted the entire number and 
began an unsteady walk across the quarry with his burden. He had gone two 
strides before a familiar voice stopped him where he stood! 
 
     "No, No, young one.." She said casually as she raced up and stood in his 
path. She brushed the collection of small stones from the top of the larger 
one. As they rolled across the floor, Shyia looked satisfied. "One at a 
time.." she said, "Or...Perhaps..Two at a time." She selected another large 
stone that lay nearby, and bade him accept it in one paw as she held it out to 
him! 
 
     He struggled to keep his balance holding the twin tablets of ruff stone, 
one in each paw. Shyia helped him turn gently gripping him by the shoulders, 
and encouraged his wavering steps toward the other side of the stone pit. The 
weight of his burden nearly caused him to topple over. He moved to stack them 
and carry them in two hands. From behind him, there came a sharp thought of 
reproach!! He sighed as he let the stones hang loosely as he walked across the 
quarry. The mass of the stones would not allow him to run, and by the time he 
reached the opposite pile of stones, his paws were sore, and he felt that his 
forelimbs might fall off! Triumphantly, he set them down in turn, and then sat 
on top of them to rest for a moment. He had scarcely caught his breath before 
an unrelenting task mistress called him back for another pair of stones!! 
 
     So it went, from early morning lite to the deepening shadows of late 
afternoon, he removed the stones in tandem pairs uncounted. Only when half of 
the stones were removed did she permit him to eat or drink any of the food or 
water on their beltpacks. As they ate, Shyia surveyed the product of his 
effort with a keen eye. She had to fight with herself to keep from seeming 
impressed as she was. Once he had fallen to the task, his ferocious energy had 
taken control, and the task she had given two days might well be finished in 
only one! 
 
     "It is well done indeed..But I can see that you tire..." she added slyly. 
He calculated remark had a calculated effect. 
 
     "Who tires!!" the spirited Male growled back, defying with his spirit 
what his body had admitted long before this. "If you wish these stones removed 
further, you have leave only to speak your wish." He said with dash! 
 
     Shyia looked around, gauging the daylight carefully, then she spoke. "It 
might take many to do what remains before sunset..Can you finish alone?" Shyia 
asked. 
 
     His response was to leap from the stone where they sat together, over to 
the diminishing pile of loose stones. Without a word, and punctuating his now 
smooth, natural movement with a short growl, he dashed quickly across the pit 
with another pair of stones! 
 
     As Shyia finished the last swallow of water in her bottle, she smiled 
broadly behind her cousin's back! 
 
     The sun still hovered above the horizon as he raced across the pit with 
the final pair of stones! He body had ceased to pain him, as had his paws. 
Both had been worked raw by the labor of the stones, yet he was so anxious to 
answer his Aunt's gentle challenge that he never noticed that many of the 
pairs of stones were marked with drops of blood! 
 
     He exalted as his tired limbs seemed to find the new energy that the 
challenge had given him. Rather than do it quickly, he walked a straight, 
steady and slow line across the pit, using the final pair of rocks to crown a 
small pyramid he had been constructing for some time with his labor! As the 
last stone touched stone, Shyia heard his growl build and blossom into a roar 
of triumph! This time, He had earned it!!! 
 
     Shyia broke into applause, and raced across the pit to meet him! Gently, 
she clasped his paws in admiration. He tried not to wince and failed. Shyia 
drew back her paws, their cocoa fur sticky with clotted blood! 
 
     You cannot walk. Shyia sent gently. She picked him up gently and saw his 
expression change. 
 
     "No..It's all right..Put me down and we'll walk home...Together" He asked 
simply, without trace of bravura. 
 
     Shyia complied, and let the Male take the two pace lead that was his to 
claim. Shyia lingered behind a step or two and cast a glance skyward, 
marveling at what the day had wrought. 
 
     Their journey home was far from dashing, but a measured, leisurely pace 
that betrayed no trace of pain or the days hard labor. Shyia sent ahead of 
them, and K'a'lia met both as they returned with a shared vessel of heated 
water, spiced with medicinal herbs to heal the growing set of black Skiltaire 
paws! 
 
     He fell into his sleeping pillows like one of the countless stones he had 
moved. He had no memory at all of Shyia applying her growing healing Gift to 
his scraped paws. Tho it took the young girl half of the nite, she kept to her 
task, all the while relating to K'a'lia in hushed whispers what had taken 
place. Shyia got the only measure of reward she sought when K'a'lia embraced 
her warmly. Then, they tucked him in together, and fell asleep piled together 
warmly at the foot of his bed. 
 
     When he stirred before dawn, he found Shyia awake to greet him with a 
smile. 
 
     "When your day is done.." She said quietly, "Come to the quarry at 
sunset." 
 
     He charged from the cave into the new day, and as his fluid strides made 
him aware of his healed paws, he came to know that he would come to like the 
nite as much as the day. Not so much by reason of what there was to learn, but 
who would do the teaching! 
 
     So, the pattern was set. The young male's days were divided between two 
teachers. He respected Master Han, but it was his Karakami who had won the 
battle for his mind and soul. There were days when he could barely contain his 
excitement, dashing between challenges for his body in the morning, and his 
body mind and heart during those wonderful nites. 
 
     After a long day of reading and understanding oral Traditions, he raced 
for the quarry like a sailbug on a stiff wind. Each time he made it, the hilly 
journey seemed to shorten, tho he could not understand why. As he raced along, 
the last of the stiffness from the day before seemed to fade away, leaving him 
a pleasant warm feeling thruout his lean body. He had eaten a tremendous mid 
day meal, twice the size of what the other trainees had eaten all together! 
Now, the lite breeze cooled his body, but not his spirit as he raced toward 
his second teacher of the day! 
 
     He found Shyia awaiting him, standing in her usual place atop the large 
slab of stone. She surveyed the pit with a studied curiosity. She looked past 
him, but did not speak. Shyia hopped down from her stone and walked slowly 
toward the opposite side of the pit. As she passed by, deep in thought, He 
could feel that she was counting paces as she moved deliberately across the 
quarry. 
 
     "Bring me that stone.." She said absently as she passed by him walking 
stiff, measured paces. 
 
     He smiled at the refrain, knowing full well that one day made no 
difference. He still could not do it, he thought to himself. 
 
     "Try thinking victory before admitting defeat, My young male of stone." 
Shyia said casually as she touched the other wall of the pit at last. 
 
     He smiled, shrugged and decided to try it for her sake. 
 
     He walked around the far end of the huge stone slab, where the rock sheet 
was thin enough for him to wrap his paws around comfortably. He took a moment 
to become still, them focused all the strength he could into a single sharp 
lifting notion. 
 
     His body tensed then lifted, but it was he who moved while the stone 
remained in place! 
 
     Satisfied merely for the effort, he gave up, and waited for her next 
instructions. 
 
     From across the pit, Shyia felt what was in his mind. She resigned 
herself. More work was needed. She trotted slowly back across the quarry. She 
looked at him with a smile as he waited eagerly. 
 
     "I have made a mistake. That place is not in the sun. Please put the 
stones back where you found them." Her request was almost so casual that it 
seemed funny to him. But his broadening smile was met by the calm, earnest 
expression on the Elder Skiltaire's muzzle! 
 
     "I-I just removed them!!" He stammered in amazement! 
 
     "And a glorious labor it was! You are growing stronger each day, just as 
intended. Now, here is your chance to grow stronger still." Shyia replied with 
a calmness that defeated his disbelief and growing anger. 
 
     Nonplussed, Shyia looked about the quarry and returned to her 
measurements with careful slowness. Her young protegee stood his ground in 
utter amazement. But as Shyia walked away, he began to think about what she 
had asked him to do. He had yet to know one thing. 
 
     "Karakami Shyia?" He asked. 
 
     "Yes?" she echoed from far off. 
 
     How must it be done? he sent strongly across the pit. 
 
     Use your own methods, young one, for I am busy building. Shyia sent back, 
admiring the strength of the young Male's send. 
 
     The labor instantly became an evening of play, as the method he would use 
came to his mind in less than a moment! He had endured the training exercise, 
but a part of that had left him a strange dislike for the slabs of stone. 
Tonite he would have his revenge!! 
 
     Without thinking, he made an easy fluid leap to the top of a half cut 
block in the wall. It gave him a seat from which to reach the apex of one of 
the stone pyramids he had built! He set himself firmly, then reached out a 
short distance to snatch up one of his baneful stone slabs. He hefted it over 
his head with a Growl, and then called upon all the strength in his thin body 
to send the flat stone spinning thru the air back from whence it had come!! 
 
     To his surprise, the first slab turned flat as it sailed thru the air to 
crash against the far wall of the pit! 
 
     The sound of the breaking rock echoed thru the whole quarry with a blast 
that made an explosion sound quiet! It nearly shook him from his perch! 
 
     In her far corner work place in the rocks, Shyia heard the sound and 
smiled, knowing the strength he would build first hauling the rocks, and now 
breaking them, just as she had planned!! She could not take too much pleasure 
in her technique, for her nimble paws had to attend building the next series 
of tasks that were not work that she would bid him do! She smiled, and went 
back to weaving rope! 
 
     He watched the second and third slabs meet the same fate as the first, 
and a new confidence touched him. He found himself enjoying the clean, solid 
sound of rock upon rock as the slabs hit the wall. It became a new and 
fascinating game for him. Overhead and overpaw tosses mingled with discus 
style heaves as the slabs seemed to fly two and three at a time! He would take 
one in his newly healed right paw , and one in his left, and watch to see if 
they would fly the same distance as he threw them both together, seeing them 
crumble as they struck the wall at the same time, he felt his bloody paws 
avenged. 
 
     First tens and then hundreds of stones moved their way, calling upon and 
tasking his strength, and endurance. He found himself having so much fun that 
he forgot his fatigue. As his body built to the labor, he found himself 
feeling warmer..more alive, and yes..he finally said to himself..Stronger than 
he ever believed possible as the shattered stones built into a miniature 
mountain on the opposite side of the pit!! 
 
     As the last pair of stone slabs sailed into the wall to cap the heap of 
broken stone less than two hours later, he felt something flash within him. In 
a single moment, he became as possessed! He leapt from his place and dashed 
toward the great stone, calling at the top of his voice as he ran!! 
 
     "SHYIA!!, KARAKAMI SHYIA!!" He yelled, he shouted, He roared!! 
 
     Not far distant, Shyia knew that tone and the spirit behind it. She 
dropped the rope and bucket she carried and vaulted into a flat out run. If 
she was right, this moment was not to be missed, for it would never come again 
if she did not see it...!! 
 
     She came around the corner to see him vault toward the stone, his 
energetic movement never stopping or slowing, but building to a peak as he 
came on..Instead of making for the thin end, He ran up and braced his forepaws 
under the center of the slab, tucking his whole body underneath it in the same 
movement. Without pause or waiting he put not just his legs, but all of 
himself into the lift. In his mind, he saw for one instant, no more than 
another stone slab! 
 
     As Shyia watched in open muzzled amazement, the great stone slab that was 
more than four times his weight resisted for a moment, and then moved!! It was 
borne up and away from its resting place, braced across his shoulders! 
 
     For both Shyia and Bill who found himself cheering, it was a spectacle 
never to be forgotten! 
 
     He not only moved it, but as Shyia looked on, he began to walk with his 
burden. Not just belabored quarter or half steps, but full wide steps that 
became full, bold strides in their turn!! 
 
     He pivoted with this last slab across his shoulders and back, and walked 
slowly toward Shyia, almost as if the massive stone didn't exist at all!!! 
 
     He stopped where he stood, the stone's width from her, slid the huge 
stone from his shoulders and dropped it casually in front of Shyia! In the 
same motion, he gathered and leapt, ending up standing on the great Stone that 
had vexed him. 
 
     "Your..Stone..Karakami Shyia.." He said, just slightly out of breath as 
he leapt down, to be caught in Shyia's waiting arms! 
 
     Why do you cry, Karakami Shyia..Have I hurt you? he sent as he noticed 
tears flowing down her muzzle again. 
 
     Hurt me? she sent back warmly. You have filled me, my young one. Now I 
truly hold the living rock! 
 
     She held him closer to her heart in that moment than she ever had before. 
 
     All of your chains are broken.. She sent to him grandly. No more the 
small one are you. Now we can begin to bring what is inside to the outside. 
You must now know that whatever task is set before you, you shall accomplish. 
You have proven to yourself that this is truth. She spoke with quiet reverence 
to his mind, and the lite in the elder Skiltaire's eyes told the younger one 
that this was as much a part of his training as the Traditions he had studied 
this momentous day.  
 
     "Come now.." she spoke aloud. "Let us show all this world what a large 
Kurushani this small form holds." She added. "I will now teach you anything 
you wish to learn." She said simply. 
 
     His Hazel eyes lit like Pridefires. 
 
     "Where shall we begin?" Shyia asked her student. 
 
     Shyia watched as the youth became calm, still and quiet, tho his eyes 
still roared with brilliant fire. Shyia could tell that he had taken another 
step upon the path to his potential. He looked down, over himself, but this 
time Shyia could tell the youth was also looking thru himself for the very 
first time! She waited patiently, knowing how his next words would shape his 
young life to come. 
 
   "I want to learn to Wrestle, Karakami...But first.." he paused, not sure 
how to say or send what he felt. 
 
     Go on, My noble one, never be afraid to feel. She sent to him gently. 
 
     "I want to become as strong as I feel inside on the outside." He said. 
 
   The simple, profound feeling behind the words touched the young girl 
deeply. Now, from that moment on and forever, she would spare him nothing he 
asked for. 
 
   "Such is possible.." She answered. 
 
   "How, my sweet Karakami?" he asked again. 
 
   Shyia was struck by the openness and trust that came with the complement. 
She never knew she was held so high. He only answer was a hug, and then she 
spoke. 
 
   "The Labors I have bid you do are not by my whim alone. You have felt your 
inner and outer strength rising. If you wish to find and call upon more of it, 
than more labor must you undertake. Strength, if true strength it is, comes 
from labor both within and without. No sword is sharp without honing, no gem 
flashes brite without polish." She told him. 
 
   "I wish to shine britely." He said seriously "For Mother, Father, 
Pride..and for my Karakami" he answered in return. 
 
   "It is well.." Shyia said. "For the conqueror of stones, I have a special 
gift.." She said with a sweeping bow. "Hold your place." she told him. 
 
   She left him almost reluctantly. But her explorations of the disused quarry 
had gifted her a pair of tools that Shyia felt would be invaluable when the 
young Skiltaire grew into them. She knew that moment had come, and together 
they would help him find himself. Now she went to fetch them. She had wished a 
grand celebration before his Father and Mother. She knew how both would feel 
at the sight and sound of their son. But the moment was ripe, and rather than 
let his energy diminish, Shyia elected to focus it once more. 
 
   One she could hide for a moment in her belt pouch. The other was almost too 
large for her, but as she hefted it, she felt somehow her young Skiltaire 
would grow into it as splendidly as he had tonite. Rather than attempting to 
hide it away, she took it by the hide thong that ran the length of the handle 
and slug it across he shoulders as she had seen in pictures. Then she walked 
from her hiding place toward the young Skiltaire. 
 
   His eyes still blazed with excitement and anticipation as she approached, 
her step made unsteady by a large hammer which hung loosely across her back, 
nearly pulling her over backwards! He saw her take it from her shoulder and 
hold it out to him just beneath the dull steel grey head. Instantly he knew 
what it was!! 
 
   "A five stone hammer!!" He repeated as she nodded. "Just like the ancient 
stone cutters used!!" 
 
   "Quite so,Young One..." she began, but paused to reach into her belt pouch. 
"And Tradition says that this goes with it, paw in paw.." She said.  
 
   " A Fang Chisel!!" he chirped happily! 
 
   He reached for one, then the other, then both together. Shyia held them 
both out to his excited young paws. The smaller chisel was easy, but when the 
young Skiltaire took hold of the huge hammer and felt it's mass, the chisel 
dropped to the hard rock floor with a clatter as he struggled to hold the tool 
that was five times his own weight! He tried to hold it up, but the head sank 
slowly to the floor, nearly taking him with it! 
     
   Shyia knew better than to laugh, but it was a momentary struggle. 
 
   He held the inverted hammer up awkwardly, and bent over the rest of the way 
to pick up the chisel. He propped up the hammer against a rock, and turned his 
attention to the chisel. He held its short, slightly curved length gently in 
his paws and looking at it reverently. His mind wandered for a moment, thing 
back over all the ageless stone the tool might have helped shape. 
 
   "Now, tell your Karakami the Tradition of the Stone Cutters." Shyia said 
gently, giving him a well earned chance to exercise his mind as well as his 
body! 
 
   He smiled broadly. His first memories was Shyia and his Mother telling him 
the Traditions as dream stories. This one was one of his favorites. 
 
   "In the ancient Dark Times, they helped build our World. When the Hated 
enemy came to Kurusha, their works were destroyed. Today we build our 
underground lodges with Their stone and our metal to remember what they built 
in the past, and what we build today, to keep Kurusha strong and safe." He 
repeated to his Elder. But as he held the tools, Shyia could feel something 
different. For the young Skiltaire, the words of the Tradition had been made 
more than that. They had become alive to the youth. His eyes sparkled as he 
spoke, and a part of him became the Tradition as much as the venerated tools. 
 
   Shyia made the customary bow to the Tradition and its recitation, but it 
was also meant as a tribute to the Tradition teller! 
 
   "Now I must ask your help again.." Shyia said. "This hammer is beyond both 
of us." She added, placing her paws around his as both tried to wield the 
fifty kilo tool. It took nearly all the strength in both Skiltaire to raise 
the Hammer from the floor and hold it horizontally as the hammer head dipped 
up and down! Shyia wavered a bit but then held steady to help the younger 
Skiltaire do the same. A sudden impulse flashed inside him and the young male 
sent all his strength to over ride Shyia's grasp as he tried to swing the 
hammer alone! 
 
   Caught by surprise, She could resist only for a moment before her grip was 
broken. Shyia watched as her cousin's sudden burst of strength gained over the 
hammer, and its heavy grey head sailed up and back in a wide arc, its inertia 
taking a suddenly off balance young Skiltaire with it!! 
 
   He staggered back three or four steps, as the handle slid backward over his 
shoulder!! As the head jarred against the hard stone, he was still moving 
backwards, trying desperately to find his balance! He hung on as the hammer 
acted like an anchor, and he twisted wildly around the unmoving handle before 
letting go to fall over backwards in a heap!! 
 
   So did Shyia...laughing hysterically!! 
 
   He flopped to rest beside the immovable hammer, sprawled out on his back, 
and tail in the air, sinking slowly as his head came up. He shook off the 
momentary dizziness and then looked languidly at his Karakami, who was 
convulsed to a neat ball on the floor!! 
 
   The sight of her open and honest amusement pinched out the sparks of his 
anger. He looked at the impassive Hammer and began to titter, and then 
collapsed as his own laughter swept over him! 
 
   The Humor broke the tension of a unique nite for both. Shyia sensed that 
both student and teacher had done enough for one special day. She walked over 
to the young Skiltaire and helped him to stand, gently brushing the slight 
dust from his coat. 
 
   "Come, My Living Rock.." Shyia said, her pride in him showing in her voice. 
"Tonite's work is done. If we stay here, I think Teacher and student would 
exchange places. There is much to tell your mother!" 
 
   "Karakami Shyia..?" He asked with a quiet, serious tone. 
 
   "Yes..?" 
 
   "Do we have to..?" he asked. 
 
   "Have to what,Little One?" Shyia asked in quizzical response 
 
   "Tell mother..I mean..about the Hammer.." He asked hesitantly. 
 
   Shyia smiled gently at his modesty and embarrassment. "As you will, My 
living Rock." 
 
   She clapped him gently around the shoulders and felt him recoil slightly. 
"How  do you fair..Are you in pain?" Shyia asked. 
 
   The slight Skiltaire moved a bit, flexing his thin forelimbs at the 
shoulder. One popped loudly in protest. Even with his attempt at a smile, 
Shyia could see her young charge's stiffness. She stepped behind him, and set 
her older paws to work on the angry muscles in his frail shoulders and arms. 
 
   "I see.." She begin gently, "..a day wherein this body of yours will bend 
iron as the wind snaps reeds, and crush stone as if it were naught but glass." 
She said. 
 
   She could not see his smile from behind, but she could feel the confidence 
that her words had given him. 
 
   "Come..I have great hunger, Karakami!" the youth said. 
 
   The elder Skiltaire shared the same empty feeling. Thoughts of food had 
been driven from their minds by their labors. Now they returned, not to be 
ignored. 
 
   The young Skiltaire kippered away, prancing litely across the pit and up 
the first trio of stone stairs. "Race you home, Karakami!!" he said with a 
burst of youthful enthusiasm!! 
 
   His spirit touched something in the young girl, and Shyia found herself 
racing from where she stood and barrelling up the stairs only a few paces 
behind him as they cleared the quarry and dashed for home!!! 
 
   Tomorrow would be arduous enough for the young male, but as they ate bowl 
after bowl of stew that nite around the roaring Pridefire, Shyia wondered to 
herself if She could match his vigor and will in the days ahead! 
 
   The change of seasons was soon upon the land, and with it came all manner 
of wonders great and small. Their evenings spent together working and learning 
in the quarry began to yield results beyond both of their shared hopes! 
 
   The clever female had used stones and bracing timbers stacked inside the 
pit to build a network of radial plankways that allowed both of them to 
transform the quarry into training and playground at once. Shyia lay awake 
many nites, scratching the designs that poured from her head onto the ruff 
native paper.  
 
   While He kept the Traditions with Master Han and his peers, Shyia would 
give up her tasks for the day with K'a'lia's blessings, and race to the pit to 
continue her plans. 
 
   To Him, they seemed like the most evil of tortures! 
 
   She would bid him go to the top of the pit, not using the stairs at all, 
but racing at a dead run along planks barely wider than his paws, and some 
split so they were narrower yet! Scarcely would his heart settle when she 
would task him to bring water to her as she stood less than a foot from the 
cool, clear rainbow pool in the corner of the pit! 
 
   He came to despise the waterlogged, warped and leaky bucket weighted with 
stones that he would have to cast down from the top of the platform and into 
the water. Shyia has woven an awful, coarse rope from the long, glascine hairs 
of a Kalidi's tail, and hauling the stone filled water bucket up from the 
water to the top of the platform as Shyia stood at his side seemed to be agony 
beyond measure! His paws ached constantly with a burning fire that came with 
the rope as he hauled the bucket tens of metres to the top!! It always became 
a terrible race with the leaky bucket, for Shyia had set down a rule that said 
if the bucket reached the top platform empty, he would have to repeat the work 
until she drank her fill, giving him not a drop at all!  
 
   But the thing he hated with the deepest colours was the vest of stones! 
 
   At first, he had loved the tight, fur-close vest of many dozens of pockets. 
At first, he would put many things into it, and never take it off at all, 
except as the day ended and to bathe. But then, his Karakami's wonderful gift 
began to change. Each sunrise as he put it on, he noticed that it seemed to 
weigh more than the nite before! He would count his pockets and find more and 
more of them sewn tightly shut each morning. He would break the threads at 
peril of Shyia's displeasure and found his wonderful pockets filled at first 
with stones and then with thick metal scale weights sewn between the layers of 
material. In less than one moon, this wonderful gift had become the bane of 
his being.  
 
   Suddenly, he was forbidden on pain of punishment to remove it except to 
bathe! He had hoped to leave it behind when the daylite came, racing off to 
forget his curse as long as he with Master Han. But the elder Skiltaire had 
been too clever! She asked K'a'lia to praise the way his vest looked. His 
Mother, who had helped make it, suggested that he wear it to show Master Han 
and his peers! 
 
   He could not refuse, and returned even sorrier that evening, having heard 
his first teacher Praise both the way he looked, and the way he had come to 
move while wearing it!! His peers made him the object of scorn and ridicule 
while away from their Teacher, but the Senior Trainer knew the true and 
unspoken purpose of the unique garment and the admired the results that it's 
wearer could not yet feel, even after a new season had come and gone! Shyia 
gave up scores of sleepless nites, sewing on and into the jacket, measuring 
it's mass by the number of stones or weights the fabric hid in its layers. 
After three full moons, the vest weighed as much as the young male who wore 
it, tho he could not tell this was so! 
 
   There were other irksome tasks, all seeming menial and insignificant in the 
face of what He and Shyia had done those first few wonderful days that now 
seemed like bygone years. 
 
   Some days they would quit the quarry and instead Shyia would volunteer both 
of them to harvests the new crops of grain and fruits. Shyia would bid him go 
to the Kuman fields, where the low, scraggly shrubs hung heavy with a half 
buried crop of small brown nuts. Not content to leave him to the laborious 
work of his own design, she would lord over him, insisting that each of the 
hundreds of nuts on each shrub be gathered in a certain manner. 
 
   The delicate Nut meat his People prized was surrounded by a shell nearly as 
hard as the quarry stones he had left behind! Shyia would stand close beside 
him, insisting that he pick one nut at a time instead of stripping whole 
branches with an easy combing motion like the others who worked beside him! 
 
   Day after hot day he was humiliated as she insisted that contrary to 
custom, each nut he picked ought to be shelled before being dropped into his 
huge basket! This folly was not enough! As the shelling roller sat forgotten 
long after the other pickers had gone on, Shyia had insisted that he pick the 
nuts and shell them first in alternate pairs, one in each paw picking, the 
other shelling. Then just as his leaden paws and forelimbs became used to this 
endless monotony, she again demanded change! 
 
   She insisted that he learn to pick and shell the Kuman nuts one in each 
paw, and in a single movement. The elder female was fair, showing him that it 
could be done by taking the narrow end of the curved nut between two digits 
and squeezing hard enough to break off the brittle end of the shells. Then she 
rolled the nut over in her paws slowing down her adept movement so that he 
could follow and learn to art of striping the now broken shell away from the 
ivory white nut meat, leaving it whole, and held gently in her digits, as if 
it were the unbroken yoke of an egg! 
 
   Shyia made it seem so natural and fluid that anger nearly overtook him as 
he crushed the first dozen nets he picked into a mangled mass of broken shells 
and shattered nuts! Only his wish to be done and out of this folly kept him 
from wasting time on anger. Rather, he focused himself on the tedious task and 
within a half an hour was working so well and fast that the other growers and 
pickers returned to the field to watch him work.! With almost super mustiline 
speed and aplomb, they worked side by side racing each other from row to row, 
as the other pickers struggled to keep a pace!! 
 
   Another time would find both working at the mill. Shyia bade him carry in 
the rude sackfuls of threshed grain, tear them open with bare paws, and dump 
the grain down a long chute that poured out beneath the crank turned 
millstone!  
 
   He began to resent the fact that while he labored to a hard pant, she would 
do nothing to help him. He could see her standing to one side, looking at him 
intently, guiding his labor with an occasional word, but saying little and 
doing even less as he performed each of the separate milling tasks alone, one 
after the other in the time honored Way. Only once the flour spilled down the 
far rim of the stone did Shyia move to scoop it into a bag! Nite after nite 
found the Male laboring alone in the mill as she only watched. As the seasons 
turned again, he could feel himself seething with rebellion at the aimless, 
monotonous, and unending Labor that she bade him do all thru the nites, and 
even thru the nites of the New Moon!!! 
 
   He worked so hard that he looked forward to the long days with Master Han 
and his peers. Despite the curse of his vest which he had worn thru all the 
humiliations, laughter and back straining labor. The images his peers cast 
upon him of the seemingly aimless beast of burden slowly began to overflow him 
with anger! 
 
   One summer nite, as the time of testing and tasking drew near, Shyia sent 
to him from their now familiar stone cavern, bidding him go again to the mill.  
 
   Both His mother and Shyia were shocked when he absolutely refused to go!! 
 
   As she raced homeward across what had now become a well worn path in the 
dust, Shyia's heart soared! The night for which she had waited nearly a year 
had come!! 
 
   When she arrived, she crept up on the cave, hearing as well as feeling the 
full flow of the fiery young male's temper! Dishes and utensils issued from 
the cave with frightening speed and frequency, most of them to shatter in the 
rocks outside the cave. The elder Skiltaire paused for a long moment, allowing 
herself to admire the object of her long days of work! It took another long 
moment for her to dampen the wild enthusiasm that she felt. If her plans were 
to take hold upon her cousin, she would have to play the role of stern Teacher 
one last time.. 
 
   She seemed to appear out of nowhere at the mouth of the Cave. She caught 
the trio of dishes flying thru the air on a beam of her own telekinetic 
energy, halting their flight in mid-air. 
 
   "THAT'S ENOUGH!!" young Shyia roared at the top of her voice as the dishes 
settled gently back onto the now otherwise empty shelf. "YOU!!" She screeched, 
"WILL COME WITH ME..NOW!!!" 
 
   "No..!" he replied, an icy calm chill in his mind, voice and attitude, "I 
will not!" He punctuated his defiance by sweeping the last three dishes off of 
the shelf with a swipe of his paw! They shattered to dust on the floor, as he 
looked on in contempt, then he looked back at the female, his eyes set for a 
fight! 
 
   Shyia marshalled all her emotions to stifle the mixed urge to both harm and 
embrace him! 
 
   You will come..." said Shyia laboring to bring the same tone to her voice, 
"Or I shall carry you!" she snapped. 
 
   "You have embarrassed me enough!" he blurted out in rage. "I shall STAY 
HERE!!" 
 
   Shyia took two resolute steps toward him. His reaction was immediate and 
instinctual. Beneath the vest, Shyia saw the young Skiltaire's body tense. It 
was such a grand sight, even half hidden by the material that Shyia nearly 
forgot that she might have to carry out her own made up threat! 
 
   "Very well.." Shyia said slowly, changing tactics and allowing her own 
emotions to cool. "Here you may stay for good and all, for no more do I have 
care for you!!" Shyia's surprising words were delivered on an emotional 
harangue so deep and well acted, that across the Cave, Shyia could see 
K'a'lia's eyes lite with fear! 
 
   Shyia turned and stormed out of the Cave on a fit of mock temper as real as 
the young male's had been. Once outside, she turned sharp and quick, pressing 
herself close to the rocks near the cave entrance. There, she turned off her 
mixed emotions, turned on her ears and listened intently!!! 
 
   The voice she heard was an unexpected one. 
 
   "My Son.." K'a'lia pleaded, "It is I, Your Birth Mother who asked her 
second son to do this. If Not for yourself, and not for your adoring Karakami 
who loves you more, perhaps than even I, then I beg of you. This last nite 
before the Testing, I beg you to follow what Shyia bids you to do." 
 
   "She has made me a laughing stock! She has brought me scorn and ridicule. 
Have you heard what they whisper about the second son of Tal? She brings us 
shame!" The combative child answered back. 
 
   His mother met anger with gentleness when she spoke. "She brings you love 
beyond measure, gifts beyond price of barter, and to Tal's family she brings 
Honor." K'a'lia said quietly. 
 
   Outside, in her hiding place, young Shyia's muzzle hung open! 
 
   "Now.." She began, calling on her own sense of resolution, "In your 
father's name, I bid you go." 
 
   He was bound to obey, and both knew it. If Tal discovered that his word was 
broken in his absence, his retribution would shake all of Kurusha! 
 
   VERY WELL!! He sent full of fight. "For my Father's Honor, and ONLY THIS 
Shall I go!" He spoke switching to words because the blackness of his thoughts 
might kill him. 
 
   Standing outside, she saw his shadow moving toward the mouth of the cave! 
She raced away quickly, choosing a shorter path to their rocky lair. She had 
work to do, for if she had planned and done well, tonite her small cousin 
would be born a second time!! 
 
   Outside of his home and his mother's sight, he let his outrage flow into an 
explosion of motion! Ignoring the path that he had helped to create, he tore 
out over the ground at a run so fast it nearly stole his breath away! Only his 
anger held him together as he flashed toward the quarry with all the untamed 
ferocity of a lightning bolt! His anger was such that he ignored the stairs 
and the planks, vaulting headlong down into the pit!! 
 
   Shyia gasped, openly fearing for him for the very first time in their 
shared life! Now, in one instant, his new and hidden strength would either 
cause his death or cause him to save his life. Frozen in a moment of life 
stopping horror, she could not move breath or speak. She could only watch and 
hope.. 
 
   Launched into the abyss, he was transformed in mid-flight into a wild, 
snarling mass of pure Savage. Instinct had won him over, and in one moment, he 
gave up everything to the complete and utter fearlessness that was his 
heritage! 
 
   Shyia saw him arch his body, changing his speed and angle of descent as he 
sailed downward. He rebounded a moment later, springing off of one of the 
running planks she had set for him. It bowed but didn't break, and he used its 
motion together with his own to make a short but powerful leap to the stone 
floor! He landed upright and in a fighting stance, as if the massive vest he 
wore weighed no more than his own coat!  
 
   The sight of the splendid young Savage in a fit of fine temper filled her 
heart with joy! At long last, he let go all the months of frustration, and had 
given himself the strength of spirit and body to vent it with! 
 
   He looked up at the unstable network of planks and platforms wedged between 
the rocky walls. With a long, throaty snarl he remembered the hours and days 
of pointless pain he had suffered. He let his anger overflow into violent 
action! 
 
   A paw strike here, and a sharp bite there as he lashed out and moved thru 
the base of his torment. From a vantage point on the rocks above, Shyia 
watched in fascination as the powerful young Skiltaire snapped plank after 
plank as if they were used torches! He ripped up supports as thick around as 
he was with his bare paws, laid them across his back, and pulled forward 
sharply, splintering them as if they were tree bark instead of hard wood! Each 
of them met demolition at his paws easier than the one before it, and despite 
the tumbling cascade of wood from the upset platforms above, his anger and 
strength combined, until after five minutes of unchecked, unparalleled rage 
not a single plank or support or piece of plank wood longer than his body 
remained unbroken!! 
 
   Shyia watched silently from above and recalled Master Han's words about him 
being feared, rather than fearing others! As she watched her cousin below, 
snapping the last of the timbers to wood chips with stomps and beautifully 
deadly flying kicks, Shyia knew that the training master had well spoken. 
 
   "What have I set loose?" Shyia wondered aloud to herself.  
 
   Now, she would try to find out. As she moved from shadow to light so he 
could see her, Shyia found herself hoping she would escape uninjured!! 
 
   "Do you seek after me?" Shyia asked from her perch high in the rocks. 
 
   He looked up at her with a vicious snarl, and suddenly let drop the 
fragments of plank that he had been crumpling like paper between his black 
paws. Now, he had other meat..!! 

   He set her in an icy cold predatory stair. As he stalked toward her across 
the stone quarry, his eyes never leaving her, young Shyia felt an icy finger 
of fear lance thru her backbone! He truly had been transformed, and now his 
uncontrolled strength made her afraid! 
 
   She crushed it out using her own iron will, and began the steep descent 
that would allow her to intercept him. They would meet on the edge of the 
floor near where they had wrestled the first day. The victory that she had to 
win this time would be much harder, and she feared, more painful to both of 
them. 
 
   Shyia came off of the rocks and onto the smooth stone floor while he was 
still twenty paces away. The Savage Male's leap could have covered twice that 
distance if he had realized his own strength, and Shyia would have been driven 
into the stone like that fang chisel she had gifted him. Rather, his huge 
broad jump set him muzzle to muzzle with her only a moment later! Instantly, 
he re-balanced, pulling his forepaw all the way back to deal her a crushing 
blow! 
 
   "WAIT!!" Shyia said sharply, a plea in her voice.. 
 
   For an instant, he held his anger. "WHY??" He snarled loudly. "So that you 
can humiliate me with more of your tricks?" 
 
   "No.." Shyia returned evenly. "You wish battle. It is well. If what I will 
show you now is not worth all of the Labor I have bid you do, then I grant you 
leave to slay me, for nothing I have ever done shall mean so much and be 
understood so little."  
 
   The unexpected supplication salved his towering anger with a dose of 
reality. As angry as he was, and as much as he wanted to fight, he didn't 
expect the remedy for his hurt to be found in killing! Shyia walked away from 
him without a word, toward the corner of the quarry that held the waterfall 
and pool. Without being told, he followed her after a step or two. 
 
   She stopped by the pool, the sound of the endless cascade of water filling 
the small grotto with muted thunder and the soothing sound of trickling water. 
Now, she reached out, not to grapple with him, but to draw him close so she 
could speak into his ear and be heard above the natural din. 
 
   She looked him up and down once, secretly wanting to remember the last time 
she might see the frail, weak youngster who had been in her heart for so long. 
Now, she could help him blossom and grow even greater, and the first step was 
to shed the old. 
 
   "Very well.." She began. "You say that you dislike the vest." She repeated. 
 
   Shyia reached down and one at a time, undid the hook like fasteners that 
bound him into the fur tight garment. To her inward satisfaction, she noticed 
that the topmost clasp, the one across his now thick chest resisted most 
stubbornly of all! As the last of the hooks gave way, Shyia slipped around 
behind him and helped him peel off the vest that had been like a second skin 
for nearly a year. She had nearly forgotten that the layered mass of weights 
now weighed as much as a pair of fully grown adults, and she staggered a step 
as she held it and walked around in front of him again, laying the vest in his 
strong black paws. 
 
   "Cast it away, then!!" She commanded him, indicating the deep end of the 
pool with a glance. 
 
   He looked at her wearily. She confirmed her statement with a silent nod. 
 
   Shyia saw him smile with delight as he took the fabric and metal vest and 
swung it around his head in a fast circle! 
 
   Shyia watched his new body answering the task and found that she could not 
look away! 
 
   The vest sailed out in a high arc that swept it almost to the far side of 
the pool. It struck the crystal clear water and sank out of sight in a cloud 
of bubbles! 
 
   He let out a brief but chilling growl of satisfaction! 
 
   Now that he had unveiled himself, Shyia could use the mirror like water's 
rippling reflection to allow him to see himself! She spoke to him quietly 
again as both walked near the edge of the pool. 
 
   "Remember I once bid you tell me what you saw in yourself as we looked upon 
these waters? Shyia asked in quiet seriousness. 
 
   "I remember.." he answered shortly, not all of his anger assuaged. 
 
   Shyia moved around directly into his vision for a moment, and then stood 
aside with a sweep, so his reflected image could be seen in the clear water. 
 
   "Now..", she said as she moved, allowing him to see himself without the 
vest for the first time, "Tell me if I have not kept our pact!" 
 
   His anger vanished in a heartbeat, taken away and wiped out by the shock 
that greeted his eyes! 
 
   It was the same light blue and white chest and under fur, but its pattern 
had changed! It was now finely demarcated by perfectly symmetrical sheets of 
muscle that rippled gently beneath the fur as he breathed! He moved a 
disbelieving paw to touch his middle and make sure it was real, but froze in 
mid-movement when he saw his well muscled forelimb flex with a strength he had 
never felt before! Something inside him made him turn his paws over slowly in 
front of his amazed muzzle. The frail paws that had spent hours raw and sore 
at the pads had become perfectly matched black vices that could pulverize 
stone without a chisel, and yet could move deftly enough to make the most 
delicate tasks seem undemanding! As he stood in open muzzled wonder at the 
stranger who was himself, Shyia slipped behind him again, first taking his 
paws and clasping them with her own, holding them above his head, and then 
rising slightly on her hind feet as she stretched out the full length of his 
shorter but vastly stronger body for him to see! 
 
   Every centimeter of him seemed different, not in a strange or alien manner, 
but in a warm familiar one. His short legs had become large and heavy with 
tapered muscles that allowed him to run at frightening speeds with the vest 
on! When he considered what he might do with two thirds less weight and the 
same strength, he was glad his Karakami was their to hold him up as his head 
spun and his mind reeled. 
 
   Karakami Shyia!! His mind crashed to a halt when he recalled what he had 
almost done! 
 
   In a single moment, he was mortified, terrified, boundlessly sorry, and 
endlessly overjoyed, all in one spirit! She let go his paws as he spun around 
quickly, clamped his powerful forelimbs around her, picked her up as if she 
weighed only a breath, and spun her around in mid air! 
 
"WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOA!!!!!!! Shyia howled as vertigo set in, clouding her 
senses for the moment to the fact that as he put her down once more, the 
littlest Skiltaire was crying like a baby! 
 
   Instantly, he was nuzzled close into her as he had done so often before! In 
an instant the wild Savage was gone, replaced by the cousin that she knew and 
loved so well!! When he spoke his words went directly from his soul into her 
heart. 
 
"Oh..my sweet, loving, wonderful Karakami..I'm so sorry...Can you forgive a 
young fool?" he begged, weeping unashamedly as he pleaded with her. 
 
   Shyia reached down and stroked him gently between his antennae, a gentle 
touch, born of the now bonded love and trust the two had grown to share 
together! 
 
   There is nothing to forgive, my Magnificent Rock.." Shyia said in gentle 
and forgiving consolation. "You have growing within and without. Your goal has 
been met. Now, you are truly as strong outside..." 
 
   "..As I am within..." He finished, still swallowing tears. Shyia lowered 
her head to rest upon his thickly stacked shoulder, and she too broke into 
tears of joy and relief!! 
 
   "Wait..I want you to have something.." Shyia said. She smoothed his ruffled 
coat gently ,turned and dashed away into the rocks again. 
 
   Shyia was back in a trice, and as she came down the steep ledge, she had a 
familiar hide thong slung across the chest! He smiled watching Shyia's 
unsteady gait, and knew what she carried!! 
 
   She came down and stood before him for a moment before sliding the five 
stone hammer off of her shoulder. She bowed deeply, eyes down, and with all 
her strength, held the ancient tool out to the young paws that had grown into 
the hammer at last! 
 
   He griped it behind the head, and at the end of the handle, braced himself 
for its weight, and pulled hard and fast! 
 
   The hammer seemed to fly up from her paws as if thrown into the air! He 
knew its mass well, but this time as he regained his balance, the hammer did 
not guide him, but he weald it, as if it scarcely had any weight at all!! 
 
   Shyia would remember the look of complete triumph that crossed his young 
muzzle at that moment! He switched his grip quickly, holding the hammer aloft 
just behind the head with one paw, and embracing Shyia easily with the other!! 
 
   "Churp!" Said both Skiltaire together, sharing the same emotions but for 
different reasons!! 
 
   Suddenly, amid their shared adulation, Shyia saw the expression on his 
muzzle change from a smile to a look of urgency and mission! He put his hammer 
down, gently and reverently leaning it head down against a rock, and put all 
of his new strength into a leaping spring into the air that ended in a dead 
run toward the pool! 
 
   For a moment Shyia was amazed by his prowess, and puzzled by his purpose, 
until she thought once more about what had happened! Then she had a wonderful 
thought, one that caused her to dash along behind him as fast as she could 
run!! 
 
   Shyia was behind him by a half a dozen strides when she saw him plunge 
headlong into the pool without a break in his stride! She skidded to the edge 
of the water, frantic with worry and fraught with panic, knowing full well 
that she had never taught him to swim!! 
 
   Beneath the water, in the grotto cast in a bluish lite, he barely noticed 
the passage between medium. His young heart was too set on his desperate 
search to notice his plunge deeper and deeper into the pool! 
 
   On the surface, Shyia watched a tiny trickle of bubbles set apart from the 
main spray of the waterfall. In the crystal water, she could spy a diminishing 
dark shape, trailed by the bubbles which had to drift farther to rise to the 
surface. He was headed for the turbulent white water directly beneath the 
fall!! 
 
   Under the water, he felt his movements and their quality change. He had 
seen his Mother swim before and tried to copy her movements as he remembered 
them. His motion became easier as he added a roll to his forward strokes 
allowing the rest of his lean strong frame to relax while his tail helped his 
move from side to side! His ears felt funny, and a small kernel of what felt 
like fire had begun to burn inside his chest. Again, he tried to relax, 
allowing his arms and legs to help him go deeper. Soon, the bottom of the pool 
was within a paw's touch! Urgently he began to look around, exciting himself 
to twist and turn as he hoped to spot what he so desperately wanted! 
 
   But hovering near the bottom, he could see nothing but the slightly shining 
stones, polished by the passage of ages of water, between and over them. Ahead 
of him lay a thick white curtain of thrashing water. He could feel its 
turbulence many lengths away. He could not venture within.. 
 
   Suddenly his ears seemed to break! They popped and began to ring, and then 
to scream at him in high pitched sounds that seemed like a thousand Shalmette 
Birds! He saw his view of the bottom split in two, and then divide again as 
that fire in his chest flamed up and roared thru him out of control!  
 
   Instinct overtook him, and as something deep within him drove him back 
towards the air above, he cursed himself bitterly!! 
 
   As he longed to breath again, he found that going up was easier. Under 
water his new found strength found an ally in buoyancy, and the slightest pull 
of his brawny forelimbs shot him toward the surface like a stone launched from 
a sling! 
 
   Something he could fight no longer made him exhale just below the surface! 
That stopped the pain, but he had to struggle to crush out the natural rhythm 
to inhale for one more priceless second.. 
 
   On the surface, Shyia saw the explosion of bubbles from the rising dark 
shape that shot toward the surface. Panic seized her and she too leapt 
headlong into the pool! She gulped in and exhaled two quick deep breathes, 
before plunging into the water and lancing downward with all the strength in 
her soul! 
 
   As they met under water, she wrapped her forelimbs around him and literally 
threw him at the surface of the pool!  
 
   He bolted up from the depths, and sailed into the sweet air, gulping it 
down along with stray droplets of water! He coughed slightly, but never gasped 
as he bobbed to the surface a few lengths from the falls. Instantly, he looked 
around for Shyia, who was still nowhere to be seen!! 
 
   Just as he squared himself for another plunge beneath the clear water, 
Shyia bobbed to the surface behind him and to the left! He rolled over easily 
and made a plunge for her! Not the desperate grip of a drowning victim, but 
the soft, gentle hug born out of concern and gratitude. Shyia retained his 
embrace and paddled them both toward the lip of pool with a free paw! 
 
   As she helped him climb out, Shyia noticed the look of deep sadness on his 
muzzle. 
 
   What ever is wrong, my fine young Rock? She sent, concerned for his well 
being. 
 
   You gave me a wonderful gift..he sent back sadly, And I cast it away! It is 
gone forever! 
 
   Shyia looked at him with eyes full of compassion and understanding. No..it 
is not gone! She sent back to him. It is here still. The strength of the 
stones you now wear INSIDE YOU. They will never disappear! Just as I shall 
never stop loving you with all that I am, My Magnificent Rock. Shyia hugged 
him close as both walked across the quarry, up the ancient steps, and over the 
hills toward home. 
 
   The familiar journey back to the cave gave his fur time to dry, and his 
temper time to dissipate. They raced over the ground stride for stride for a 
time, but he was free of the vest and the extra strength it had molded into 
him began to tell as the pair raced along. He lead her at first by a muzzle, 
and then drew deeper within himself to test his new body. He pulled away with 
each fluid stride, by a head, and then by half of his length, and then by two 
full strides! Yet, he had scarcely tasked himself at all!! 
 
   I wish to run, Karakami!! He sent quickly before rocketing ahead of her as 
if she were frozen in space! This time, he tried to run, tried to push too 
hard, trying to find some point where this dream body of his would leave him 
behind! He ran as if all his life was in every stride, wondering where the end 
or the beginning of himself might be! He felt something strange overtake him 
inside as fast as he could challenge himself to move! Each stride seemed to 
sublime into the next, as if this new body of his had been freed of it's 
prison and opened itself up wide to celebrate! Far, far behind him now, Shyia 
could feel the energy of sheer joy overflow his thoughts. As he tasked himself 
harder in body, Shyia knew that the young Skiltaire was running toward that 
moment when the body would no longer contain the spirit within! 
 
   In the days to come, Shyia knew better than most that he would need the 
strength of himself as well as his body. 
 
   A brace of days would pass now, calm and still. After many months of 
teaching and training, the time of testing drew near. The young Astreli had 
endured the trials set before them purposefully meant to make the disciplined, 
confident and self-reliant. All of his peers had grown in body and spirit, but 
thanks to Shyia's faith in him, where his peers had doubled, the rugged young 
male had redoubled! 
 
   If Shyia lived thru four millennia, she would never forget the look of 
complete and utter amazement and relief that swept across K'a'lia's muzzle 
when first her son and then his Karakami dashed into the cave. K'a'lia started 
to greet her own son as a stranger until scent convinced her that her own son 
stood before her! But it took Shyia's word and a nite long explanation for 
K'a'lia to begin to understand the wonder that Shyia had brought to touch her 
smallest son! 
 
   To a dotting mother, that seemed the most wondrous point of all. To call 
the Splendid male who stood before her small was as to call the Kamiyama a 
mound of dirt! She took him in her forepaws and hugged him until her limbs 
ached, able to do so for the first time in her life without fear of injury to 
his frail body! 
 
   As they ate with the morning sun, K'a'lia stared at him endlessly. His body 
and spirit had so changed that there seemed to be a wonderfully familiar 
stranger sitting with them around the stone table. His ever movement was 
flowing and graceful, filled with the strength that came with self discovery, 
where before his slightest movements seemed to be timid and clumsy! When she 
asked for the water vessel, it seemed for a moment like he would rise and move 
the slab to meet her, rather than passing the crockery jar! 
 
   After the meal was done, Tradition said that the Skiltaire had earned the 
right of rest for the ordeal to follow the next sun. Instead, Shyia found the 
headstrong young male filled to overflowing with an infectious energy and 
curiosity about the Testing and Tasking. 
 
   Since female custom was set apart from male by the Traditions, Shyia and 
K'a'lia did their best to relate the mystic Traditions and rituals that went 
with the time. When he felt Shyia tell him the Khan would be watching the 
Trails, his heart leapt into his throat! He wished his father was home, 
because he knew Shen Dai Khan well! They had hunted together on the Kamiyama 
when both had come of age. The young Skiltaire never tired of asking about the 
nature of the Huge Cat who was the elected leader of the Pride of Astrel and 
all of Kurusha. One nite before the Pridefire, he remembered the promise that 
his ear weary father had made a chattering child. That one day, perhaps upon 
the days of testing and tasking, he would present his youngest son to the Khan 
and the Dashing young Prince only a few years older than he. 
 
   No one had known until he spoke of it that the young Skiltaire had secretly 
lived for that day and had made it his fondest hope! 
 
   Shyia and K'a'lia exchanged glances. 
 
   Even the females knew the Tradition, for theirs was not far different. 
Javelin throwing, tests of strength and skill such as wrestling, races, 
climbing contests and matches of Komrtai for the older young and the adults! 
 
   Their words thrilled and delighted him. He felt his spirit fill with the 
fire that came with anticipation. 
 
   For K'a'lia and Shyia, the lean, almost predatory look in the young male's 
eyes had a double meaning. Both realized that he had yet to know the full 
scope of the strength Shyia had brought out of him. The adult and the elder 
youth knew beyond doubt that the days ahead would bring him. Watching him 
prepare mentally for the Tasking, Shyia came to know that there might be 
entire Scrolls re-copied because of what he might be able to do, if his mind 
led his body into the challenge! 
 
   They lay down together that nite, Shyia being the last to give in to nature 
and drift into a fitful sleep, filled with excited visions of the events that 
would be only one sunrise away when she woke! 
 
   He was awake a few moments later, it seemed, his excited mind radiating 
like a beacon! Shyia was annoyed for a moment, but then saw the dawn light 
streaming into the cave! Her slumber had come and gone, but it seemed her mind 
had never been still! His raw, radiant energy seized the girl in an infectious 
moment, and her lassitude was swept away like snow on the winter wind! His 
bright mind was as refreshing to her as the white season's breezes! Pulled 
from her sleeping place, he lifted her bodily in a hug so gentle as to make 
the whole of her coat stand on end, and so powerful as to make her ribs ache 
gently! Responding with an embrace of her own, she tried to wrap her forelimbs 
around his deep chest. Shyia succeeded, but her paw digits would barely touch, 
and locking both paws behind his back became impossible a moment later, as he 
stretched gently and drew a deep breath, breaking her tenuous hold around his 
middle in spite of her own stout bodied hug. The simplicity of the awesome 
display of strength made Shyia tingle as she thought about what his mocking 
peers would discover on the day of Tasking! 
 
   Rather than race for the quarry, after the meal, Shyia led him out of the 
cave a short distance, and into a thick stand of trees. There, he watched her 
as she walked slowly from tree to tree, gauging the thickness of each branch 
upon every tree with a practiced wisdom that went far beyond her dozen 
summers. The third tree in the grove was a fine young oak that bore exactly 
the limb that suited her purposes. She looked up at it and smiled, then cast 
the same glance in his direction, as if sizing the two against one another. 
After a moment, she spoke. 
 
   "That bough we may claim without harm to the parent tree." She said. "Fetch 
it to me, and I shall show you one of the tests you shall face." Shyia 
explained casually as she turned and walked back toward the open ground. 
 
   Nervously, the young male looked about him. "Can you fetch me a blade, 
Karakami?" he asked, uncertain of her intentions. 
 
   "You have no need of another blade!" Shyia answered without looking back. 
"You are a blade. Snap it off and bring it yonder to me." 
 
   He looked up in disbelief! The bough that she selected was as thick as his 
forelimb, and twice his body length! 
 
   If there was one thing he had learned, it was not to question her wants. 
Obediently, he began climbing the oak, hoping to gain the main limb of the 
tree where the shorter one joined it. K'a'lia was an arboreal, and climbing 
was a skill the young male had gained in spite of his frailty. 
 
   Carefully, he gathered himself up, ready to call upon all his energy to 
make the first leap, and then sighted a lower branch as a target, he allowed 
instinct to guide him.. 
 
   Instantly, it was as if something had exploded beneath him the very moment 
of his leap! He had not leapt, it seemed, but had been hurled by some behemoth 
not toward the branch he wished, but toward the thin new branches at the top 
of the venerable tree! He almost wished to cry out in fear, but as he soared 
upward, the view over the treetops swept away his fear and his voice at the 
same moment!! 
 
   Shyia had just turned to look, and saw the youth rocket skyward on leg 
muscles as hard as the quarry stones, and as fluid and strong as the 
waterfall! She too had a sudden impulse to cry out, but the sheer beauty of 
his motion and it's results took her breath from her with an explosive wheeze! 
 
   A moment later there was a rustle in the timbers and a flurry of fallen 
leaves told Shyia the young Skiltaire turned mustelid missile had reached the 
treetop! But which tree was now the question! 
 
   She looked aloft, trying to anticipate his line of leap. As she stretched 
her body and vision, she spied a light form clinging tenaciously to the top of 
a ceder tree ten metres distant and half again as high as the tree she had 
selected! 
 
   She smiled broadly as she broke into a quick trot that brought her to the 
base of the tree in only a moment. Shyia stood up using the truck of the tree 
for support as she craned her sleek neck to see him! 
 
   He looked down at her, his muzzle a mixed expression of shock and amazement 
, while all the while trying to appear unflappable! Shyia swallowed hard to 
kill her laughter, cleared her thoughts, and then spoke to his mind, for he 
was well out of hearing range! 
 
   Ah, so you would prefer maple for a javelin..It is well. Fetch that limb 
and come along with me. I have need of a blade. 
 
   With that, Shyia walked away toward the cave, leaving the perplexed young 
Skiltaire to try to snap off the limb he clutched, and then climb with it down 
the tree, more then four times higher than any he had ever seen! As he puzzled 
over his predicament,the noun that his Karakami had used hit home!! 
 
   "Javelin...Javelin!!??!! He whispered softly and then shouted as it true 
meaning dawned on him! He was so excited so quickly that snapping off the 
branch with a single quick paw motion was as simple as the single jump he made 
from the larger limb to the ground as he dashed after her!! 
 
   By the time he caught up with her, Shyia was coming out of the cave with 
one of his Father's knives. Silently she took the limb from him and bade him 
stand and watch as she worked. Clipping all the branches and buds from the 
main limb was the bulk of the work. They fell away, and she set about rolling 
the blade in her paws as she moved, lending a unique shape to the carved 
wooden staff. He thought for a moment that her work had fallen to confusion, 
because the transformed branch looked as though it might have a point at both 
ends! Finally, she carefully scraped away the last fragments of bark, planing 
the length of the stick carefully, and taking it in her paws to gauge it's 
weight and balance. When her labor was done, she held at her side an 
unpolished but accurate copy of the Javelin he would have to throw tomorrow! 
 
   As she extended it to him lengthwise, and his black paws wrapped around it, 
there was an almost childlike expression of wonder on his muzzle! 
 
   "Mark what I show you well..." She said, taking back his prize gently. "For 
you shall have to do the like tomorrow." 
 
   "Why does a female know so well the javelin, Karakami Shyia?" he asked 
almost impertinently. 
 
   She reached over and stroked his head between the antennae. " I have no 
brothers, but my father has made generations of such as these!" She answered 
just a bit smugly! 
 
   "All the other things in the Games, do you know by reason of what you have 
done" Shyia explained. "But the Javelin's flight is a unique skill, tried as 
much to test the spirit as to task the body's strength." 
 
   He nodded, this time understanding what she meant full well! 
 
   They walked out of the stand of trees a short distance, and she handed the 
javelin back to him. 
 
   "Throw it" She instructed simply. 
 
   This time, he knew better. He remembered seeing his father do this, so he 
had learned the Tradition that accompanied it early and well. 
 
   "Will you teach me how to throw with the spirit?" he asked casually. 
 
   Shyia looked at him, a slight hint of surprise playing across her muzzle. 
"That is what I intend." she said in return. 
 
   She took him under her paws like a doll, showing him movement by movement 
what the ancient standing form would feel like. His lean, thickly muscled form 
was a joy to touch, and even at rest the young Skiltaire's body seemed to 
overflow with ferocious energy, seething just below the surface,and now poised 
to erupt! 
 
   When he was positioned at last, Shyia walked around him slowly, correcting 
his form here and there with a gentle touch. She spoke as she worked, so no 
time would be lost. 
 
   "In this you have been given no lessons, not even at the paws of Master 
Han." She began, correcting the way that he held the javelin at the ready on 
his shoulder. "This is done so that the young may try to master their spirit 
for the first time, doing something in which they have no skill." She 
explained, as she paused to take him around the waist and re-balance his 
stance. 
 
   "Then is your teaching proper, Karakami Shyia?" He asked gently. 
 
   "You know the Tradition. Your family may teach you anything that you have 
will to learn. If you choose not to learn now, I shall cease." 
 
   "No.." he answered quickly. "Go on, Please, Karakami Shyia." 
 
   "It is not unfair, my young rock. Knowledge is also a form of strength. The 
testing and tasking us to measure you against what you are within. By learning 
all that you elect to know, you are made stronger. If others choose not to 
learn because they feel they have learned enough, then this is their 
weakness." Shyia explained patiently. She reached up and finished the tip of 
the javelin with one final knife stoke. 
 
   Now, she sent, spring into a run, uncoil your body, and hurl the javelin 
without stopping and in one motion." she instructed, standing back a step. 
 
   He nodded, and considered her instructions for a moment, allowing his mind 
and body to synchronize, and then act. His spring was a more controlled 
version of the one that had catapulted him to the top of the tree. As Shyia's 
critical eye watched his form, she smiled. He was learning, and quickly! 
 
   He raced along a short distance, feeling the weight of the javelin on his 
shoulder, and drawing it back as he dashed forward in a smooth two-legged run. 
There came to him a moment in his forward momentum that told him the time was 
right. Stopping only slightly, he called all the strength in his forelimbs and 
paws together in the spear, and launched it into the clear sky in a sweeping 
arc! 
 
   Shyia watched the Javelin soar away with no hint of wobble, thru the air to 
lance the ground tens of metres away! He watched his effort, and as it lanced 
a far off point, he permitted himself a smile. 
 
   "Very well done, my handsome stone." she offered. "A few flaws, but these 
shall you overcome with practice. Do you wish to practice?" she asked. 
 
   His reply was to sprint after the distant Javelin, wondering to her thru 
his mind how many times he could throw before sunset!  
 
 
   As Pridefires blossomed all across the Valley, Shyia and K'a'lia came out 
to pull him bodily back to his dinner. Shyia took his paw, and he winced. 
Looking down at his strong young paws, Shyia noticed with a silent look of 
admiration that they were laced with splinters!! She waited until after 
K'a'lia had gone to bed to minister to him, using water tapped from an 
underground steam vent and a carefully plied needle! 
 
   After more than an hour, Shyia resorted to ordering her cousin to sleep! He 
went reluctantly, and only because he knew what the day to come would hold. As 
he laid down, Shyia covered him with their thickest hide, and her own 
priceless look of admiration, trust and hope. As he drifted off to sleep, 
Shyia remained awake to damp the lamp and quell the fire. She cast one last 
look at his simple, young muzzle, knowing that after tomorrow, he would never 
be quite the same again. 
 
   And after all that he had shown her, Young Shyia too would never be quite 
the same again! She dowsed the fire, leaving all three Skiltaire only shadows 
in the still nite. Tomorrow's sun would cast a new and shyia hoped, a brighter 
light on all of them! 
 
   There is a legend among the Kurushani that says if the day of the Tasking 
dawns brite, so will be the accomplishments of the generation that the sun 
shines upon. Instinct woke Shyia first, and she dashed from her resting place 
to the mouth of the cave! 
 
   A dull mist hung near the sparkling horizon, rendering the sphere of lite 
that shone on the Astrel Valley an indistinct white-yellow ball of haze. 
Shyia's heart flagged a bit, then she felt a slightly heavy forelimb fall 
across his shoulder. Instantly, she warmed to his touch, and turned to him 
with a smile. 
 
   "Brite Dawn, my fine young rock." Shyia said, reaching up to hold his paw 
gently over her shoulder. 
 
   "Do you hunger or thirst young one?" Shyia asked. 
 
   "Only to do honor to my Pride and family,Karakami Shyia." he answered 
sincerely, hiding a case of nerves that scarcely allowed him to swallow. 
 
   "It is well.." said a soft voice from behind the pair. Both turned, and the 
female Skiltaire enjoyed a long, and sweeping look at her son before hugging 
him gentle and close. A moment passed, and K'a'lia took Shyia into their 
shared embrace, hugging her as close as her own son! 
 
   "Mother...Karakami.." he said, his voice unsteady, and not from thirst. "I-
-I want to.." His voice failed him, and the only expression he could find was 
to take both female Skiltaire in a firm, loving, and deep embrace of his own. 
 
   Come along now, K'a'lia sent gently to both. This is a grand day for all 
our people. Let us enjoy it together. 
 
   We must hasten, Shyia sent back across their thought bridge. The 
PrideGround is not long away, but others gather there now. 
 
   K'a'lia turned, and picked up two belt pouches. She wished a third for her 
son, but she knew Tradition would not allow it this day. She allowed him to 
fasten their buckles, and then the trio dashed quickly toward the PrideGround, 
overtaken by a spirit of fun and adventure! 
 
   PrideGround was shared in common by all Astreli. It was a broad, flat 
plain, extending tens of miles in the awesome shadow of the Kurushani's most 
Sacred Mountain. Here, any and all of the Pride could meet and stay without 
question or enmity. Today, Tradition older than the modern Astreli bid them 
gather here as one so that the young who had known a full year could be seen 
and recognized by their Pridemates.  
 
   Shyia's words were true. As the group came within the bander stones, 
already more than ten score Astreli could be seen. There was no drone from the 
assembled throng. Rather they waited now, as one of their few informal 
Traditions demanded, for the arrival of the Khan and the Niiraki. For K'a'lia, 
other than to witness her son's tasking, this was the portion of the ritual 
she most enjoyed. She had met Shen Dai Khan and the young Prince more than 
once at her Lifemate's side, and she knew that this day, she might stand in 
His stead, presenting Tal's son to the Elected Ruler and Leader of the 
Kurushani People. She blushed at herself for giving such airs to a simple 
thing! 
 
   Indeed, it was true, for both Shyia and K'a'lia knew that this Khan, an 
Astreli like themselves had done much to alter the pomp and Traditions given 
to the Khan. The simple, sincere, and compassionate Kamiyama Cat had restored 
the Khan's nomadic lifestyle, and each and every day of his Reign had been 
spent traveling and staying for a time on the PrideGround of each and every 
Pride of Kurusha, no matter how few in number or goods they were. Shen Dai 
Khan had set the Tradition of any being able to approach the Khan and be heard 
as an equal. He had brilliantly and simply erased generations of distance 
wrongly placed between Khan and People. His own popularity was rivaled only by 
the young Prince. The tragic assassination that had laid the duties of Leader 
upon Shen Dai Khan, also made the Astreli the Prince's Karakami, serving as 
Regent until Ryokyo was of age to freely chose and be chosen as Khan of his 
People. 
 
   Shyia too looked forward to meeting the Prince. He was a young Cat, with 
beautiful fur as white as the snows of the Kamiyama, and a spirit that many 
said was as grand as the peak where he lived as a boy. She had seen him from a 
distance two summers before, but the crowd around the tremendously popular 
Prince had never let them see one another! Since that time, meeting him mind 
to mind had been among her fondest wishes. They were the same age, lacking 
only one season, and as Shyia moved into the end of the receiving line with 
the others, her girlish heart took a momentary flight, which made her warm all 
over in spite of the rising wind of morning!  
 
   Now, Tradition would assume control of this very special day. In a while, 
both elder Skiltaire knew they would have to part from the young one, leaving 
him alone in the long line of those waiting to fall under the eyes of Master 
Han, the Khan, the assembled Pride, along with the others who would compete in 
the events, and the Testing questions that would come from the adults of the 
Pride. 
 
   The trio held their place in line until the queue passed between two 
wolverine Samurai in full armor and drawn Katana. Their task was to allow none 
but the young to proceed beyond them. Surely, inexorably, in a symbolic act of 
severance, the two swords crossed before the trio, stopping the march of the 
line. 
 
   The Young Skiltaire stepped forward, placing himself in front of his elders 
and before the naked steel of the ancient blades. There was a moment of 
tension, for the Warriors had the right to slay him where he stood if he 
showed fear or made himself appear unworthy. Slowly, the crossed blades swung 
upward and held, opening the way before him. He did not step, but strode thru, 
past the Warriors, and their Katana lowered again before the females. The 
reduced line led off to the left and right, toward the open stands and the 
edge of the PrideGround beyond, where the ceremony would take place. 
 
   The throng grew by threes and fours as other families brought forth their 
young. But nothing could begin until the arrival of the Khan. Just after the 
rising sun swept away the dawn haze, the crowd was swept by a wave of thought 
energy so dynamic and forceful that even at a distance it took Shyia's breath 
away like a sudden blast of icy Kamiyama wind. There was no sound of reaction 
from the assembled. Rather, Shyia recovered and felt every active mind in the 
group waver, and then synchronize to a harmonic of the tidal wave of mental 
power behind the Khan's send. Instantly, the entire  People knew not only how 
close their leader was, but that the mammoth Cat and his retainers were but 
one hill away, Rushing toward the PrideGround at a thundering pace! For a 
moment, there seemed to be a ripple in the white mass of sunrise. Everyfurry 
looked toward the pearl- like star. As a shimmer of heat and lite crossed the 
ground, there was another glimmer, and Shyia and the gathered Pride could see 
a group of five figures dashing toward them at breakneck speed! The Group was 
a remarkable study in contrasts. It was lead by a Cat so huge that the other 
four in his company combined were still not his size! Yet, at his right paw 
there was another, much smaller feline who matched the Leader stride for 
stride in spite of their size difference. He was whiter than the rising sun, 
and his movement flashed the sunlite almost like a mirror as they ran. 
 
   Shyia was among the first to feel their minds and the ground swell of 
thunder that seemed to come beneath the Paws of the approaching Cats! 
 
   Their final pounce onto their PrideGround was a sight that would always be 
pressed vividly into Shyia's memory. They crested a small ridge, rebounding 
from it high into the air before the sunrise and the crowd! The vision of the 
airborne Cats filled the young Skiltaire with awe, and for the first time in 
her life, Shyia felt the vivid history of the bygone war touch her heart, as 
the springing Cats paid homage to the waves of them that had fought to free 
planet and populace! She expected the ground to rend open beneath them as they 
landed, but a last second mid-air roll loop, lead by the young Prince let them 
land so lightly and easily that it barely disturbed the morning breeze! 
 
   Shen Dai Khan and his councilors walked behind Prince Ryokyo as they 
mingled slowly with the crowd and sat down without acknowledgement, as if they 
were any other Astreli! 
 
   The assembled onlookers watched as to the sounding of ram horn trumpets, 
the young Astreli marched three abreast onto the open space marked by four 
torches that glowed brightly, even in the face of the rising sun. At their 
head rank, Shyia could see Master Han, resplendent in his full armor, Daiku, 
and katana. He broke rank with a practiced sidestep as the final rank met the 
first, closing a three deep circle of the young to be Tested or Tasked. 
 
   In unison, the circle of ninety with Tal's son in its midst snapped to a 
halt with a sharp and resounding two step before Khan and Prince. The circle 
parted for a moment to allow Master Han to stand directly before his Liege. He 
bowed, then spoke quietly but in a rich, ringing voice that all could hear. 
His words were the fulfillment and continuation of both Kurushani Principle 
and the Pride of Astrel. 
 
   "Tradition demands that as this year turns that the new young be recognized 
by Pridemates and all of Kurusha. We present ourselves to our People and Our 
Khan, and crave that he task and test us, so that we may be proven worthy of 
the Kurushani Blood and Soul born within us, one and all." 
 
   Shen Dai Khan rose slowly from a reclining position to all four paws. His 
massive shadow fell over nearly all the group as the mammoth Cat and Leader of 
his People bowed to the Astreli Training Master. "SO MOTE IT BE!" he roared to 
the assembly. "Let them who would be seen upon Kurusha, and upon the Plain of 
Astrel come forward, one upon one to be tested and tasked!" Shen Dai Khan's 
words matched the Tradition with studied perfection. They had been spoken the 
same since uncounted ages past, when the young had to prove themselves strong 
enough to survive the harsh living their snow bound PrideRange could afford 
them. 
 
   Thus the ceremony began, with the youngest being called first to face the 
Khan and the Astreli. In bygone times it demanded a test of will. The young 
contestant would have to turn aside the mighty cat's gentle probe of his mind, 
and then ask a question usually testing his knowledge of Astreli and Kurushani 
traditions. Modern thought had softened hard Ancient Tradition, for those who 
faltered in days of yore were killed or driven away. Now failure to answer 
from the spirit was an embarrassment to Pride, Family, and Sensei. It would 
mean a harder year of re-training over the next seasons, and the tasking next 
year would be harsher and less informal. 
 
   As the first youth stepped forward beneath a see of eyes, Tradition too 
dictated the form of the asking, the form of the answer, and the form of the 
tasking if the answer was incorrect, or given without feeling. 
 
   "How shall this one be called among our People?" The mammoth Lion asked him 
gently. 
 
   "I am To'laka, first son of Ratef, of the Kamiyama, Oh Great Khan!" The 
Youth proclaimed himself in a strong, loud voice without weakness or waver. 
 
   "So shall you be known, Son of Astrel..As a first born of Kamiyama, your 
choice, Testing or Tasking?" The Khan asked. 
 
   "In the name of my Pride of Astrel, I demand Testing, oh Great Khan!" The 
youth said. He knew that if he broke gaze or looked away, he would be marked 
as weak. 
 
   Shen Dai Khan nodded. "Tell your Pridemates the Tradition of the Sun, 
To'laka." The elected chief asked without rancor. 
 
   "It is well, Oh Shen Dai Khan..!" he began, obeying the Tradition of 
respect for his elders and Pridemates. "Oral Tradition tells the Kurushani 
that the white star is our beacon. It is from her light that Kurusha claims 
life and calls forth the Pridefire that guides us Homeward from far away."  
 
   Slowly, The Khan Smiled, and then bowed to the youth, without breaking gaze 
with him. "Well Done, To'laka!" the Kurushani Leader said for all to hear. "Is 
there a challenge?" he asked the assembled crowd. 
 
   Absolute silence reigned for a full minute. 
 
   "So mote it be, your testing is passed. Grow and learn well To'laka, Pride 
of Astrel." he said seriously. The youngster and the Khan exchanged deep bows. 
Then the turned smartly and marched a few paces to the left, first in the form 
of a new rank and file that would grow in number as others passed their 
testing and tasking. 
 
   The ancient ceremony continued in the Traditional Way for nearly three 
hours, without a single pupil of Master Han's failing or faltering. At last 
the center file in the circle was reached. Shyia and K'a'lia's attention 
sharpened keenly as his time drew nigh. 
 
   As his moment came, the young Skiltaire stood forth, seeming not to see the 
multitude that stared at him. Once more Tradition was repeated. 
 
   "How shall you be known among our People?" The Khan asked. 
 
   "I am the second Son of Tal, of the Kamiyama, Oh Great Khan!" His youthful 
voice was clear and forceful, full of the spirit of the Tradition. "My name is 
not yet heard among the People." he responded. 
 
   K'a'lia and Shyia exchanged sudden and worried looks. He was within his 
right not to speak his name, if he had not been chosen, but both knew it was 
exceedingly rare for a youth not to have chosen before this day. K'a'lia gave 
Shyia a reassuring squeeze, as both listened anxiously for the next step in 
the ritual. 
 
   "It is in order, Second Son of Tal" the Khan replied. "What an Astreli 
calls himself is a grave matter, deserving the deepest spirit. You shall come 
before us again with your kin when your choice is made." The Kurushani 
leader's tone approved his thoughtfulness. But the other steps had to be 
observed. 
 
   "So mote it be.." The Khan went on, not missing a beat. "Shall your choice 
be Testing or Tasking?" The Khan asked. 
 
   There was a long, almost uncomfortable moment of silence. 
 
   "In the name of my Pride of Astrel, I ask both, oh Great Khan!" The youth 
said. After the long silence, his words shook the assembly like a thunderclap! 
 
   K'a'lia looked stunned at Shyia, whose young muzzle wore an expression of 
the deepest dread! 
 
   Shen Dai Khan's stately muzzle betrayed a slight trace of surprise. The 
young Skiltaire had taken a path open according to their Tradition, but 
unchosen by any within all but the eldest memory. 
 
   "According to our Tradition, I ask you to say this again, so there is no 
error." The elected chief asked without rancor. 
 
   "In the name of my Pride of Astrel, I ask both Testing and Tasking, oh 
Great Khan!" The youth repeated in a louder more resolute tone.  
 
   In the crowd, K'a'lia and Shyia pooled their waning strength to hold one 
another up as they looked and listened in disbelief! 
 
   The Khan's eyes flashed brilliant spears of fire. His regal attitude became 
even more serious. He spoke and sent his words to every mind within his range. 
 
   "Oh hear, Oh all Astrel! Before the Khan stands one who knows Tradition 
well!" He near to roared, for the crowd to hear and feel. "Whom has set our 
Way so well in your spirit, oh second son of Tal?" he asked. 
 
   "My Karakami, My Mother and My Sensei!" He replied on a send as nearly as 
powerful as his voice sounded. 
 
   "All have done well..According to our Traditions, they must have a voice in 
this. Present them to us, if you please!" The Leader of Kurusha asked 
cordially. 
 
   In the crowd, Shyia swooned audibly, and her body suddenly turned to water! 
K'a'lia caught her around the middle and held her up, even tho the elder 
Skiltaire also shook like a leaf! 
 
   The youth who called upon Tradition so well now obeyed it as well, bowing 
to the Khan's request, and then walking back slowly into the crowd. He took 
his Mother's paw in his right hand, and Shyia's shivering paw in his left. He 
gave it a gentle squeeze as he led his family across the field so that all of 
them could stand before the Khan and the Young Prince! 
 
   He bowed again and then spoke. "I present my Karakami, Daughter to my 
Mother's sister. As he led Shyia forward by two steps, he felt her clutch 
strongly at his powerful paw to remain on her feet. Both bowed together in 
greeting, waiting for the Khan to bow in return before all rose to share even 
gaze. 
 
   "And how are you called, My Dear?" The Khan asked easily. 
 
   "Shyia..Oh most Magnificent Khan of Khans" Shyia's speech was stern and 
formal, in the best Tradition. 
 
   The mammoth Cat smiled, his expression open and relaxed. "You may call me 
Shen Dai Khan, my shining one!" 
 
   The caramel brown Skiltaire could scarcely believe her ears. The Leader of 
the whole People had addressed her as an equal, and moreover as an intimate 
friend! 
 
   "May I present the hereditary Prince to our Shining friend?" Shen Dai Khan 
asked Shyia with a bow. 
 
   Her ears rang now and she could scarcely swallow. All she could do was nod 
weakly! 

   My Son, he sent strongly to both youngsters. I present to you Our noble 
Shyia, Karakami to the fine Young Skiltaire who keeps our Traditions so well. 
 
   Instantly, Shyia was paralyzed benignly beneath his deep brown gaze. She 
watched him move slowly, and then felt her mind overload as the Kurushani 
Prince nuzzled her warmly! 
 
   "Churp!" 
 
   Shyia let the natural sound escape her without meaning to, but without the 
power to pull it back! Prince and Khan looked on with broad and gentle smiles 
as Shyia blushed with mild embarrassment. 
 
   "Fair beauty deserves fair praise." Whispered young Ryokyo to the fetching 
Skiltaire as he was seated again. 
 
   Shyia's heart rocketed up thru her chest and straight into her brain ! She 
prayed she would not have a stroke! 
 
   "T-TH-ank you, Young Prince!" Shyia stammered aloud. 
 
   He used the moment to urge his mother to step forward. "Oh Great Khan, I 
present my mother, K'a'lia, of the Pride of Whitewater,Lifemate of Tal of 
Kamiyama." 
 
   The Kurushani Leader smiled warmly. They had met before, and the memory was 
a fond one. Shen Dai Khan had pronounced his friend Tal Lifemated some years 
before. 
 
   Greetings and Bright Dawn to you, K'a'lia!! How is Tal, our old friend? The 
Khan sent. 
 
   "He is well, and this day upon the Kamiyama, My Khan." Responded K'a'lia 
aloud, more as a courtesy to those around her than a lack of ability. 
 
   "It is well..His second son does him just Honor this day." The Khan 
replied. "Master Trainer Han, come before us, Please." The Khan added, looking 
at the tremendous Skiltaire who looked even more formidable in full armor as 
he moved as if the ancient plated iron weighed nothing at all. 
 
   "Loyalty and life to the Khan of Kurusha" Master Han said to the Khan with 
a supplicating bow. 
 
   "This youth, who is your pupil, son and Spirit Child.." He began addressing 
the trio, "Is within his rites to ask both Testing and Tasking. But you are 
his family and Pridemates. I would know what you feel." He said solemnly to 
the four of them. To his right, Shyia could see the fine fiery gleam in the 
Prince's eyes as he gave his whole attention to the drama unfolding before 
him. 
 
   "He is my Son, Son of Tal, and a Savage of Full Blood, this day to become 
grown.." K'a'lia began slowly. Her words carried a Mother's emotion and a 
Savage's fire. "If my Son wishes it, cast in his Father's mold as he is, so 
mote it be, if such is thine favor, Oh Khan." K'a'lia's words came from 
herself, as was what the Khan desired. No Tradition dictated her speech, only 
the love within her. 
 
   The Khan nodded, and his blue eyed gaze shifted easily to the Master 
Trainer. "Tell us, Han-Sensei, Has this one been a good student?" 
 
   "Among the young.." Master Han began, " None save the elders twice his age 
keep and hold our Traditions better." Master Han said. "Until the days past, I 
thought him weak of spirit and physique, but he has improved himself well of 
late." The Senior Teacher said evenly. 
 
   The Khan's deep, serious gaze swept the young Skiltaire's body once from 
head to tail. He did present a different figure from most of the young. His 
Lean, fluid, but well-muscled body looked as tho it fit with the fire he saw 
in the youthful Mustelid's eyes. The Khan's duty was to determine if the 
spirit inside was as well cast as the body without. 
 
   "Thanks only to My Karakami for the praise of Master Han, Oh Great Khan." 
the young rock said modestly. 
 
   "Ah, yes.." The Khan began, "And what then thinks the spirit mother of this 
fine young one?" the Kurushani Leader asked. 
 
   Shyia took a bold pace forward and clapped a forelimb as hard as she might 
across his strong shoulders and back. All her strength did not move him in the 
slightest! It was a demonstration not lost on the elder Kurushani.  
 
   Oh Great and Noble Khan.." She began with simply spoken grandeur. "I swear 
upon my Life and spirit, and that of the Pride if Astrel that before you 
stands no more a youth, but a Living Rock, chiseled from the Kamiyama. He 
shall accomplish with surpassing ease anything which is in him to do. I stake 
my life upon this rock." Shyia said with quiet grace. 
 
   Only when she fell silent did see every eye in the assembly upon her. But 
the most solemn and brightly lit belonged to her spirit child! Their whole 
soul were met up in their silent, deep and lasting embrace. It gave more 
eloquent testimony for both than any word or thought might provide. 
 
   Shen Dai Khan waited for the Karakami and the youth to part before 
speaking. 
 
   "You are rich beyond price, my young one. As rich as even the Prince. You 
have asked rightly and well, and I grant your request. By our Traditions, I 
must choose the testing, and you must set forth and accomplish your own 
Tasking and present proof of it to your peers and your Khan, know you and 
accept this Tradition?" Shen Dai Khan asked, making certain the brashness of 
youth had not triumphed over sound judgement. 
 
   "With all my Soul, and according to our Ways, I accept it, Oh Great Shen 
Dai Khan!" He answered. 
 
   "Then by the Honor of the Khan, So mote it be !" Shen Dai Khan spoke for 
all to hear and feel. 
 
 
   "Share with your Pridemates the legend of the Sacred Kamiyama." Shen Dai 
Khan tested. 
 
   "The Sacred Mountain is the Kurushani Soul." He began. The Kamiyama rose 
with Kurusha created around her. As she is high, so are our dreams and hopes, 
and so must the vision be of the Kurushani themselves. When we seek her summit 
only in our sight, the Climb that lays before us is made with Heart and paws 
light." The youth repeated the ancient chant of legend to intoned perfection. 
But it came not from his mind alone, in order to be correct, he knew the words 
had to be heard thru his muzzle and felt in his soul. There was a tense moment 
as he waited and felt those gathered around him. 
 
   "It is well felt!" The Khan of Kurusha spoke for all to hear. "He has felt 
the Sacred Mountain within himself!" he declared with a trace of awe in his 
stately voice and manner. "He is one with the Kamiyama! Is there a 
challenge??" The Khan asked his assembled Pridemates. 
 
   K'a'lia, Shyia and Shen Dai Khan shared confident glances. After such a 
heartfelt display, there could be no doubt, but the moment of challenge was 
also a part of his rite of passage, and had to be observed. 
 
   The Khan of the Kurushani was as shocked as his Pridemates a moment later 
when a flat white stone sailed thru the air to land between the young 
Skiltaire and the Khan!! 
 
   "I challenge!!" Came a defiant voice from the ranks of those who had passed 
their rite! 
 
   Shyia, the young Skiltaire and the Prince shared concerned looks. Once the 
words had been spoken Tradition overtook them all, and had to be answered 
according to the Astreli Way. 
 
   "Challenger, come forward among the People." Shen Dai Khan spoke out. 
 
   "I do bid a challenge to this one. He is not of the spirit!" Said a voice 
that came out of the half turned circle. Another of his peers stepped forward 
arrogantly and looked with contempt upon the Son of Tal. He stepped between 
Karakami and spirit child and spoke loudly, with an undisguised disgust. 
 
   Mother..Karakami..! The young Rock sent urgently. This one was of the 
company that did beat and pelt me with stones. 
 
   "This sniveling wet nose is no Astreli.. He is soft, and coddled..like a 
female!!" His detractor was the first Son of Ta'lem, whose family had spilled 
much blood during the dark times. His familiy's honor alone would have his 
complaint heard without contesting, until the proscribed moment in ritual. The 
young Skiltaire held his ground and tongue, but gave up his temper as his 
peer's tone became more scathing. 
 
   "Raised by females is he..Let him be as one!" Ta'lem's eldest scoffed. "Or 
let him prove himself a Male..In Personal combat.."  
 
   His reaction was wordless, and nothing short of explosive! The littlest 
Skiltaire snarled, a mighty, vicious, and visceral noise that sent a chill 
thru Shyia's marrow. His leap upon his challenger was deadly accurate and 
coldly precise. With a single violent body block and throw, the younger, 
stronger Skiltaire smashed his detractor to the ground, spinning him onto his 
chest. The young Warrior reached down, taking his fallen foe in a brutal crush 
and stepping across his opponent's spine. The slightest flex of his powerful 
jet black paws would literally break his foe in half! 
 
   In the next moment, a roar like the whirlwind bowled over both combatants 
and sent those in the throng reeling for cover. 
 
   "ENOUGH!!" Roared Shen Dai Khan! "Is this Astreli Honor and Chivalry?" 
 
   Instantly, Both combatants cowered before the mammoth Cat. 
 
   "Great Khan, I beg forgiveness.." The littlest Skiltaire began. The Khan's 
blazing eyes shunned him into stony silence before he dared speak another 
word. 
 
   "A challenge has been pronounced. Now, He who is challenged must answer in 
the Tasking. What say you, Son of Tal?" 
 
   "I say that as he and others here cast stones at me and did attack me as a 
host when I was but one, I shall answer him in the Tasking, that which is of 
mine own choosing, Oh Great Khan!" 
 
   "SPEAK IT!" Commanded the Ruler of the Kurushani. 
 
   "I Shall climb to the summit of the Kamiyama..!" He blurted out suddenly, 
"..And ask my Father's leave to be trained in the Ancient Ways!" 
 
   It was as if, for one moment in time, the entire planet stopped! It was as 
if the littlest Skiltaire could not believe what had come forth from within 
him! These words and the deed they promised could not be altered or taken 
back. He had spoken before the whole of his Pride. His fate was now one and 
the same with his words! 
 
   The entire thousand score of the Pride of Astrel looked upon the upstart 
youth in silent and amazing disbelief. Amid their mass of doubt and fear for 
him, three pairs of eyes and the spirits behind them remained centered and 
calm. 
 
   Shyia looked at him, her eyes gleaming like blue diamonds, the same way he 
had seen her look at him in the quarry... 
 
   K'a'lia's soft eyes were filled with a gentle love and everlasting pride 
that none but a mother could know. 
 
   And, to his own shock and amazement, the last admiring gaze came from the 
right of Shen Dai Khan! 
 
   "Who shall speak for this youth?" Shen Dai Khan demanded. Tradition 
demanded someone to whom proof of the deed would be given. 
 
   "I shall, My father!" Ryokyo said simply. 
 
   This time, all knew there could be no question. None would ever suppose to 
question the Honor of the popular Prince. If the deed was done, there would be 
no doubt of it. 
 
   "Know you this must be done alone, without aid or solace from any at all?" 
Questioned the Khan. 
 
   "I accept this, Oh Great Khan. And offer my own life as bond." the blue-
grey Skiltaire answered in accordance with Traditions he knew and kept so 
well. 
 
   "So mote it be!!" The Khan Roared. 
 
   The littlest Skiltaire's fate was now sealed. Into his paws, he took his 
life, hope and the Honor of his family and Pride. The one moon Tradition gave 
him to prepare would become the most faithful and fated time of his young 
life. 
 
   The rest of the ceremony had been rendered anticlimactic. His was the only 
challenge of the day, and the manner and form of his answer had left the 
entire Pride of Astrel ablaze with wonder! As the Ancient Rite concluded and 
Shen Dai Khan prepared to depart for the Kamiyama that had been his home, the 
trio of Skiltaire felt a summons from the Khan touch their minds. As their 
Astreli Pridemates dispersed from the PrideGround, K'a'lia and Shyia led him 
to stand before the Khan again. 
 
   This time, the Pridemates were not bound by ceremony or station. Shen Dai 
Khan looked at the young Skiltaire, his eyes ablaze with Honor. "You bring 
honor to your Pride, Father, and Family.." He began. "You have this day proven 
yourself and your worth. If you wish it, I shall command that you be taught in 
the Ancient Savage Ways." The Leader offered with no degradation or shame. 
 
   A deep, pensive look passed over the young Skiltaire's muzzle. Then, after 
a moment's reflection, he shook his head resolutely. 
 
   I have been challenged, he sent graciously. I thank you for your praise, 
but what cut of Savage shall I become if I allow my enemies and friends see 
that others do my battles for me? 
 
   The huge Cat shook his head in proud understanding, then he spoke for his 
family to hear and feel. 
 
   "Tradition binds even I.." he began "I would climb the Kamiyama with you at 
my left paw upon any day. But now, I cannot aid you, tho it is my wish for 
your every success. I cannot aid you, but no Tradition Holds the Khan from 
barter with one of his Pridemates. I wish to make you a trade.." Shen Dai Khan 
paused, and turned to another of the huge Cats who were his entourage. From 
one backpack, he drew a double belt pouch and harness that was also a back 
pack in itself. 
 
   This is given you in barter, he sent, for the lesson in Honor you have 
written into Astreli legend this day. 
 
   The young blue-grey Skiltaire took it with quivering paws. "The trade is 
sound." he said, making the required response to conclude a trade. 
 
   "It is well then..Since the Young Prince has spoken for you, he shall 
remain among you for the next two moons. One to oversee your departure, the 
other to await your triumph." 
 
   The manner in which the Khan spoke filled everyfurry with awe. He had shown 
that in his mind that his young Pridemate would accomplish his goal! 
 
   The trio wandered away for a moment, to admire his latest trade and to give 
Khan and Prince a moment alone as Foster father and adopted son. 
 
   "We shall wait in high meadow, where we train the young, my son" Said the 
senior Cat.  
 
   "It is well, Father..About the young one?.." The Young Kurushani prince 
asked. 
 
   "Yes, My Son?" The Khan replied. 
 
   "None may help him during his climb.." He began, "But what of the coming 
down from the peak?" 
 
   Ryokyo's adopted Father smiled. "You are the Prince of all Kurushani, my 
son..You know our Traditions.." the parent answered sternly. "But that same 
Tradition tells that you may set your own, in the name of the People, if that 
is your wish." He added, as he walked away. 
 
   The Young Prince smiled, and sprinted after the trio of Skiltaire! 
 
   The days that followed became like none they had ever lived before. Rather 
than stand on the ceremony that was his birthright, the Young Prince became as 
if a forth member of the family. The young Skiltaire watched day after day as 
the Cat set him a silent example to follow. Each morning the Prince was up and 
dashing about in the pre-dawn twilite. His first act was always to rose the 
slumbering Skiltaire, and together the brace of males would go for an early 
morning romp into the treeline. Secretly at first, and then openly, Shyia 
would rise with them, and lay the morning cookfire while she waited for her 
Rock and the Prince to return from the timbres, each heavy laden with 
firewood. Shyia was sure after the third morning that an unspoken contest was 
being waged between the pair. Each morning the loads of fire branches would 
grow and grow until at the end of the first week, the pair had laid in enough 
spare wood for the winter to come if the volcanic vents that heated their 
homes capped unexpectedly. 
 
   Her greatest joy was not the tremendous pile of wood that the pair would 
collect, rather for her, the joy in it came after its collection. Three hours 
before their morning meal, the males would begin the labor of cutting and 
stripping the wood. She watched the machine like method the pair established 
with unabashed fascination. The outer bark on the native wood was thicker than 
birch bark, and was as tough as raw hide. The first step came as Shyia watched 
her young cousin wrestle with logs half a dozen times his size, laying them on 
a pair of skids longways before the Cat. He would then walk to the end of the 
log, and taking it in a bear hug grasp, roll the log over slowly as the Cat's 
razor-like claws spiral cut away the valuable bark without ruining its 
usefulness for crafts! 

   The next step also required eight paws. Once the fallen wood was stripped, 
the logs, some really more like broken sections of felled trees, would want 
cutting. When the young Skiltaire picked up a hatchet, the Kurushani Prince 
merely smiled. He flipped the last log the pair had barked off of one of the 
skids so it lay at a forty-five degree angle to the ground. He bid both Shyia 
and his young charge to stand away with a glance, and as both watched from a 
pace distant, the Young Prince tensed, and then sprang at and over the log, 
braking it cleanly into two sections with a blow from his paw at the apex of 
his leap! 
 
   The would-be mountain climber liked and copied the style of the movement as 
he set about work on the smaller branches using the skid on the opposite side. 
The Skiltaire's leap was different, as he used the mass of his body, jumping 
full force onto the propped up branch and allowing his heavy weight to break 
it in two! By the time the morning sky was washed with pink and blue-green, 
Shyia was nearly buried alive in kindling, and the meal that she cooked for 
the Males matched the admirable work they had done together! 
 
   They decided on a cross country race after their meal was done, and as 
Shyia cleared the dishes, the pair of males rocketed out of sight, matching 
young bodies and strides for strides at a pace that stole her breath away, and 
made her bones rattle. 
 
   She knew better than any what the Young Prince intended. Despite her Young 
Rock's newly crafted physical prowess, this would not be enough to prepare him 
for the nearly insurmountable task he had set himself. He had the strength, 
fire and the will, but it would require another to forge and temper the steel 
that Shyia had brought out of him! She was overwhelmed that the smithy that 
fate had chosen was already among the most renown Warriors of Kurusha! The 
Young Prince had set about proving himself from the time he could stand, in 
the best Kurushani Traditions. As she thought and then dreamed about what her 
cousin might become with his help, she some how seemed to recall that those 
Traditions also rumored that the Young Prince had also climbed a mountain when 
he was younger! 
 
   As the thought struck her, Shyia smiled a warm expression of thanks, and 
sent the feeling that went along with it to a certain Meadow, high up before 
the Kamiyama! 
 
   They were gone well past mid-day, and when they raced into view, both were 
a sight to see, spattered and caked from nose to tail alike with mud and loam! 
They spirited along side by side, challenging the wind and each other as they 
made for home, and the simmering food that waited them both! 
 
   Shyia raced out to meet them but with an all together different goal. She 
interposed herself between the fractious, dirty males and the food that was 
their prize. She stood as still and stern as a stone slab sprouted from the 
ground before them. It required both their combined strengths to halt one 
another without running into her head on! 
 
   "Hold!!" She bade them sternly, trying all the while to hold back her 
amusement at the sight of the sloppy pair before her! 
 
   "What is wrong, Karakami?" asked the young Skiltaire. 
 
   "Strangers may not pass upon the face of this land without leave." Said 
Shyia coolly. 
 
   But Karakami Shyia..he sent back surprised, It is I, your young Rock, and 
Prince Ryokyo! 
 
   You jest! She thought back at them, with a note of mock scorn. My Living 
Rock and the Prince of Our Whole People are a fine, proud and handsome pair.. 
She punctuated her thought by reaching out a paw and tracing a path thru the 
caked mud on the young Skiltaire's chest. She drew it back, looked at it for a 
long moment, and then shook the goop from her cocoa toned paw with disdain! 
 
   The pair who stand before me are wandering beggars to be sure! Her mind 
added. 
 
   "But Karakami!!..." The Skiltaire piped up in exasperation. 
 
   Shyia would hear none of it! She shook her head stiffly. "If you urchins of 
the soil would eat at my fire, High you to yonder stream and wash, else I 
shall eat my fill..and alone!' She snapped, trying her best to sound angry, 
and enjoying every moment of the confused, hurt and then indignant looks that 
the Males gave her! 
 
   Without another word, Shyia turned around and marched away, as much to 
disguise her urge to laugh as to phren anger. 
 
   The pair of frolicsome males were left standing speechless in the spaces of 
their shadows. Shyia turned and sat down just in time to see both trudging 
heavily toward the stream, like dejected children at bath time!! 
 
   Shyia had to fight to keep from howling with laughter, not so much at the 
sight of them, but at the thought of what the Khan might say, had he seen his 
son and Prince! 
 
   They trudged a short distance to the stream together. Heads and tails down. 
But as they saw and felt the icy, trickling water, their chore became cool and 
splashing fun as the crisp mountain water carried away layer after layer of 
the mud that had layered in their fur!! 
 
   Shyia kept the stew on a low simmer, fueling the fire with an occasional 
branch to keep the food warm until their return. More than an hour later the 
two padded slowly over a low hill, laughing and talking together as they 
approached their morning meal! Shyia looked up from the cookpot, and 
brightened at their approach! 
 
   As they stood and waited for Shyia to pronounce the stew ready, she looked 
up at them and smiled. 
 
   "While you were gone, two beggars appeared.." Shyia teased gently. 
 
   The two males looked at each other, and then back at Shyia with an evil 
smile shared between them. They shared a nod.. 
 
   With a sudden swipe, the Kurushani Prince picked Shyia up in his mouth!! 
She was so startled that the wise female still held the stirring stick for the 
stew!! 
 
   "PUT me Down!!" She cried, in mock panic..Actually the Prince's soft hold 
on her was so gentle, it tickled! Yet, she made a show of trying to rap him on 
the nose with the stick as she struggled, with no real hope or wish of escape! 
Ryokyo looked at the young Skiltaire, whose muzzle had become a study in 
uncontrolled hysterics! He gasped for air and rolled on the ground helplessly 
as the Prince dangled her for a moment over the pot of stew, and let his head 
dip as if to drop her in!! Shyia's eyes grew to the size of tea saucers in a 
frantic heartbeat! But then he stopped where he stood, standing dead still, as 
his eyes sparkled with a sudden inspiration! 
 
   He managed to roll over, weak from lack of wind..Then he saw the Prince 
walking with a muzzlefull of his Karakami back toward the stream from which 
they had come! They had not taken three steps together before the young male 
realized the Royal intention! He had to fight to keep from falling over, and 
ordered his limp body to catch the pair as they walked back to the stream. 
This he had to see! 
 
   Shyia squirmed helplessly in the Cat's gentle grip. Inwardly, she was 
surprised that one so strong could be so gentle! He padded into the cold water 
of the stream, and plunged both his head and her muzzle into and beneath the 
chill water! By this time she was laughing so hard that she scarcely had a 
chance to draw a breath and hold it before she slid beneath the water!! Ryokyo 
released her, gripping her between his huge paws. Again, his touch soft and 
gentle rather than angry!! The shock of the icy water lasted only a moment, 
and it drove away the last vestiges of sleep that still floated around her 
senses!! 

   Now she was alive in the water, not thrashing or panicked but light and 
buoyant! Her mother was born of the woodlands, but where there were trees, 
there would be water to nurture them. Shyia's mother insisted that she climb 
and swim in equal measure since her youngest days. There was another splash 
into the water at her side, and as she looked around Shyia could see her 
cousin relishing their early morning swim as much as she or the Prince! 
   For the tremendous Young Cat, full of smooth, sinuous muscle, the deepest 
part of the fast rush of water barely wet his forelegs beyond his paws. And 
yet, he was as wide open at this limited play as the Skiltaire themselves!! He 
would set up great waves to rush against the current of water with a sweep of 
his paws, leaving his mustelid friends to bob like animated corks in the fast 
swirling water now almost whitecapped with artificial waves!! The Skiltaire 
would stand off a safe distance and try to splash him with waves of water 
guided by flips of their paws and tails. Young Ryokyo would take the full 
brunt of every wave without flinching, and then with a flip of his paw send 
what seemed like a typhoon to douse them both!! Soon, they were all three 
soaked thru the fur to their skins! The exercise had served its purpose, and 
had given all three appetites as large as their Prince! As they emerged 
together from the water and three shook themselves dry as one, Shyia was 
shocked to see Ryokyo kneel gently before both of them, offering his broad 
back and wide shoulders to them both! 
 
   "I shall be Honored if you would ride back to breakfast with me." He said 
simply. 
 
   Shyia and her Rock exchanged glances filled to overflowing with surprise 
and wonder! 

   Their journey back to the cave was as swift and smooth as the young Cat was 
gentle and strong. Shyia choose a spot on his right shoulder, seated solidly 
on his back. The younger Skiltaire laid down, lost in the snow white fur, and 
took gentle pawfulls of his sprouting mane to keep from being blown away like 
a stray seed caught in his coat. Rather than recline for the short run across 
the land, Shyia remained standing gently on all fours. The vista of the hills 
sweeping by as the Prince proved his title once again would fill Shyia's 
dreams for moons to come! 
 
   The morning meal was warm , hardy, and welcome after their shared, bracing 
bath. During their romp, K'a'lia had heated the baking stones, and as the 
young trio ate a truly princely fill, the elder Skiltaire poured potion after 
portion of the rough whole grain dough onto the heated stones, producing a 
stack of their native flat bread almost her own height, that seemed to vanish 
like the morning mists before the four of them! Each piece laden with 
vegetable and meat stew, the bread itself became the common utensil, replacing 
the traditional chopsticks for eating. 
 
   Shyia had been careful in choosing her seat, directly across from the Young 
Prince, so she could admire him as they ate. 
 
   The young male began the conversation with a question that weighed heavily 
on his mind. He hoped the Prince, only a bit older than he might be able to 
answer. 
 
   "Please tell me about the Kamiyama, My Prince.." The young Savage asked 
respectfully. 
 
   "My name is Ryokyo, My Brother in Pride.." He answered simply . 
 
   The young Skiltaire smiled an easy smile at his well known informality. 
Instantly he had become another Astreli, just as close to the land as they 
were! 
 
   "I cannot tell you where to climb, or what trails to seek.." He began "But 
there is no fault in sharing my impressions of the peak with you, if you 
wish.." He said, half asking the question whose answer he had already felt by 
the time he had asked it. 
 
   "Please..Tell Us Prin--Ryokyo.." Shyia's voice was level, but K'a'lia 
smiled softly as she felt the slightly dreamy quality behind Shyia's request!! 
 
   The young Cat's eyes filled with a certain fond distance that could be read 
in his expression as well. "Have you been yet upon the Sacred Mountain?" 
Ryokyo asked an open question. 
 
   Only K'a'lia nodded. "Tal and I were Lifemated upon the Mountain.." Shyia's 
mother recalled fondly. "So much rugged beauty..Near the first key.." She 
added, stopping herself because she wasn't sure what not to say. 
 
   This time, it was Ryokyo who nodded fondly. "I know it well..There is a 
grato nearby.." This time it was the Prince who had said too much. He stopped 
tantalizingly short, and drew a deep breath before going on in his revery. 
 
   "New fallen snow every morning, tens of metres deep..Ice canyons and chasms 
so deep and wide none has ever found bottom and lived..Sheets of ancient ice 
and rock lifted from the very heart of our world eons ago..A hard skin, but a 
soft soul..Like Our People...She is our first mate.." 
 
   "They tell of green places amid the white.." Shyia spoke, her dreamy tone 
matching Ryokyo's. 
 
   "You have been to the High Point where Father camps this day." He answered. 
There are many such higher up on the Sacred Mountain, but I can say no more. I 
shall say that you must know where, and how to look, in order to see and find 
them out." Ryokyo answered. 
 
   "How many not born there have climbed to the summit?" The young male asked, 
a sudden edge of seriousness to his voice. 
 
   "None." The Prince of the Kurushani answered simply. 
 
   K'a'lia and Shyia stopped both chewing and eating! They shared frozen 
expressions of horror as cold and distant as the peak they had dreamed about 
only a moment before. One single word had turned the dream into dread, and 
they were not in the least afraid to show it! 
 
   Shyia's cousin gobbled down another slice of bread, heavy with stew, 
scarcely stopping to chew. His expression remained unchanged. 
 
   "It is always well to do something first..How will I know when I have 
reached the summit..What proof will you need?" he asked, between gulps of 
water. 
 
   A distant and knowing smile was the Prince's only answer. 
 
   While the morning provided an unwelcome shock, they tried their best not to 
allow a paul of gloom fall over these important days. To their continued 
surprise, every nite of his visit, the young Prince took over the duty of 
providing for the family. This allowed the young Skiltaire to divert his 
attention and focus on the formidable task he had set himself. He began, as he 
always did, by finding himself a quiet place to think. Ironically, he found it 
in the quarry that he had come to hate and love so much. 
 
   Amid it's half hewn grandeur, he found that he could hear the distant 
echoes of his memory as he recalled each and every one of the Traditions to 
his mind and heart. The echo of his voice as he spoke them aloud, mingled with 
a thousand voices that were both real and not. He renewed each and every word 
to his voice searching for any scrap of knowledge that might help him, now or 
later. 
 
   The Kamiyama filled their Legendaria. The Mountain was far from myth, as 
any Astreli could swear, yet, all its lore seemed to paint a picture of 
mysticism and danger. The rocks that moved..Places on the ice flows that 
burned with intense blue flame that seemed to leap from the water of the 
melting ice..Contradiction and contrasts..Everything was different, and yet as 
any Astreli could tell you, the Kamiyama never changed at all..Only the 
Astreli who lived in its shadow changed.. 
 
   He thought long and hard, thru a day and a nite without food or drink. 
Hidden away in the rock pit, it took the Cat's superior senses to call him 
forth and bid him to eat, for he could not climb if he was made weak by lack 
of food! 
 
   Grudgingly, he mounted the steps he had come to know so well. As the Cat 
and the Skiltaire walked slowly back toward the cave, the young mustelid 
decided to attempt a direct question, almost afraid of the answer he might 
get. 
 
   "There's a rhythm to it, isn't there?" He blurted out suddenly. 
 
   Young Ryokyo looked at him oddly. "To what..?" he asked evenly. 
 
   "The Kamiyama." 
 
   Again the young Cat smiled that wonderful, knowing, exasperating smile. 
"There is a rhythm to most all things and places." He answered. 
 
   This time, the young Skiltaire smiled back! 
 
   The days seemed to fill themselves, passing by in a blur of thought and 
deep concentration. His father knew the Sacred Mountain nearly as well as the 
Khan himself. At the end of the first week of preparation, he went to his 
mother and asked her permission to read his Father's Scrolls. 
 
   K'a'lia was at first hesitant, well aware of the Tradition against outside 
help. Once again, their prince served as arbiter. The collected knowledge of 
the guardians of the Kamiyama was, by Tradition, the property of all 
Kurushani. When the youth asked the Prince, he was almost knocked over by the 
ease with which Ryokyo gave his consent! 
 
   He was surprised to find not a wealth of maps, and charts as he had hoped, 
but entire pages of writing that sounded almost like the Traditions he had 
learned so well! But this body of work was pointed straight at the Sacred 
Mountain! From the first verse he read, a still felling inside him could tell 
the words had been set down by someone who had been deep in the Mountain's 
almost mystical rapture! 
 
   He fell upon them like some part of the Kamiyama had taken him over. Food 
slowed him down, and the excitement of the new set of Traditions swept away 
all thoughts of slumber. By nite, he would take the wood and iron cast 
spindles of paper to the quarry, carrying with him enough oil to fill his lamp 
to get him thru the dark hours. 
 
   The eerie light cast upon the white stones seemed to fill the stone pit 
with a light that was more than simple flame glow. He found the flickering 
flame seemed to take on an animation of it's own, rising from the lamp to lite 
the pit with what seemed a second sun that would linger well after the crisp 
cool of the morning twilite. 
 
   His second nite absorbed into the Scrolls brought him a special gift. For 
many seasons, he had learned the Traditions by hearing them whispered above 
him. Sweet stories with a purpose that helped the tormented young Skiltaire 
sleep. But as his paws swept lovingly over each and every leaf of the scroll, 
each re-copied with studied faithfulness as each older sheet wore thin, he 
seemed to sense the dedicated energy of the countless generations who had kept 
and added to these Scrolls that were a part of his Pride, Family and People. 
He came to feel the stylus in his paws, copying and matching each ancient 
stoke of wisdom to new paper. He could almost smell the time honored ink, and 
feel its tar-like weight on the end of the imaginary scribe's tool. He opened 
his mind to not only the words left by his ancestors and elders,but the 
sensations and memories that he sensed in each mark upon the paper. After a 
time, he discovered that every new leaf that layered the roll could pass 
before his eyes once, and he could stand and recite each passage with flaw or 
divergence from the ancient texts! 
 
   Gently, he swept up leaf after leaf, gazing at them in disbelief as each 
phrase found its way thru his eyes, and made itself a part of his soul! 
 
   Soon, a picture painted with words started to form in his mind. The 
Kamiyama had always been shrouded in a sort of dread mystique. But in the 
softness of the lamplite, the Symbol of the Kurushani seemed to cast another 
shadow all together. The lite he saw the Mountain in seemed to change from 
dread to distant beauty, from respect born of traces of fear to a sort of 
singular siren song of beauty and danger in equal measure. 
 
   So few had REALLY seen her and set down their words of her majesty..None 
save the Guardians whose words had entranced him so. In an instant, something 
far distant and as near as his soul met somewhere inside him.. He looked up 
from the scroll, and saw the pack the Khan had given him. It sat forlorn on a 
flat rock, ready and waiting for the moment.. 
 
   This moment!! 
 
   He stepped forward, picking up the bulging pack as easily as he had any of 
the huge slabs of stone that had once seemed his curse turned blessing. He was 
still for a moment after he slid the buckles to fit his thick but sleek form.  
 
   Something inside him expected fanfare and great, long moments of fair thee 
well. Instead, there was the quiet sound of the waterfall, and the only thing 
he felt was a quiet sort of resolution as he sealed the scroll, put out the 
lamp, and walked quietly up the stone steps one at a time and away into the 
nite. 
 
   Shyia felt something touch her mind. The expression it left on the young 
Skiltaire's muzzle was born of both wonder and worry. It caught K'a'lia's 
attention, and she drew near her cousin. 
 
   What is it, My Bright One? she sent softly. 
 
   Our rock has gone his Way..Shyia sent back. He no longer holds forth in the 
stone pit, but stands in the shadow of the Kamiyama. 
 
   The elder and younger Skiltaire matched minds, and what Shyia felt poured 
across their mental link into his mother's mind. K'a'lia felt herself shiver 
with a mixture of worry and admiration. She was left alone in thought as Shyia 
turned and walked away. 
 
   "Where are you going?" K'a'lia asked aloud, not wanting to divert her mind 
from its task. 
 
   "I must waken Prince Ryokyo. He too ought know of this." Shyia said simply. 
 
   "I have not slept.." A strong young voice spoke from the adjoining cavern. 
The young Kurushani padded out of his chambre to stand for a moment with the 
Skiltaire. 
 
   "Oh, My Prince.." K'a'lia asked, "..Is there nothing we might do to aid him 
now?" 
 
   "Come with me, both of you." The young White Lion replied. 
 
   He led them both outside, into the chill nite air whose draft was warmed by 
the Pridefire's orange glow. Ryokyo stopped, and put out a paw which became a 
step, allowing both to sit on his back. In the distance the trio could see the 
deeper black mass of their Sacred Mountain. Without a word, three hearts and 
six eyes were one being as they watched, waited and hoped together! 
 
   He began the longest journey of his young life with an easy lope. The high 
meadow where his training began was as far removed from the cave as was the 
quarry. The nite sky was clear and began to fill with stars as he loped along 
the rolling ground that led into the foothills that sloped gently upward to 
the grassy plain beyond a narrow pass. He had been called here on many days 
with Master Han and his peers, but then the Mountain had been a backdrop, an 
inspiration for the young. It had worked almost too well, he thought. 

   Now the backdrop was his goal. 
 
   Five hundred feet above him as he climbed the steep. rocky slope, he could 
see the soft glow of a bonfire built on the meadow above him. The narrow 
passage of pointed, weathered rock seemed to funnel the nite wind down on him, 
and it made his muzzle and antennae tingle. As he surmounted to the meadow he 
had a vivid demonstration of why nature had gifted the Savages such a thick 
coat. He crossed into the grass where he had struggled to walk before, this 
time parting it like a sword blade's sweep. Amid the grass, he could see the 
Single Pridefire and the pavilion tent of the Khan who attended it. As he 
approached, Tradition again bound both the Savage Leader and the Skiltaire. 
 
   "Greetings Traveler!" Hailed the Khan in a loud voice. 
 
   He bowed low, but kept his eyes level as he answered. "Greetings to the 
Astreli Kurushani!" he replied in a lusty tone of voice. 
 
   "Where are you bound?" the Khan asked. 
 
   "The peak of my soul and the heart of our People." He answered again. 
 
   "It is well..I offer bread and tea." The mammoth Cat obeyed the wayfaring 
Tradition of the Kurushani. Any who crossed your path, friend or stranger was 
offered the basic staples of the Ancient Times. 
 
   "I shall accept, and offer praise to Our People of your name." His answer 
carried more than Tradition, for his walk to the high meadow had brought 
hunger back to him in soft pangs! 
 
   Once inside the pavilion, Tradition yielded to friendship and curiosity for 
the young Kurushani. His Khan was as dashing and imposing as all had said that 
he was, yet he held on air of his position. As the Skiltaire sat at the round 
metal table wrought from a captured enemy shield, he watched in awe as the 
stoneware tea service and the round loaf of heavy, black bread floated toward 
him without aid! 
 
   Now the youth understood something about Shen Dai Khan, power,and ability. 
None could deny the power in the Mammoth Cat. Simply the sight of him was 
eloquent testimonial. But it was not just the power of the position, it was 
power held and exercised by the individual with as much eloquence as the sight 
of him. Shen Dai Khan had written when he was younger that the greatest power 
came not with a roar but a whisper. The truth of it came home to the young 
Skiltaire. 
 
   Shen Dai Khan bowed to the youth. It was Tradition, but to see his Khan bow 
to him made him uneasy, and it showed on his muzzle. The Khan, still a young 
Cat at heart looked at him and smiled warmly as he poured the tea for them. 
 
   "How is my son?" he asked. 
 
   "Splendid!" was his almost absent minded reply. It came with a light in his 
eyes that Shen Dai Khan was well used to seeing. 
 
   "Then you favor the Young Prince?" The Ruler asked. 
 
   He was a bit taken aback. The question was normally asked of only fully 
grown Kurushani at the time of the Choosing. In asking it in the tone he had, 
the Khan revealed his choice to treat the youth not as a first born, or 
yearling, but as a fully bonded adult!! 
 
   "Yes..Oh Great Khan..He..brings our Pride and you great Honor." He 
answered, picking every word as truth from his heart. "He.." 
 
   "Speak it, My Pridemate" 
 
   "Ryokyo is also my friend, Oh Khan..So is my opinion coloured." 
 
   "It is well.." The Khan said with a smile. "A Khan must have friends he 
trusts. Without them, he rules over an empty domain." Ryokyo shall need many 
such in the years to come. And you shall, I feel, be first among them." He 
added as he broke the bread into large chunks with a swipe of his paw, and 
passed the plate to the young Skiltaire. 

   The pair of Astreli took equal size chunks of the sweet black crust and 
waited as Shen Dai Khan's masterful telekenetic gift poured the tea for both 
of them. His guest was the first to dip the bread into his drink, and offer 
the crust to his Khan, as the Kurushani leader reciprocated. Each took the 
other's offering, in an age old symbol of Pridebound sharing. 
   
   "You do your father well proud.." Complimented the Khan. He enjoyed 
watching the young Skiltaire blush! "Has he never seen you?" He asked. 

   "My Mother has sent him my image..Before Master Han and My Karakami began 
my training..." He said between sips and bites. "When I find him, I shall 
obtain his permission to be trained in the ancient Ways." The Skiltaire spoke 
with dash. In the middle of a bite of bread, the Khan stopped, his eyes 
shining. 

   The Khan nodded. He knew better than any that only success or death would 
quench the fire within the young adult. 

   "Prince Ryokyo will need proof that I have done what I set out to do..What 
can I bring back..What proof will he need??" he asked his leader. 

   The Khan smiled. That same knowing smile that Ryokyo had used. But this 
time, words came with it. "Proof of your becoming." he said wistfully. 

   He nodded slowly, part of him understanding, but most not at all. He sensed 
that this was the only answer he would get. 

   He ate his last portion of bread slowly, knowing that he might not see food 
for a long while or ever again. At length he was finished. He crossed his 
muzzle with a coarse, wet piece of cloth, and then bowed to the Khan in 
gratitude for more than bread and tea. The Kurushani Leader rose from his 
place, returned a deeper bow and then walked his young friend back outside the 
tent, and onto the soft grass of the high meadow. 

   "None may help you.." he reminded. "Not even your father.." he continued. 
"Whom you shall find camped upon the very summit of the Mountain..In a lodge 
we built together.." He said slowly, with a parting wink! 

   He stood frozen as if by the winter frost! "You...You have done it..and my 
father as well??" he practically shouted at the Lion as the Khan walked away 
without turning around. 

   "It is nearly dawn.."The Khan said nonchalantly. If you wish to reach the 
summit in daylite, you ought start now. When you return, your Family shall 
dine with us. Farewell." 

   
   A sudden soft gust of wind off of the mountain blew out his surprise like a 
snuffed candle. It didn't matter who had done it before. Success or failure. 
Now, it was his time. 

   The meadow where he stood was no goal at all, standing less than a tenth 
part of the sixty thousand foot obstacle that he had chosen to overcome. It 
rolled gently upward as he dashed along, ending in a distinct and sharp 
upsweep that funneled him into a second narrow pass. He found himself working 
for each stride now, as the pitch of the land beneath his paws seemed to 
rocket toward the vertical! 

The grass had been replaced by overlapping slabs of dark grey rock, some as 
thick as his body was long! The geoscape seemed to be a patterned patchwork of 
time smoothed stones around the base of their Sacred mountain. Yet here and 
there, nature and her caprice broke the pattern, leaving huge sheets of stone, 
oddly balanced upon one another. The sight was perplexing and as he stopped to 
admire it, he could see that they were really interlaced, the bulk of one 
resting in some measure on the adjoining stone. While some of them looked 
tenuous, he chose the thickest pair and gave himself to a fluid leap onto the 
top of them, as he had so often in the stone pit. The timeless stones, meshed 
together as one by titanic forces he could scarcely imagine gave away nothing 
to his added weight. It was like tossing a pebble and hoping to break an iron 
shield. 
   
   The land of monoliths..He remembered from his fathers words as he surveyed 
the desolate looking landscape. The strange rock formations seemed to sit in a 
canyon all their own wrenched from the land that had thrown up the rocks. As 
he looked about, he could see the rocks formed small passageways between their 
bulk. Perhaps one or more of them led out and upward. But they also faced 
every point of the compass. Which would take him up, and which would lead him 
off of the steep slope in any direction, perhaps over some cliff, ending in 
one of the rock strewn crags below. He looked at the ground and the stones. 
They betrayed no traces of pawfalls nor any path to guide him. Atop the slab 
where he stood, a pawfull of gavel was all that remained of a smaller rock 
which capped the pair where he stood. He looked at the pebbles, and then at 
the height of the monoliths that seemed to bar his way. The first open pair 
faced north, and the ground slopped upward invitingly. 

   He turned toward them with a sweeping motion, scooping up and hurling a 
single small stone over the rock slabs. Instantly, he was still, his whole 
body tensed to listen.. 

   To nothing!! The pebble tumbled off of the cliff face to fall far below, 
even beyond the Savage ears! 

   East came next, and that pebble flew between the stones to echo far in and 
hollow as it sailed into a lava vent that ended deep in the mountain. He shook 
his head. He was climbing the south face, so his steps had shown him that path 
lead only downward. He turned suddenly westward, flushed with victory that was 
overwhelmed a moment later by a sudden spear of caution. He could see the 
small space between the stones, but he had to be certain. A single mislaid paw 
in the weak morning twilite could end his journey with brutal suddenness. He 
paused, taking his sling from his pack and tucking a stone into the hide 
folds. His winding overhead snap put all the strength of his new body behind 
the small rock. It rocketed over the stone slabs to land with the ringing 
sound of rock upon rock! He paused long enough to pick up a pair of the 
pebbles and strike them together. He smiled as he heard the same ringing sound 
in miniature in his paws! 
   
   He walked quietly forward, toward the small opening between the slabs. It 
seemed at first as if the narrow passage between the stones was blocked by the 
mass of interlaced stones. But as he walked forward with the confidence of 
what he knew, he came to look at the stone slabs with different eyes. His 
vision seemed to shift as he gazed at the stones. He took one more step and 
then froze where he stood! 

   It was an illusion!! The passageway was open before him, only a slightly 
different shade than the surrounding slabs!! It required the motivation to 
step close enough to see thru the deceptive shadows cast off of the other 
rocks early in the morning! He smiled, and walked on, knowing now that the 
correct path would be open for a few brief moments every morning for those 
patient enough to look. An hour later, the sun would have been wrong, and 
nature's hidden pathway up the Kamiyama would have seemed to disappear from 
view. 

   He was tempted to stop and crane his neck looking up at the imposing peak 
that challenged him. He did not have to. The ground beneath his paws was 
rising fast, it's slope now palpable to his senses as he walked slowly upward. 
The Scrolls set down what every Astreli knew. The great mass of the mountain 
sat upon a plain from which nature and time had carved twin terraces. The 
Meadow was the herald of the first, at five-thousand feet. That was no 
challenge to any save the youngest, for the valley of Astrel was set at the 
same elevation. Any born there were used to the air and the altitude. Ages of 
run-off and rock slide had carved the valley of the monoliths on the ascending 
slope between the rising plains of ancient Volcanic rock. Once beyond them, 
the Skiltaire took a path that led sharply upward, each pawfall taking him 
higher now as well as closer to the imposing grey mountain. 

   The second terrace was still three thousand feet above him. That ledge was 
by their Tradition the beginning of both the Kamiyama and the mystique that 
surrounded it like the pink clouds of the morning. It was know to all as the 
High Point. It was where the first Khan had stood to proclaim the unity of the 
Kurushani. Many of his people would surmount the lofty height that overlooked 
their Valley to announce births or proclaim special events. The Legendaria 
said that it was also the burial place for Khans and heros. He had heard his 
father say once that part of the ashes of the five heros of Takateru had been 
scattered here in secret, and the spirits of the five Warriors still lived in 
secret seclusion, waiting for the day when the Kurushani would call upon them 
again. 

   He warmed to the folk tale as a youth, and even now as he stood watching 
the changing shadows upon High Point, he stood still for a moment, paying 
Homage to the idea if not the truth of the tale. He wondered as the ground 
challenged his every upward step what the Heros would think of their Home and 
People two generations after their sacrifice that had brought the People 
together. He put a paw on a single loose piece of shale, and the thin flat 
rock fractured beneath his weight, tumbling back down the slope. The sight of 
it breaking into pebbles on the huge rocks below snapped him out of his 
daydream. It was now full morning,and if the youth was to reach the one place 
on the peak where he could spend the nite to come without fear of freezing to 
death, he had more than twenty thousand feet to ascend before the sunset. 

   Daydreams, he told himself, were poor climbing tools. He put renewed vigor 
into the steps he now had to press his body into making. 

   The ground beneath his paws changed as well. The scattered black stones 
gave way to a time worn grey-black tone. No grass, nothing at all to mark the 
passage of his pawfalls. He stood for a moment, before a seemingly impassable 
face of rock. At first glace it seemed almost sheer, but as he reached out and 
touched the rock, he could feel the rough surface almost hidden by the colour 
of the rock. 

   The Scrolls set forth the Law that no one could use tools for the climb. 
The rope that he carried and the strength oh his paws would have to see him 
thru. He set himself and stepped closer. Reaching up, he found he could just 
manage to grasp the thin ledge of rock just above his head. He braced himself 
and pulled hard, worried for a moment the rock might give way.. 

   It held, permitting him to climb easily onto the ledge that he had held 
onto a moment before! He fought back the continual temptation to look anywhere 
but at the face of the mountain. He found that he had to, in order to trace 
the gaps and cavities that ran thru the rocks. Standing there, with no easy or 
simple way to mount his next step, he was puzzled. For a long moment, it seems 
he would be halted where he stood. He noticed that he face of the stone was 
actually split between the two masses. The rift in the stones was as wide as 
his body and... 

   In a moment, he had a wild and dangerous idea. Rather than seek a way to 
climb on top of or over them, perhaps he might climb thru them!! Standing 
sideways to the face, he pulled down his head, and tucked his lean, wiry body 
into the crevice! The stones themselves were smooth, but he found that he 
could tense his body and maintain enough tension for his mustelid form to 
squirm and squeeze upward to the next place he could grasp freely! As he 
extricated himself from between the stones, he took a strong grip on an 
overhanging rock. He hung there a moment, trying to shake the loose dust and 
dirt from his coat. After a moment, he decided he was being more vain than 
practical. There would be places both above and below where he could wash, and 
if he didn't see them before sunset, something inside him said that he would 
be no more, clean or dirty. 

   He would permit himself only the briefest glance over his shoulder. Not to 
gauge his height, but to see and feel where the shadows fell on the mountain. 
He laughed as he came to realize that his quest was not only a mountain to be 
overcome, but shadows to be raced and beaten. Unless one could beat the 
changing cast of light and shadow, there was no way to overcome the mountain.. 

   The rock he grasped was the point stone to an escarpment that led into a 
steep trail. To his relief, he found that the Kamiyama was not just sheer 
walls of stone. The Scrolls said as much, but as he fought to climb over them, 
he had wondered if his elders might not have exaggerated!! 

   He turned his mind back to the climb. He took two steps and stopped. The 
overhanging rock gave way to a small grato, a cavity in the rocks that 
sparkled like diamonds!! 

   Part of the Traditions that he had learned concerned the nature of stones. 
Kurushani loved their native world, so spending several weeks of time learning 
of the soil and rocks was not out of place. Now, the young Skiltaire stood 
before one of what the Scrolls called Hidden Treasures. They set forth that 
the Great Mountain was both monument and storehouse. Now, all the hours of 
study paid off in understanding as he understood and enjoyed the sight of the 
quartz deposit built and polished by endless ages of geological magic. His 
magic pouch was still empty. If fortune stood with him, perhaps he could claim 
for himself a piece of wonder! 

   His mind turned another leaf of those wonderful Scrolls that now seemed to 
live in his mind. Challenging the Mountain carried many responsibilities, but 
it also gave him certain rights. He could take anything he could carry away 
from the mountain, as long as no act of destruction was committed to claim it. 
He carried his hammer and fang chisel, but could not use them to break the 
rocks. He pulled his eyes away from the white, yellow and purple cascade of 
mineral salt. He looked at the ground at the floor of the grato. Perhaps some 
long forgotten tremor had.. 

   There!! 

   Obeying the Law of Survival, he looked up first, to be sure that the cavern 
above him would not crash down upon him, and then, with cautious reverence, he 
stepped in toward his token. The intact crystal glowed with peach coloured 
fire, even in the subdued lite. As he stepped toward it, it seemed almost a 
transgression to lift the rhomboid of gem-like stone from the place it had 
held for so long. Yet, it seemed to call for him. He stood still for a moment, 
cementing the sight of it into his memory forever, and then reached out a 
black paw to pick it up. It was warm and smooth, just as he had been taught. 
Master Han's crystal was a nearly blinding piece of ice blue fire, so charged 
with natural energy that he and his peers could not hold it even for a moment, 
but passed it quickly from paw to paw as if it was a lava rock as their Sensei 
laughed at their surprise! 

   He turned slowly, stepping out of the grato, holding the glimmering piece 
of natural art in cupped paws. By the Law of the Mountain, it was now his to 
treasure! He opened the self made drawstring pouch that until now had hung 
limply around his neck, and tucked the quartz crystal inside it. As it settled 
back into his chest fur to move slightly as he did, the young Skiltaire 
noticed there was now a warm spot behind the crystal! 

   The rocky ground gave way to a steep trail that snaked around the grato and 
up the mountain.It was so steep and dusty that even his strong young paws had 
trouble finding and holding their stance as he tried to climb upward. As he 
worked at it, he could hear his breathing deepen for the first time, and 
before he had put a hundred feet of the trail below him, he was panting openly 
as he ascended. 

   His path was stopped by a wide mantle of rock across the narrow path ahead 
of him. The trail split into three paths each diverging in a different 
direction once they crossed the hard mound of rock that sat before him. 
Ryokyo's words came back to him now. Which ground trace he followed was a 
critical choice. He felt that more than one might lead up to the summit, still 
far beyond even his dream sight, but which was the hardest, easiest, and which 
one was the deadly one? 

   The rock bound shadows told him he had been upon the mountain for  more 
than three of the twelve hours open to him before cold and dark cut his 
chances of surviving to less than nothing. He had made of himself no time 
table for his adventure, but within him, he felt that he ought be higher 
before now! He sat for a long, frustrating moment, each second of time tearing 
at him with a sense of desperation! Again, the Scrolls leapt to his mind. 

   Patience..he heard his father's voice in some of the words he had penned 
into the Scrolls. You cannot race with the Sacred Mountain. He reminded 
himself of the council of those who had been here before him. A few moments 
spent in wise reflection here might mean tens of minutes and perhaps his very 
life further up the Mountain. 

   He forced himself into a calm. The first passage of the ancient writing 
said that the Sacred Mountain could wait forever, and would never pass away. 
If the mountain could wait, he could also tarry a moment or two. 

   As thoughts whipped thru his mind, he also remembered the answer the Prince 
had given him. Perhaps the answer he sought lay not in the place he chose to 
walk, but in the way he walked it. 
   
   Again, the Days spent with Master Han and his peers repaid themselves. His 
Sensei and the Scrolls had taught him the beginnings of the place where he 
stood. His search for answers began there. 

   He mounted the crest of deep black pumice that had boiled from the heart of 
their homeworld eons before. Dark ages past had seen the Sacred Mountain begin 
as a volcano, and when forces beyond measure or imagination had turned their 
Kurusha upside down, this point upon which he stood had been the low point of 
the planet. Titanic forces had taken all the released energy in Kurusha's core 
and driven it upward now, it a cataclysmic blast whose focus and magnitude had 
left a ridge of high mountains in its wake, with only one point of release. 
That weak spot in the very being of their beloved Homeworld had ruptured with 
all the forces that had brought the planet to be. Gravity flux and nature had 
healed the great tear in the crust by forging the uprent plates and their 
surroundings into a mountain that planetary rotation and gravity had swept to 
towering heights before leaving the tortured planet to find its new center in 
an unstable orbit about its white sun. 

   The mantle upon which he stood was as black as his paws, an ancient scab of 
immense proportions where his planet had bled for thousands of centuries, 
before regaining balance with nature and its surroundings. The trails that led 
up the black rock face meandered off in three directions. He stepped over the 
rock to examine each in turn for some clue or proof of those who had come 
before him. 
   
   There was not one wit of difference between them. His nose could detect no 
scents.The ground was not scratched by claw, nor polished by pads. No cracks 
or flaws to telltale the passage of time itself. The Black stone seemed to 
mock him, silently defying his quest and all it stood for. He paced back and 
forth, anger building inside him at his own indecision. It came to a head in a 
deep growl born of his lack of knowledge. He sat down heavily upon the ground, 
trying to force himself to--

   Wait! Perhaps this was both the source and the key to his puzzle. He was 
forcing his mind to work and his body to feel!! He sat still for a moment, and 
realized his mistake! 

   He laughed! Deeply and out loud, for the wind, the rocks and himself to 
hear! He had been so focused on his goal..The physical act of climbing was not 
important..Feeling was!! His own intensity had closed a part of himself to 
himself! The very Soul of the Savage was his instincts. He had been taught 
that he and his people had gambled all on their instincts, backed by whatever 
wisdom they could gain. His studies had given him the knowledge he needed, but 
the Scrolls held none of what only he might supply.. 

   Instinct!! 

   He had the answer he needed. He turned, mounting to the highest point on 
the slope where he could still stand. He stood stili for a moment, let the 
wind gust over him softly, turned off his mind, and opened his senses. Before 
he could feel a way out of this place, he had to feel the place! 

   Stillness..But not desolation.. 

   Wind whistling thru the rocks.. 

   Insects wings.. 

   Flowing water... 

   As his eyes remained closed, he felt the wisp of an airborne seed tickle 
across his nose..He never thought seeds could be blown this high.. 

   He took a paw and scratched his claws gently against the stone that seemed 
older than time. He found himself wondering what something that old would feel 
and sound like under young paws. This, he thought, would be a sound only he 
could hear. A time, a place and a sound just for himself! 

   As he stood there, feeling the place where he was for the first time, he 
became aware that the Mountain, rather than being somehow removed from Nature 
by some mystical force was made even more a part of it by a greater and more 
natural one! The Great Mountain which surrounded him was a cradle of life and 
movement, not the distant and lonely place that so many had seen from a 
distance. He had asked about the rhythm that came with the place. Now, he 
understood the smile that had been his answer! 

   Only one who had felt his own instincts of the Mountain knew the answer! It 
was different for each one..As Different, he remembered now, as Han-Sensei had 
taught him that the Savages were!! 

   He opened his eyes and walked away from the place he had stood, and began 
by dragging a forepaw with slow, steady strokes over the black mantle. It was 
a slightly hollow, but deep scratching sound that seemed to come not from the 
surface, but from inside the rock itself. He stepped back onto the main trail 
and listened as his paws traced over the timeless stone. He repeated the 
ritual until the sound and the feeling of the rock would never leave him. When 
he felt the rock thruout himself, he stepped toward the tri-forked trail that 
lay open before him. 

   A small scratch and a moment to feel was all that was wanted. He chose the 
center trail. He did not know why. He had no wisdom, no logic at all. It just 
felt good! 

   The trail upward became steeper and steeper, until almost every forward 
step he took forced him to reach up nearly as much with his body. Now, 
climbing began in good earnest. This time, he decided to concentrate less on 
the mechanics of the climb. Instead, he took a moment to look with wonder upon 
the ridge of rocks that now became a wall whose apex was masked by clouds, and 
whose edges were white with new fallen snow! 

   Now, he felt the rocks as he grasped and tried to climb over them. He had 
felt their surface before, but this time, as paw met stone, it was not rocks 
that he sensed. Instead it was the sensation that the stone carried an energy 
that came from him and to him! 

   As he worked with what he both saw and felt, the geoscape seemed to change 
with his perception of it. He found and felt places among the stones where he 
could stand and grasp above his eyes without seeing them. The act of climbing 
changed as well. Each new and higher point he surveyed, he came to feel that 
he was not the Alien that his mind had made him up to be! He began to tell 
himself that he belonged here, and that what he had come to feel from the 
Mountain was a part of what he wanted to become. Soon, in his mind, he was not 
pulling himself desperately over barren rocks, racing time; he had come to his 
Mountain to discover a new part of himself, strange but somehow benevolent in 
its sensations, and energetic in its newness to him. 

   And yet, His Mountain still held out an allure to him mixed with a sudden 
dash of Nature's wonder. As he paused for the first time in hours to think 
about that other kind of time, he permitted himself a long look off of an 
overhanging rock, back down and out over his valley, stretched out in the 
shadow of the mountain, even in the full light of day. The sight held more 
thrill for him than just the view. Hours ago, he would have been sore afraid 
to even consider perching on some rock as small as this, and leaning far out 
to enjoy the view. Now, he did so with relish upon each and every stone he 
overcame! As he turned to continue his climb, he reached up boldly to grasp 
his next pawhold. A sudden spear of frozen cold made him reconsider his rash 
action! His next step upward was covered with snow! 

   He smiled, and dusted off his paws, letting the white ice crystals fall 
over the edge of the ledge. 

   So, he thought to himself, it has come. 

   His Training and the Scrolls told him the way he would climb above the snow 
line would have to be different. Slower, more deliberate, and more 
unforgiving. He would have to slow his climbing speed, and reduce his 
expectations of where sunset might find him. He could no longer climb without 
looking. Not once, but several times. A seemingly hard crust of snow and ice 
could hide chasms or canyons hundreds or thousands of feet deep. 

   Before moving up to the snow dusted rock, he stopped and looked down with a 
more critical eye. Unless his instincts were tragically wrong, he stood at 
twenty thousand feet, and the sun had passed noon. He had half again as far to 
climb before the sun crossed a quarter of the sky. Thirty thousand feet was 
the soonest he could hope to discover a volcanic vent turned cave that would 
give him shelter against the merciless nites exposed on the Mountain. In this, 
the Scrolls had been ominously clear. He who tried to fight the Mountain alone 
at nite would loose his life to cold so bitter and deep that no fur could stop 
it. There was another, unproven way to proof against the nite, but none had 
tried it. Master Han had spoken of it as a way to survive storms lower down, 
but his Teacher remained silent about the Mountain. 

   The sensation of snow under his paws was not new. Any Kurushani out of 
first fur knew and loved the fine white powder. Tradition taught the Mountain 
dwellers to revive the winter snow as the source of the spring water that made 
their valley green. It was also a survival tool, providing water when melted 
and in an odd way that he had learned shelter from the cold that came with it. 
Odd as it seemed, it was this same ally that in a tiny span of hours that 
would become a bitter cold and deadly foe. 

   He put these thoughts away, cleared his mind again and sought to feel the 
Mountain once more. What had begun as a moment of wonder had changed in that 
same moment into an indispensable tool he would have to use as surely as rope. 

   The irregular rock face continued, providing cautious paw holds and rests 
as he clung to the snow capped rocks. He found a new measure of his slow 
process. Every flat or slightly overhanging rock he felt had a fall of snow on 
its face. He would brush a forepaw over the stone, and gauge the depth of his 
grip by the amount of snow that fell from the rock onto his upturned muzzle. 
Most of the time it was a light dusting that did no more than tickle his 
whiskers and antennae. Such rocks were adequate as steps in an uneven climbing 
ladder, but he could never trust them with his full weight for long. One or 
two in his search produced near avalanches that threatened to sweep him off 
the rock face like a fallen snowflake. He also learned to his displeasure that 
the powdered water also hid stones, small and large, which had to be avoided 
just as large falls of snow. More than once, he saw small ice covered stones 
fall above or under him, tumbling downward, striking the face and falling out 
of sight. Every one was a stark and gentle reminder that he was only a pawfall 
away from becoming any other fallen rock. 

   He tried to fill his other mind with visions of what the summit of the 
Great Mountain would look and feel like. He caught himself thinking that it 
was still too far away, but before he could finish the thought, he had turned 
it on itself, instead saying aloud that it was becoming closer with each 
passing moment. Even tho he had tried not to, a part of himself was now 
keeping merciless account of how far he had come. That figuring part of his 
brain had taken two known figures, His body length and the height of the 
Mountain, and had performed a meaningless but somehow binding calculation. 
Now, as he seemed to inch upward with awful slowness, that figure loomed 
before his thinking mind, almost as large as the Mountain. It seemed to inch 
downward as he crawled and clawed upward, diminishing only in small increments 
every time his own mind subtracted another length of his body.                    

   He took hard hold on another rock, twisting nimbly to avoid several feet of 
snow that fell from it at his touch. A sheet of ice as thick as his paw 
cracked loudly and cascaded downward in two pieces, reflecting the sunlight as 
they fell end over end toward a shattering fate on the rocks far below him. 
This wide, deep rock was part of a small ledge carved out of the Mountain face 
by ages of wind, snow and water. He pulled himself up, a labor which seemed to 
have become easier some how, a small recompense for the other arduous tasks he 
faced. He would have to lower his head, but could stand with surety and safety 
in this place for a moment or two. 

   In so doing, he chose not to take stock of his surroundings, or elevation 
as he had at every pause since his journey began. Rather, he chose to take 
stock of himself and his belongings now that his mind told him he had done 
three-fifths of his quest. His concentration on his physical tasks and then on 
the instinct that now led him had driven him to forget some practical points 
about the body he had brought with him. 
   
   Paws first..He held both of his forepaws out before his muzzle and turned 
them oddly so he could look at his pads. They ached slightly, but he expected 
that. He had also expected to find his pads and paw fur scratched and scuffed. 
He expected to see blood after this long and difficult a climb, but was 
surprised to find none, and to discover that the snow had an antithetic 
effect, leaving his paws slightly numb, but otherwise unharmed. He took to 
flexing them one after the other, until a warming rush of blood drove away the 
prickly cold. His paws were damp, and his next thought was to wipe some of the 
grey-black dust from his coat. It seemed to work for a moment, but with no 
snow to clean his paw, he found himself wiping dirty fur with a dirtier paw 
and making matters worse! 

   He shook himself a bit, letting the loose snow and small chunks of ice 
settled in his thick coat fall away. Smoothing his coat felt good, because it 
brushed out the cold air that had collected between follicles of his fur, and 
let a slow, warm body heat replace it. He knocked snow flakes from his muzzle 
and antennae with an almost playful swipe of his paw. As he finished, his 
stomach clawed at him in another, gentler, but equally insistent way. 
   He began to scold and scorn himself for thinking and feeling so common a 
thing in such an extraordinary place, but again his practical side won out. 
This might be the only chance he got to eat before nitefall. If he was to 
remain active for any time after dark, eating ought to be the last of his 
problems. He felt an odd sensation as he reached for the harness clip over his 
heart that held his back and belt pack in place. He had forgotten he was 
wearing the useful gift from his friend and Khan! 

   Suddenly standing at twenty-five thousand feet, the slightly sheltered 
ledge seemed like his home cave, and that moment seemed like a New Year's day, 
filled with common but wonderful gifts!! 

   He opened the pack and delved deep inside it. As his paws touched the 
familiar objects he had put there only hours before, there was a strange mix 
of recalled familiarity added to a dash of excitement that came with re-
discovery in time of need. 

   A pair of large Khalidi hides, each rolled many times and stuffed gently 
into the bulging pack rolled out first to greet him. He picked them up, hugged 
them close for a warm moment, and then set them aside, making sure no mis-step 
could send them falling away. The knife that his father had forged for him as 
a birthing gift fell to his paws next. He scolded himself mildly and paused to 
gently slide the black leather scabbard and the heavy,razor sharp blade it 
held onto his belt, where Tal had taught him to keep it, even while he visited 
or slept in any new or strange place. Getting to it as he ascended the 
Mountain could save his life! 

   Two shortened torch sticks were tucked along one side,for a moment he 
wished for a lamp, but knew the oil would have probably leaked long before 
now, and might have frozen stiff. No, the torches, soaked for days in oil and 
resin, were a better choice on the Mountain. They would burn almost too easily 
in the face of the combination of the abundant flint rock and the stoke of his 
knife. He had to plan for at least one night as a guest of nature. There was 
too much Mountain for even the Khan himself to climb in only a day. 

   His medicine pouch came next. Another familiar and somehow welcome sight. 
He undid the clasp and took another small drawstring bag from one of the many 
leather pockets. The herbs inside the bag were still green and soft, and it 
took no skill at all for the young Savage to select a sprig of a broadleaf 
plant. Gingerly, he took one leaf and tore it in half, pausing to put the rest 
away carefully before slipping the small green triangle under his tongue and 
sucking on it gently. It's sweet, slightly peppery oil was no replacement for 
food, but would help him stretch the simple faire he carried as far as he 
could. It would check his growing appetite for a time, until he could climb 
high enough to find the herbs and the breadfruit that the Scrolls told about. 
Though he had seen nothing yet, his ears and senses had told him that he was 
not alone on the mountain. His father and the other guardians lived upon the 
heights for season upon season, sometimes for years on end. His Father was the 
best hunter in all Astrel. He did not become to it by living on a lifeless 
rock. There was game both lower down and higher up. If it came to that, he 
might have the skill to track and kill a sagebird, or the snowhare. That would 
be his last refuge, only because on this ground, his prey would have the 
advantage. 

   The food he brought from what seemed another world was simple, yet chosen 
in part for his likes. The flat, broad slices of thin, coarse bread he carried 
were made with grain that he had milled himself while his Karakami Shyia built 
him up. A bag of dates, already peeled so that he could carry more of the 
fruit. Four pouches of nuts, a pawfull of these and a few dates were his 
average morning meal. Then, he looked oddly at a metal bottle with a strange 
cap on it. He lifted it, and found that it held only air! He blushed at his 
greenness, popped open his canteen and looked around him. He sniffed the large 
snowbank on one end of the ledge, tasting a pawfull of it to make sure it was 
pure and unspoiled. The water that trickled down his throat was sweet and 
clean. He resisted the temptation to eat snow, knowing it would only make him 
thirst harder. Instead, he shoveled what seemed a huge amount of it into his 
canteen. It was packed solid before he stopped, knowing that ten kilos of snow 
would yield one litre of water. Not half enough, but enough for now. He hung 
it on his belt, next to his knife, hoping that his mistake would remain 
between him and the Great Mountain forever! If his father or peers discovered 
it, he would become a joke for certain! 

   He repacked carefully, and allowed himself a spine popping stretch before 
sliding back into his harness. Daylight was on the wain now, the pearl-like 
sun sliding slowly toward the horizon. He had a bit more than two hours, 
before evening twilight would fall, the lead in to the nite that would see the 
character of this benign place change much for the worse. He had to be above 
this rocky face of the Mountain and into some shelter not long after sunset. 
The Scrolls called nite on the mountain as black and cold as the native 
volcanic rock. He stepped out onto the ledge, took a look back to make sure he 
had left no trace, and then pulled himself upward and away, wedging tightly in 
the rocks. 

   Pawholds came easily as his mind again turned him into part of the stone 
around him. Above him the places became flatter, and the stones more brittle. 
He learned to try each step twice. If it did not break after the second touch, 
he trusted it. More often than not, the stone seemed to crumble, at times, 
almost like old parchment under his strong, youthful paws. He grasped one 
stone that seemed to hold, but in mid climb it snapped loudly and he slid back 
down over the face of the rock, scrapping his head and muzzle over the rock 
before his hind paw caught on the edge of his previous step! 

   The young Skiltaire cursed, steadied himself with a deep breath, blessed 
the Mountain to forgive his temper, and began to climb resolutely upward 
again. He had pulled himself thru a dozen body lengths of deeper black stone, 
more and more of it seeming to crumble at his touch. He was relieved to feel 
another ledge or terrace above him, his one so deep that the full length of 
his forepaw could not feel the face of the rock. It felt smoother that the 
unforgiving stones that he seemed to wrestle, and there was no snow built up 
on the ground above him. He felt relaxed and fluid as he planted his hind paws 
in a notch between two rocks, and pulled himself up easily onto the higher 
ground. 

   He was so occupied with the climb that it took him almost a full second of 
laying sprawled out on the ground to see that there was no more cliff facing 
him! He looked around in breathless amazement! It was another terrace, just 
like those below the meadow and High Point. Against his better judgement, he 
sat up quickly and raced to the edge, allowing himself to peer over and down 
at where he had been for the first time. Only the height and distance lent the 
real perspective. He was more surprised to look down and see a thin, wispy 
cloud clinging near the face of the rock below! 

   He paused, and with a single claw began scratching litely on the rocks at 
his feet. There was the Trail to the meadow, he thought to himself, keeping 
the line he drew level. Then there was the meadow, he added its depth and 
altitude by canting the line up a bit and them making it flat again. Then up 
to High Point, as his trace repeated, taking him farther from ground level. 
The Crystal Grato was a bit higher, and spoken of in the Scrolls. He drew a 
soft "X" to mark its place on the ascending line. Then, the sheer face of the 
cliff after a short, hard climb. Now, he thought to himself..How high had he 
come? The snow line held the key. It had begun about halfway up the sheer 
mountain face. He drew another soft line across the width of his sectional 
trace. If he had come half again as high, he thought, moving his line of climb 
steeper yet, that put him....Where? 

   Here! He figured, lancing a claw down on the scratched map, and drawing 
another flat line for the terrace where he now stood. If the scale he had 
tried to keep was true to his inner feelings, then he stood at thirty thousand 
feet! Yet, he knew he was no map maker, and his trace as well as his feelings 
might be skew. 
   
   His journey half done had been hard won. Yet, there were still a few 
minutes of fading light at this elevation. His mind conflicted two thoughts. 
The Scrolls said that he ought to hold up here or above to abide the dawn. 
Another part of him said to climb on, and that part of him won a battle to 
look in the opposite direction. He gave up looking and thinking down, stepped 
away from the edge, and looked up at the second half of the steeply stacked 
peak. 

   Clouds that seemed thick enough to walk upon wrapped the upper reaches of 
the peak in a truly magnificent garment as white as the snow upon the peak. 
The cindered black rocks gave way to a grayish white stone that seemed in an 
odd way to cap this massive monument that his People held in deep trust. As he 
looked at it, he felt his stomach knot, but food was no remedy. As he held the 
sight in his eyes, he felt his feelings rise and gently overwhelm his thinking 
mind. In those feelings, he could feel another thing that the Scrolls had 
told. They said to him that he would not understand it until he saw it, and 
now a part of him did. He felt every synapse of his sending mind and every 
hair trigger of his motion sense fire! The young Skiltaire begin to quiver 
with a massive onrush of energy that no avalanche of rock or snow could ever 
hope to equal! It took his breath away with a force so gentle and explosive he 
found himself gasping and gulping for air! It demanded all the strength in his 
limber young body to twist himself, wrenching his seeing eyes away from the 
tableau of the mountain above him. Yet, even as he looked away and slumped 
weakly to the ground, the energy that radiated from the mountain top continued 
to resound thru his mind, crashing thru him as if he was a bell ringer trapped 
in a steeple at noon! 

   He lay there, for uncounted hours it seemed, convulsing on the ground, his 
limbs thrashing in a vain attempt to control themselves and react to what had 
blasted into his brain, and now seemed to burn and seer into his being! He did 
not fight it. He could not..He dared not..Part of him wanted it..And that part 
of him absorbed the blast, saving his sanity and his life! 

   The onslaught settled the question on climbing on. It took him a quarter 
hour to stand again, and as he did, it was upon newborn's paws. His whole body 
shook as if douched with an endless torrent of icy water, and yet, he felt 
slowly recharged, as if each of those minutes had been solid days and nites of 
food and slumber. He would use the remaining sun time to seek out his shelter 
for the nite. As he walked about slowly, his eyes slightly downcast to avoid 
risking the sight of the peak again. As he moved, his quivering body became 
aware of a gentle but persistent burning pain in his chest! He stopped where 
he stood and ordered his mind to check himself against what he felt. He 
reached up and put a paw over what seemed to be the kernel of fire in his 
chest. He was surprised when his softly glowing medicine bag gave the back of 
his paw a respectable shock! 

   Slowly, gingerly, he took the small hide pouch from around his neck. He 
looked oddly at the thick pouch, now overtaken almost completely with a soft, 
peach coloured aura! He prodded it softly, expecting to be burned in the 
iridescent fire. Instead, his curiosity was rewarded with an even larger pulse 
of current! He seized it gently and impulsively in both paws, and a sharp 
surge of power made even the naturally charged Skiltaire drop the pouch! 

   As he shook his paws gently, he recalled again the sensation he had felt 
from Master Han's piece of ice blue fire! It was the same, only ten fold more 
intense! He plucked up the pouch gingerly, almost fearing of it. He held it at 
paws length, watching the energy field swirl and flicker as it shimmered 
softly with power born of the Mountain! 

   He hesitated to loop the strap over his neck again. He loosened it 
slightly, making it longer, so it hung below his chest but not quite touching 
the ground between his forepaws as he walked slowly around the terrace. 

   It was tens of metres deep, and rather than ending in another sheer wall of 
timeless rock, its edge sloped upward gently following the face of the peak 
lost in the white clouds far above. The ground beyond was steep, but passable, 
layered all around about with glacial snowbanks so tremendous that it seemed a 
half of any of them could fill the Valley of Astrel to overflowing with snow 
and perpetual ice. 

   The Sacred Mountain had struck him hard. So hard that he still stood on 
yearling paws. He would climb no more this day, but satisfied his urge to 
explore by looking around the high, rock strewn terrace that was the gateway 
to the upper Mountain. His first task as the disk of the sun met the land was 
to find shelter. Two hours hence, this seemingly tranquil place would be 
transformed by nature into a wild, boiling crucible of ice storms and 
windblown snow. He felt the rising wind deflecting off of the rock face below. 
It ruffled the guardfur on his thick coat with a chilly finger.It was a 
forewarning of the inky nite where nothing left to the wind would survive. He 
turned and walked toward the body of the peak, a new urgency in his faltering 
steps. 

   This high place had no name, but was spoken of in the Scrolls. Caves as 
large entire hills were cut all through the timeless rock. A crude drawing 
told of three caves that merged to form a cavern at the very core of the 
Mountain. His danger was that he knew not which of them led to the inner 
place, and which slopped downward into sudden bottomless holes that were vents 
for the primeval volcanic heart of the Sacred Mountain. In a fashion, this was 
more fraught with peril that climbing up the rocks. If you trod on a stone 
that will not carry your weight, he thought, it gave way. Now, he stood on 
ground as solid as any he had ever known.Yet walk one length too far, and risk 
falling forever into the core of Kurusha.       

   There were a number of openings in the rocks of the mountain side. He 
walked carefully, feeling each of them as he walked closer. His sling would 
not save him this time. He would have to explore each possibility, slowly and 
carefully, with time against him The wind ruffled thru his coat again from the 
back, this time slightly colder than it had before. The air raced by him, 
seeming sucked inside the mammoth body of the peak..Then, he stopped, thinking 
about what he had just felt, and why! His answer hit him just as hard as the 
radiant energy that broadcast from the peak above him... 

   The Mountain's age old battle with weather, wind, and eruptions past had 
combined to drill and blast many open spaces into the high Kamiyama. Now, he 
knew! Those that drew in the air were the vents he sought to avoid! Twists and 
turns in the shafts between the inner connected caves would break the draw of 
the air, and the place before the cave he sought would know only still air!!! 

   He raced from opening to opening, pausing before any that might accommodate 
his head, for where his head went, he might be able to tuck in his body as 
well. As he vaulted over boulders and broken rocks on the terrace, he saw the 
top third of the white sun's disk begin to dip below the horizon. The shadows 
that hung and grew from the rocks extended slowly, as if bringing their share 
of the chill dark nite whose onset was closer than he liked to think about. 

   Cave after cave seemed to draw the very air from his lungs. The suction 
before a matched set of them was such that he had to fight hard, his claws 
scoring the rocks where he stood in order to keep from being drawn inside like 
the occasional icecicle that broke away from the cavern roof just inside the 
cave entrance. 

   He turned hard away from them, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw an 
oddly shaped oval rock, the size of a whole cave in the Valley below. His 
climb had showed him the strange shapes and dimensions wrought in rock by 
nature's carving fingers. Yet, as he took a whole stride backward to see the 
whole of the huge rock, the perspective told him that there was something 
different about this one at second glance. Forces that made the planet had 
tossed and broken these rocks like grains of sand on a beach. Rock falls and 
planet quakes had felled some, and he could tell from the rocks higher up that 
the fallen boulders had once been pieces of the higher rocks. 

   The Oval stone lay apart from any other, where all the other rocks seemed 
awash in a see of smaller company, many pieces of themselves worn away by the 
wind into a separate being. But the place where this odd one rested held no 
stone over the size of his paw, other than the oval parent stone. Then, there 
was the shape. Only with distance could he see that the rounded contours of 
the single rock resembled nothing so much as a long, thin, almost sculptured 
body laying down with a thin tail extending toward the face of the mountain. 
Curiously, he padded over to it, and matched the stance of his body and its's 
shape with that of the oddly shaped rock. He looked backwards, over his 
shoulder, along the length of his own tail. He thought he might be able to 
sight one cave, or opening. He swallowed hard when he saw only another pile of 
broken, dark rock fallen against and strewn around against the face of the 
rock. 

   Dark rock? he thought to himself..Dark rock..amid mostly light coloured 
stones?? 

   He rose slowly and padded toward the spot, one step at a time. The rock 
fall he saw was set against the mountain side, as if the stones had fallen 
from some great high place. Yet, as far up as he could look, he saw only the 
snow clad ash coloured rocks. No, these had been put here. They were not 
native to the place! He grew more encouraged as he stepped closer and saw that 
most of the rocks were small, under the size of his own body. While several of 
the boulders were tens and hundreds of times his size, those might be 
passable, if he could remove the others..in time! 

   To the Skiltaire, who tore into the fallen rocks as if they were his last 
hope, it seemed like old times. These were not the carved hard to grasp slabs 
he had tossed around the Quarry as if they were paper. These were rude, 
unpolished rocks, and his strong black paws found them as easy to pluck up and 
toss away as so many of the nuts that Shyia had him pick! Yet, as the first 
pair of them sailed away, he halted himself in mid throw as one of the two 
struck a larger rock and shattered like thin pottery. 

   The Law and Traditions said that he was free to try to climb the Kamiyama, 
as was any of his People, as long as no tools were struck to the rock, and 
Nature was left undisturbed by their passage. He felt a sudden pang of deep 
guilt. 

   Was he breaking the Tradition by moving the rocks? 

   Again, he looked over the rock pile. From the manner that the stones lay 
piled without reason or symmetry, this had not been built. And the rocks..They 
had been put here. They were not native, not part of the natural stone that 
made this place. He thought of the matter deeply for a few seconds, there in 
the darkening stillness of the great peak. 

   He would compromise. He reached for the next stone, but instead of tossing 
it far afield, he simply moved it aside, dropping it at the base of the slide, 
and beginning, stone by stone, a new pile of stones, removed from the first 
only a bit! 

   He resolved himself to stop when he could discover his passage, or lack of 
one. He found he could become selective with the stones. Removing one large 
could let him move three smaller ones more easily, just as if the stones had 
become a giant heap of jackstraws!! His work was quick, for both his body and 
mind were limber together. He began an unsteady climb that seemed easy and fun 
in the face of half the Mountain below him. He had moved about two score of 
the stones when his paws reached out for another. He moved it aside, and 
instead of another stone, he was greeted by a small dark gap in the rock pile 
large enough to probe first with a paw, and then with a whole limb! 

   There was a cave here!! 

   Flushed with excitement, but remembering his promise to the Mountain, he 
quickly reshaped the rock slide by moving the stones, purposefully building 
with them, where nature had not. Soon, the small hole had widened to his body 
size, the top of the loose, unsteady rock slide re-enforced by the careful 
placement of the larger rocks. The inside of the cavern was far to dark to 
see, and his senses could detect no movement within his range. 

   He slid out of his pack, and took out one of the pair of torches that he 
carried. He held the fire stick in one paw while he drew his knife with the 
other. He shook out and laid upon the dark rock a brittle reddish piece of 
stone. The held the torch near the smaller stone had struck it sharply with 
the flat of his blade. Instantly a pair of orange yellow sparks flashed from 
the flint onto the torch. The oil soaked wood sizzled for a moment, sparked on 
its own and then leapt to flaming life! 

   He had little time to be pleased with his first fire. The amount of 
darkness the torch drove back from him was now very noticeable. It became even 
more so when he turned on the rock where he stood, and cast the flaming stick 
into the cave. He looked in after it, and amid the strong yellowish glow, 
could see the smooth, glasslike walls of the cave weakly reflect the torch 
light. The scent of long stilled but breathable air came to him from along the 
top of the cave as the warmth of the torch stirred the air inside the cavern! 

   He felt both elation and relief as he gathered his pack, and slid easily 
down from the now open rock fall and into the cave that would shelter him for 
the nite! 

   He was more pleased to discover that the rocks around the cave mouth still 
acted as a wind break. As he prepared to eat and sleep for the first, and he 
hoped only time on the Mountain outside of his Father's lodge, the rising icy 
wind began to howl as if it was some tormented living thing that held forth in 
the nite. 

   Inside the cave, he unpacked again, spreading not one, but both hides on 
the cave floor. He set the torch, cut in length to burn far into the nite, 
between two upright stones he took from outside his temporary home. The clean 
snow packed into his bottle was now bracing water, still slightly chill 
despite the passage of hours. Flat bread and hard corn sticks never tasted 
this way before, and he ate with new relish the common faire he had tasted so 
often before. As he lay on the soft, thick hide, struggling playfully to bite 
thru a corn stick as hard as the rocks that held his torch, his tired mind 
split in twain. One part thought of his Father, the other thought of three who 
waited below. 

   As he put up his food, and finished the last of his water, He wondered what 
Tal would send when the two were close enough to sense one another. He laid 
down on the soft hide, pulled the other hide over him, curled up fur in fur, 
and fell into a deep satisfying sleep, the edges of which were filled with 
images of the Mountain Crest and his father. The last sound to fill his ears 
before echoes of his father's voice was the howling wind as it passed 
hurricane force outside the cave.. 


   Shyia was the first to feel it. her young, active mind gave her a moments 
grace over K'a'lia, who smiled warmly at the younger Skiltaire. 

   "The Mountain sleeps...and so we must." K'a'lia said gently. 

   Shyia made no effort to hide her disappointment. Her mind felt a familiar 
touch from below. You serve him best by resting and preparing for his return, 
Ryokyo sent. 

   K'a'lia saw Shyia nod, trying to hide a yawn. As the Pridefire that the 
females had kindled for the first time without their males continued to blaze 
brightly, Ryokyo padded toward the cave as Shyia and K'a'lia lay down gently 
on his back. The Prince of the Kurushani took a long, longing look at the mass 
of the mountain, cast in darkness, and then brought his hosts inside to the 
warm fire. 

   He awoke suddenly in deep darkness. He tried to go back to sleep, in the 
hides still wrapped snugly around him, but he could not. His head ached, and 
his ears rang like bells. A moment later, the throbbing pain grew from his 
heartbeat to a drumbeat in his head, steady, dull pain so intense it drove the 
breath from him and threatened to stop him from ever drawing another! He made 
it worse by trying to stand. Pain and vertigo swept his paws from under him, 
and he crashed to the floor of the cave with a heavy thud that hurt his 
forelegs and chest. His head seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds and it took 
all of his strength to sit up on all fours and raise his head slightly. 

   He was sick. The bitter taste of bile and half digested food drove up his 
throat, and bolted out of his muzzle and nose, as if fleeing whatever had gone 
so wrong inside him. It was as if his head was on fire from the inside, 
blazing like a dozen torches. Pure instinct seized him and he found himself 
half running and half crawling toward the mouth of the cave. He hoped to dive 
into a snowbank whose cold would extinguish the fire searing his brain. He 
remembered the withering blast of cold so profound that fur nor flesh could 
stand against it..Something greater than himself turned him around, and seemed 
to throw him back into the cave. The pain overwhelmed him, and the only 
thought he could think was that death would be welcome relief from the pain! 

   Shyia sat up screaming! Instantly, a send more powerful than she had ever 
felt wiped out the pain, and smashed her fear, sweeping it away like pieces of 
a black nitemare exposed to brilliant sunlite. K'a'lia lay tranquil and 
unmoving nearby in an almost hypnotic slumber. 

   I hold her thoughts. Ryokyo sent to Shyia on a band so broad that Shyia 
could think and feel nothing else. 

   Indeed, the bond between you is strong! Shall I shield you as well? The 
Kurushani Prince asked. 

   No, my Prince.. Shyia sent back a whisper compared to his roar of mental 
power. She sensed their mutual energy now held out whatever had touched her 
mind. I beg of you, she sent, tell me, does he live still? 

   Like a star, a nova brighter near than any sun. Ryokyo answered 
cryptically. Shyia's own heart had known that before the thought words were 
born in her mind. 

   Is there no way we can aid him? I have want to be near him! She asked from 
mind to mind. 

   In the subdued light, Shyia saw the Prince shake his head slowly. Aid him 
we cannot..He said with calm resolution. His sent answer was as final as his 
next thought. 

   He rose smoothly, and beckoned to Shyia to take her former place on his 
back. She leapt up without prompting. Now, the Prince sent to her again. 

   But Climb ourselves, we can! He sent to the worried Skiltaire. Are you 
willing? 

   Shyia's only answer was to grasp twin pawfulls of his coat with all her 
might, and sink herself into the young White Lion's snowy mane. Lead on, my 
Prince! she sent back on a burst of her own mental power! 

   The Prince of the Kurushani looked at K'a'lia once again, and with a surge 
of his own telepathic strength, left her immune from the agony her son felt. 
She would slumber without dreams, but in peace, until sunrise. 

   The two of them shot from the cave, the rocks of the Valley seemingly 
giving birth to a white lightning bolt that split the blackness of nite in the 
diminishing light of the Pridefires. 

   Morning light and a whisper of the cold wind told him that he was still 
alive, much to his surprise. Before he tried to rise, he braced himself, 
expecting the anvils that rang in his head to drive him insane. He stood again 
slowly, almost painfully. He expected to feel a spear lance thru his ears, but 
instead, he felt his balance return and his double vision fade and his eyes 
sharpen to clarity that seemed to rival the mountain at sunrise. He stood up 
full and strong, letting the breeze hit him square in the muzzle. He braced 
himself to be sick again, and felt only a hunger pang creep softly thru his 
belly. He resisted the temptation to eat, not knowing what the mountain held 
for him. It was the last of his food, and he wanted to save it. 

   He padded around on soft paws for a time, but as the light and shadow 
changed outside the cave, he came to know that every second he lingered was a 
second that he was separated from the peak and his father. The thought and 
image of the peak had pushed him up half a mountain, but now it was the 
thoughts of Tal that pulled at him as strongly as the energy that radiated 
from the mountain top. 

   His father was a ghost to him. He had never dared say so to his mother, but 
the only lasting sensation second son and father had ever shared was a moment 
in his dim past, when a dark, looming figure had held him for a time. He 
sensed the shared bonding, but had little chance to enjoy it. Soon he was 
gone, and the littlest Skiltaire was left with the mother and the Karakami who 
brought him up. He had learned less resentment and more understanding as he 
grew older and came to understand whom his absent father was, and the deep 
Tradition that forced their separation. 

   The Guardians of the Mountain. Master Han's teaching made them seem like 
another race. Yet, he was taught theirs was the same Savage blood that flowed 
in each one of his peers, and thru him as well. Perhaps Master Han had his 
reasons for never saying who or what his father was to the other in his group, 
but he could never reason why. K'a'lia spoke of his Duty infrequently, and 
spoke more often and lovingly of a departed Mate, and a Male that the young 
Skiltaire ought to emulate. He soon came to hunger for any scrap of 
information about him, and had worked since his youngest days to make some 
sort of picture of his absent father. As he mounted the steep but passable 
trail, he looked again at that incomplete image, and the steep ascent was made 
easier as he told himself that the missing knowledge his heart and mind 
hungered for waited above. So, he told himself, did the Skiltaire who he loved 
very much but had never seen. He climbed now not only for his Family, their 
honor, and his Khan, but for the missing part of himself as well. 

   Even if Tal would not give his consent for the Teaching of the Ancient 
Ways, perhaps, he thought to himself, he would gain something equally 
important. 

   He felt a sudden burst of warmth fill him, quite apart from the chill 
morning wind. He did not know where it came from, but as he climbed with new 
strength over some broken rocks, he had an idea. 
   He had tried to send to his father from the Valley, without success. Part 
of him understood why when he felt the natural energy field of the mountain 
tear thru his body. It was so strong that he wondered if even the Khan and a 
dozen of his people could send or receive while on the Mountain. 
   
   He walked a few paces up the steep incline, bracing himself against a rock 
as solid as some of the blocks in the stone quarry. He looked slowly upward, 
fearing to see the peak as much for the sight of it as the prospect of having 
his mind torn out once more. If he fell from this place, that would end him, 
and he might never be found. 

   But this time, something was different. He looked up less steeply than 
before, taking in the elevation of the cloud wrapped peak a bit at a time, 
rather than all at once. Again, he expected to see colours, and have his head 
seem to explode. He waited, a dread moment, looked full and deep at the peak. 

   His ears popped.. 

   He swallowed, inhaling deeply.. 

   His body gave a sudden shiver, and was still. He was light headed and his 
body quivered a bit, more from his own expectations than from the effect. He 
felt himself, and realized that he shook not from the ill effects of the 
unique energy of the mountain, but in harmony with it!! 

   His young body had found a harmonic of the peak as the energy flowed thru 
him! He stopped his fear and found the will to let what he felt flow over 
himself from the inside. Instantly, the slight chill of the morning air faded 
from his coat, and the last vestiges of his ringing headache were snuffed out 
as if it had never been! He felt good again. Rested, his hunger forgotten, and 
a little bit warm! 

   He smiled a bit, laughing slightly to and at himself! What had caused him 
to be so afraid? He did not permit himself to become careless as he found and 
followed his twisting path up the steep mountain grade. One misplaced paw 
could still kill him, and he still had half of the Kamiyama to challenge him. 

   The ashen stone was of a different type than the black rock he had 
encountered below. No great projections, or scars, just a steady upward path 
of unbroken rock and ice coated snow that seemed to stretch upward forever. He 
would set his sight on one place he could see not far above him as he pulled 
and pushed himself upward over the inclined rock face. He found a new way of 
climbing, using his body like a spring after wedging tightly between a lower 
stone and a higher one. Rather then just pulling his body upward as dead 
weight using his strong forelimbs, his heavy hind legs became like a frog's. 
He sprang upward nimbly from pawhold to pawhold, using his forelimbs and 
strong black paws to catch himself if he slipped on the occasional snowdrift 
between what seemed to be mammoth plates of rock that made up the 
mountainside. This was a more intense climb, he thought. Below, the lay of the 
stones helped a climber, if he was careful. At this height, there was only 
snowbanks and smooth stone, broken by widely spaced outcrops of the same 
grayish white stone. Once or twice he gambled that solid stone lay beneath an 
oddly shaped snowbank. The penalty for loosing was a long, steep slide 
downward over the rocks he had climbed a second and third time. Yet, for all 
the scrapes and abrasions the ragged stones inflicted on him despite his thick 
coat, there was always a nearby pawfull of snow or piece of ice to salve the 
burning wounds. 

   He gained ground slowly, with a mixture of pain and fortitude. Once, he 
stopped to rest laying down only slightly as he straddled another outcropping 
of stone. His breathing was regular and strong. He seemed to have become used 
to the altitude. There was something special about this place. As he drew in 
deep breaths, he could taste water on his tongue. The air was bracing, and a 
fine mist hung close to the mountain side. He lingered as long as he dared, 
enjoying the welcome cool respite before he resumed his springing climb up the 
face of the rock. Another hour and thousand feet behind him, he was struck 
with a sudden fatigue. He found himself wishing for that cool place below him. 
He had the presence of mind to look back, and down at where he had been and 
felt a surprise. The ledge where he had paused was in the midst of a cloud!! 

   The Scrolls said that the Sacred Mountain defied time and space. For the 
first time, from what he felt was forty-five thousand feet, he understood the 
meaning of that cryptic passage. He felt momentary elation. Two thirds of his 
quest lay behind him. but in the next moment, he turned with new resolve to 
the third that lay ahead, thinking again and again as he climbed of who he 
would meet at his journey's end. 

   More and more, the rock face was covered now the ice encrusted snow so hard 
that he could walk on it like rock, if his claws would hold him. The geoscape 
turned completely white here and there, and the young Skiltaire came to 
realize another danger. Rocks and permafrost on the mountainside held back 
glacial snowbanks so heavy that someday they would win their struggle with the 
stones and cascade over the ground he climbed in a tide more destructive than 
any tidal wave. Now, he had to take greater care than before. One mis-step, 
one backslide on his part might break some of it free and cause the greatest 
of all mountain cataclysms--Avalanche! 

   Now, more than ever, he held quiet, not for fear of causing a slide, but 
instead listening against the wind for the telltale rumble, an ominous sound 
that meant nature, in her grand caprice had started one instead of he. If he 
began it, he would be it's first victim, and nothing after that would matter. 

   He swept the gloomy thought from his mind with a sudden urge to look at the 
stark but ruggedly beautiful panorama of the mountain. Again, he scolded 
himself. Feeling a place was as important as being there, and once again, he 
let his senses and instincts sweep control of him from his thinking mind. 
   
   As he mounted a rock,he stopped, held out a paw to find the face of the 
wind and turned full toward it. The wind seemed tame, almost benevolent after 
the violent shrieks and howls of the nite before. It had a light, slightly 
chill edge that felt good as it ruffed his stiff guardfur slightly. There were 
no animals within his range now, save himself. and yet the mixture of sound 
that his ears heard had not diminished. It had only changed composition, as if 
another conductor had picked up nature's baton. 

   The lightly blowing wind gushed, eddying behind his ears and filling them 
with what sounded like the laughter of the very young. There was a fine 
hissing sound as wind lifted loose snow on the ice pack to the heights of the 
mountain wind. Some of it, touched by the clouds that seemed to adorn the peak 
above, returned as tiny slivers of ice that made a unique sort of tinkling 
sound as they fell against the stones and shattered. And then, he noticed the 
sounds of himself. His breathing was deeper now, strong and slightly faster as 
his unique lungs worked to pull oxygen from the rich atmosphere that was 
becoming slightly thinner with each upward pace he took. 

   He found a special pleasure in the crunching sound his strong paws made as 
they seemed to pop thru the thin spots of the ice crust. A firm, solid but 
soft crunching sound that seemed to echo the rhythm of his walk. He had never 
told his Karakami, but it had been his paws that had finally convinced him 
that he could undertake and fulfill this unique quest. The moment he found 
himself able to break rocks with their solid, well muscled flexibility, he 
knew that if his mind could begin the climb, the body and paws that Shyia had 
gifted him would and could finish the undertaking. 

   How many had stood at this place before him, he wondered to himself. The 
Scrolls said that if you opened your instincts and feelings you could feel 
impressions of those who had come before you. They said that the Kamiyama 
changed one's sprint, and part of the Sacred Mountain's price for the changing 
was that part of your energy stayed always on the Kamiyama. He thought this 
fanciful and romantic until he stood upon the mountain. Now, he would swear to 
its truth to the last of his life. He cleared his mind and stilled himself 
until the only sound his ears could hear was the near and distant hammering 
that was his heart. 

   He let his mind stop bringing him the sounds and scents around him. He 
channeled his senses from a feedback to his brain into that part of himself 
that was his natural gift. Trying to send once before had made him light-
headed and sick. Rather than trying to send thoughts, he found himself sending 
a simple sine wave form of mental power that was the harmonic of the Kamiyama 
around him. he sent it outward with no power save itself behind it, and 
wondered what his mind's eye might see.. 

   They came in flashes, like sun rays over the horizon at dawn. Each lasted 
only a minuscule part of a second, but his mind and senses worked like a 
superb camera, freezing each impression like a woodcut image on his probing 
mind. 

In the rocks..the after image of a young Lion, his slight but large figure 
recognizable to the Young Skiltaire. 

    Prince Ryokyo! 

   The young chosen Ruler of the people had been here, and judging by the 
image his senses captured, at an age only slightly greater than his own! The 
bashful monarch to be had evaded the question when asked, and now he knew why! 

   He decided to try something. Without pressing into the realm of conscious 
thought, he tried to exert a measure of control over the feeder wave that 
captured the images of the mountain's history. He allowed his own composite 
image of his father to filter into his seeking thoughts. 

   It began with painful slowness, exciting him so that it nearly forced his 
eyes wide with wonder. Then, in a moment, he was there, with such a three 
dimensional clarity that the sight and the feeling of his image might as well 
have been the avalanche he had sought to avoid! 

   It knocked him over, sweeping him away with a flash of energy more intense 
than the dawn.It was as if he had tried to seize the sun with his paws! 

   He forced his squinting eyes open, sat up and shook himself clear of the 
snowbank he had been blasted into. His whole body shook as if newborn! 

   He permitted himself a deep, and heavy exhale, the very air in his lungs 
seemingly turned to static electricity by the seer power of the image he had 
felt..!! The image..!! He shut his eyes again, desperately hoping to recall 
some fragment of it to add to his puzzle piece picture!! 

   The half breath bolted from his lungs..He staggered backwards and fell 
again, crumpled to the rocks, catatonic with utter disbelief!! The image he 
had treasured for so long was erased, and in its stead, at the slightest 
thought of him, there was something as real as his image of himself!! 

   He was...Huge!! More than half again as large as Master Han, the largest of 
his kind he had ever seen! Sleek blue-black shimmering fur with a mask of 
white about his muzzle and throat.. The glow of his pure crimson red stripe 
almost blinding in its incandescent intensity..Hazel eyes that shined like a 
volcanic glow, blazing with a spirit so utterly Savage that just the aura of 
the image cowed him instantly..He called it up again as it began to fade, half 
afraid to see him again. He stood still, breathless, and looked in awe at the 
image of the father he had yet to know. 

   "Get Up, My Son!! Savages bow before no one!" a hard, deep voice commanded 
him. 

   "Father!!??" 

   "Get up and Climb! The Sacred Mountain is yours, if you can proclaim it. I 
wait for you above." 

   Before he heard the last of his Father's words, all image of him was gone, 
and the young Savage was left with an empty space inside and the sad sound of 
the wind in his ears. 

   He wanted to cry! 

   And Shout for Joy!! 

   Shouts of joy and tears of anguish merged inside him, blocking any sound 
from his throat or muzzle.  

   He rose from the ground and looked up at the cloud bound peak above him. 
How many times had he run from the Meadow and back? Now, only twice this 
distance kept him from the summit and Tal! 

   He drew a deep breath, to help charge his lungs with the thin air, and then 
another and another, to charge his body and mind with something beyond 
electricity! He recalled the words of the Scrolls, echoed by his Father. The 
Kamiyama was his..The Sacred Mountain was his birthright..He was a Savage..An 
Astreli..His race had kept the Mountain forever, and always would! 

   He looked up at the invisible summit, couched in thick clouds and 
snarled..Growled....ROARED at the top of his voice as he bolted back up the 
rocks!! 

   "THIS MOUNTAIN IS MINE!!!" He Shouted. "MINE TO ME AND MY RACE! I CLAIM IT 
FOR THEM!!" He roared at the peak above as he vaulted over the mountain side, 
tens of feet at a time! 

   Surging toward the peak now, and gulping the air between shouts, he felt 
his head begin to buzz like a live honeycomb.. 

   On he raced, shouting, roaring and snarling, trying with all his soul to be 
heard on the peak and across the Valley far below!! 

   His paws began to feel like iron in their weight, but his energy added 
measure for measure to his iron will as on and up he ran.. 

   His breaths came in halves now, yet from somewhere inside him, he found air 
to continue his shout as he dashed over loose rocks and charged thru the 
white, misty bodies of snow laden clouds... 

   Up...Up..Up..! The roar in his ears matched the one in his voice now. He 
could draw no more, it seemed, of the thin air, so he cast his body into his 
fire to fuel himself...He felt burning pain sear each muscle..His limbs seemed 
broken..They refused to move, yet he threw himself ahead, upward still more 
and over the rocks.. 

   His Father... 

   His Pride... 

   His People... 

   HIS Mountain..!!!!! 

   The fire consumed him, seeming to snuff him out like a candle 
flame..Suddenly, he was falling..Falling...upward, and forward..into 
blackness!! 

   The concussion of solid ground crashing against his body shocked him into 
consciousness. For a moment, he lay dead still, and tried to draw a breath. 

   It was if every fibre of his lungs were filled with red hot coals! He 
screamed..No roar of defiance, but of pure agony! Pain so profound, it snapped 
his eyes open wide.. 

   He lay on cold white ground, oddly flattened for a Mountainside, and free 
of rocks. When a gnarled tree crossed his odd vision, he reasoned that his 
senses had given themselves up with the air. As he lay there, four blue-black 
paws appeared before his vision... 

   He looked up, his bright hazel eyes trying to focus. They were matched by 
another set very like his own. 

   "Away with Visions..My Father and the Mountain..Must reach the peak..." he 
said weakly, without Breath.. 

   "So have you done, My fine son..So have you done!!" 

   The image of real fur and solid flesh reached downward to pluck him up from 
the ground of the summit! He barely felt the enormous Skiltaire press him 
close and gentle, handling his smaller Mustelid offspring as if he were 
scarcely more than a doll! 

   Suddenly, his hazy mind matched the moment from one his mind could barely 
recall..In less than one heartbeat, all the time between that moment and this 
ceased to have meaning! 

   Father? he sent weakly..Tal, my.. 

   "Father!" he said the word aloud, in a profound whisper. 

   Instantly he snuggled deeply into the huge Adult male's shinney blue-black 
fur. To his delight, it almost seemed to swallow him alive! He felt the warmth 
and security of his Father near him as he slid off into the deepest, gentlest, 
sleep of his life! 

   Tal picked up his offspring delicately, as if the solid young male 
Skiltaire would fall to pieces under his paws. As Tal carried him back to the 
entrance tunnel not far distant, he looked down and silently marveled at his 
second son. 

This, he thought to himself, was the runt?? What marvel had touched the 
offspring that both Tal and K'a'lia would die before the first full moon? 

   Now as he held his progeny, Tal paused to wonder at the marvel that the 
Mountain seemed to give to him. Their first born had died so young, and now it 
was as if the Mountain had propagated another to him! 

   It was never as if the weaker sibling had been unloved, but the loss of the 
eldest son among their people was seen as something of a stigma. Before Tal 
could influence his second born, the Call of the Mountain touched the Savage 
hunter, and he had been parted from them ten months out of the rolling year 
ever since that season so long ago... 

   Longer than he dreamed, by the look of the fine figure of young Savage he 
laid on a wooden platform bed and swathed in many layers of rugs, robes and 
hides. Tal put a paw to his son's forehead.. 

   Ka'a'matchu..He thought...Altitude sickness..The elder smiled as he 
remembered his first weeks after volunteering to become a Guardian. He had 
staggered around the summit for days with the Khan, as his lungs acclimated to 
the thin but oxygen rich air. From a baked clay vessel beside the firepit, he 
took a sprig of plant with leaves as black as tar. He crumpled it casually 
into a fired clay cup, and ladled in some steaming water. He stirred the mix 
slightly, until the fresh water of the snowmelt took on an awful smell, and an 
inky color. 

   What Tal was about to do was a terrible way to greet his Son, but it was 
for his own good.. 

   Tal pressed a paw gently bit firmly over the younger Skiltaire's nose. His 
Son's muzzle dropped open and he continued to breathe. Tal waited until the 
timing was right and poured the nasty herbal medicine down the young 
mustelid's throat all at once, massaging his son's throat, forcing him to 
swallow gently by pure reflex! 

   The Father finished his loving treachery, and then jumped back, remembering 
in turn the effect it had on a full grown adult, let alone it's natural havoc 
with anyfurry younger than he. 

   Six layers of hides, or six of iron could not hold him down! His youthful 
body bolted high off of the bed in a reflexive spasm of pure and absolute 
revulsion as a taste like coal tar found it's mark in his unsuspecting 
stomach!! At the apex of his flight, he coughed, gasping and dry heaving all 
at once, as the Mountain grown herb nearly seemed to kill before it cured!! 

   Tal vaulted forward again, catching his Son before he could crash to the 
bedstead again. He swept him up and over his sleek black shoulder in a basket 
catch. He gave his only son a deep, firm slap between the shoulder blades and 
the blue-grey male drew a single, deeply gasped breath..before going 
completely limp in his father's arms. 

   Tal set him down gently on his own two feet, and held him by the shoulders 
for a gentle shake. It brought the young Savage back to a blurred reality. 
   Instantly, the young Son and the elder father collapsed into one another, 
no medicine except love affecting their mutual embrace!! In less time than it 
took for the pair to touch, their minds met in another far more intricate and 
closer embrace. Mind opened to mind, and across the thought link that was one 
shared palette of sensations and experiences, two and a half long years poured 
across at them in half as many seconds! 

   Tal held his son at out at shoulder length again, and let the practiced 
eyes of a pure predator sweep over the lean, well-muscled, and strong 
Skiltaire who was his heir. His eyes blazed with the kind of unspoken love and 
admiration that only Father and son might share!! 

   But before they could come to know one another again, Tradition bound both 
of them with an old, comfortable, rope, a little worn but still binding enough 
to be respected. Tal was the Guardian of the Sacred Kamiyama. According to 
Law, no one had any right to be here save the Khan, or one with his blessing. 
Tal had felt all that had come to his Son before this moment, and knew that 
his old friend and his Son shared the unique relationship he had always hopped 
that they would, in spite of his inability to be with them and plant the 
seeds. But Tradition broken was Tradition lost. The questions he was compelled 
to ask and his manner in their asking had been set and followed by twenty 
generations of his people since the first Astreli had set paws on the summit 
that was the height and crown of their land and planet. 

   "Why have you come, invader?!" Tal asked with a sudden, loud and visceral 
snarl in his deep, hard voice. 

   Seeing his mammoth Father in the full blossom of a Hunter's Savagery was 
enough to frighten the youth. He was terrified for a half a heartbeat, until 
he felt the spirit of his quest push it out of him with a mighty heave half a 
heartbeat later. 

   "I seek the peak of my soul and the heart of our People." He answered 
strongly, allowing the words of the Tradition to crush his momentary fear. 

   Upon hearing these words, Tal's manner changed slightly, but his attitude 
was still defensive. His son knew better than any that it was his Father's 
duty and pledge to rend to bits any who set paws on the summit without the 
Khan's permission. 

   "You seek the soul of the Kurushani People, say you.." the Guardian snapped 
quickly. "How shall you approve it?" he asked, eyeing his own son as if the 
next moment might make them mortal enemies. 

   His son knew that it might. If he could not prove himself worthy to be 
here, his own father would dispatch him as easily as the first Guardians who 
held the summit and the safety of the valley below from the hands of the enemy 
during the dark times. 

   "Oh Guardian.." he began, being sure to send as well as speak his thoughts. 
"I have stood before the Khan.." 

   Tal nodded, listening intently with hard eyes. 

   "..We ate of bread and tea.." he added. 

   The expression on Tal's muzzle was cast in stone. He had yet to hear the 
words he needed. He growled, low and menacing, the sound of it shook the 
younger mustelid thru his bones. 

   "I feel this Mountain in me...!" he blurted out in quick desperation. "It 
is mine!!" the smaller Skiltaire added, with a trace of defiance in his tone. 
His Posture changed, and he stood up to the Guardian. 

   "So say you??" Tal asked. "And how then stands Our Khan?" 

   He let all the impressions of the elected Ruler of his People flow quickly 
through his mind. Their sensations left him able to speak only one word. 

   "Serene.." 

   Tal eyed him once more, up and down, his burning eyes seeming to dissect 
the youth. They cut thru his flesh and fur and sank deeply into his soul. For 
a moment, both were still as if frozen by the mountain wind at this moment of 
destiny. 

   "It is well. Welcome. Your Quest is done in Pride. Welcome to the heart of 
our People." 

   It was then that the huge Skiltaire Hunter softened for a moment and added 
"Welcome Home, My Proud Son." 

   Tradition had been given its due, and Father and Son fell into a long and 
animated conversation made of both thoughts and words. The young Savage sent 
his elder the whole of his life since that fuzzy memory of days past. 

   The first hard days, and the beating.. 

   His Training, partly at Shyia's paws.. 
   
   The ceremony, and challenge, and his wish for the quest.. 

   But the warmest sensations that Tal felt from his splendidly grown child 
were for his Mother, Karakami, Prince and Khan.. 

   That was as it ought to be. His Son's emotions for the one who had helped 
raised him were particularly strong. He was surprised that the feeling did not 
extend as far for Han. 

   Tal reacted to the thought of the training Master's image with a swell of 
mental energy edged with proper respect for his station, but with a certain 
satirical overtone. Tal sent back a montage of vivid mental pictures that 
showed the pair were contemporaries and competitors who each shared points of 
envy with the other. 

   But Tal's thinking paused for a long moment as he heard his Son asking to 
undertake the Ancient Ways, and how his offspring had come to learn of them so 
well, nite after nite in his absents. 

   "So, my Son without name, you overtook The Mountain to prove of yourself, 
seek this one, and seek as well of the Ancient Ways?" Asked Tal as his Son's 
send ended with a warm burst of happiness at the sight of him. 

   "Yes, my Father." The son replied shortly, with the same taciturn manner 
that had won his People renown. 

   "My name is Tal..use it!!" The huge blue-black Skiltaire snapped, instantly 
banishing forever the wall that usually existed between father and infant son, 
and replacing it with a footing between adult and parent. 

    The youth's brain nearly exploded with questions for this fantastic 
personality that was a part of him. As Tal set out bread and tea, and son ate 
with father for the first time, it was Tal's turn to send to his son. 

   His thought montage began with images of his mate. K'a'lia still held his 
heart and soul in spite of separation, time and distance, and the depth of the 
passion he felt for her surprised their offspring. The youngest of the family 
replied with a stream of images that helped bridge the days since their 
parting. Both males had been touched, and in turn shaped by her quiet, 
resolute strength and enduring love for them both in part and whole. Both knew 
that it was her fondest wish that they could again be a family united, but 
knowing that Pride came before all else, and admiring her mate, even while 
K'a'lia pined for him. 

   Later, there came the tens of questions a son asks of a father, each and 
every one, it seemed, held back until this moment to be recalled for the 
asking and answering. Priceless stories and legends flew from Tal's memory to 
his, as if he had known them always! They matched and magnified the stories 
that K'a'lia had whispered to him nite after nite. Each of them was recalled 
by him with a new meaning of depth detail and life! 

   They talked beyond the sun and far into the moonlite before pausing again 
long enough to eat or drink together. One of the Son's fondest wishes went 
unanswered however. Winter still held the mountain deep in it's grip, and 
there was little game to hunt at this altitude. If he would tempt the mountain 
during the peak's brief springtime, Tal promised to show him another world all 
together. Father and Son could hunt together then, paw beside paw, just as Tal 
had always hoped to do! 

   It was near to mid nite when Tal noticed the soft fire glowing from the 
pouch that his Son wore around his neck. He indicated it with a gesture and 
smiled. 

   "You have seen the grato, My Son?" 

   "Yes, Tal..Beautiful!!" he replied, his hazel eyes gleaming like twin 
stars. 

   May I see your crystal, Tal sent quietly. 

   The Hunter watched as his son took the pouch from around his neck with a 
touch of gentle reverence. As he placed it softly on the table in front of 
him, the rawhide strap relaxed, and the pursed pouch fell open, unveiling the 
soft peach quartz stone that seemed to have taken on a fiery soul of its own!! 

   The young Skiltaire could not hide his admiration and awe. His Father 
looked at his change of expression and smiled, nodding knowingly. 

   "You and the stone have felt the energy of the Mountain." Tal explained. 

   He shook his head, remembering how that same head had rung like a bell as 
the peak had shown him its power. 
   
   "You have come onto another place.." He went on. "Almost another world, but 
at the same time, the very soul of this one." Tal's hard, serious voice 
softened as he spoke of the Mountain that had become both his duty and his 
second home. He put his paw gently over his son's strong back. 
   Come, he sent..Let us rest together. On the morrow, we shall get us down to 
the Valley again, and as we journey, I shall show you the wonders of the 
Kamiyama. 

   Us, my Father?? The younger sent back in surprise. 

   Yes, my Son. As Guardian, I may leave here to see those who have come here 
back to their homes. The peak is timeless. It can survive without me for a 
short while. 

   As his son leapt softly onto the bed where he had laid before, Tal moved to 
douse the oil lamp that brightened the room. As the room darkened, the 
Skiltaire could see the soft glow of the peach coloured stone whose fire would 
carry them softly thru the nite. Both fell into a gentle sleep with the colour 
of the stone in their eyes. 

   The nite was without the sound of the tortured wind. The peak was silent, 
but not desolate. This nite was full of warm fur and gentle touches as to his 
surprise, his huge father took him in a gentle and loving embrace as they 
slept side by side! It was something he had dreamed of forever! The only way 
the nite could be more perfect was if K'a'lia were there! He responded openly 
as he had the first instant they met, snuggling deeply and openly into the 
thick, soft blue-black fur. His greatest, gentlest reward was to hear his 
Father emit a soft, utterly contented "Chirp" as he and his son became a 
single mass of intertwined fur! 

   It was mildly ironic. As they slept together, the numerous hides that had 
wrapped him earlier lay aside in a pile, unused. Sixty thousand and more feet 
above the floor of the Valley in air and space that he had imagined as empty 
and cold, the littlest Skiltaire had never been warmer or more fulfilled. 

   The morning came not with the bright dawn that was greeting and Tradition 
in the Valley below, but with a soft glimmer of awareness as both mustelids 
stirred at the same moment, in spite of the lingering darkness surrounding the 
summit. 

   This time, it was the son who rose and lit the lamp as his father prepared 
their breakfast. This repast was not only their traditional black bread and 
tea but included nuts and sprigs of herbs that his parent selected carefully 
from a large clay jar beside the table. Tal took a large portion for himself, 
and left his offspring but little to breakfast upon. He smiled at his hurt 
expression. 

   "Before You can eat here, My Son, you must learn not to be sick. After you 
have eaten, I shall teach you to breathe." Tal said. 

   The confused look on his son's muzzle broadened Tal's infrequent smile. 
   "When your father and he who would become Khan first became to the summit, 
the air hit us just as it did you. The air upon the Kamiyama is rich but thin. 
Come, I will show you as we share the sunrise." 

   The smaller of the pair ate his three nuts hungerly, fearing for a moment 
that sickness or his Father might steal them away again. Tal passed him a 
sprig of a broadleaf grass that smelled pungent. He drew back from it. 

   "Eat!" He father commanded. 

   Reticently, he took the tuft of grass and bit it off from between his 
father's black digits. It tasted like sour oranges!! 

   "The oil of Kamusha grass will steady your stomach. Remember it well." 

   Tal lead the way up the steep, narrow tunnel of the lodge, and waited for 
his son  to join him on the summit. Dawn's white light seemed to still the 
wind which seemed to race unchecked over the rocks until shadow vanished from 
the peak. As the Guardian and his son emerged into the morning twilight, 
everything around them was serene and benign, as if the Kamiyama had paid them 
both tribute! 

   His head and spirit were in no condition a day ago for the young one to 
appreciate the panorama that now opened before his wondering hazel eyes. It 
was indeed enough to steal his breath away, but when his lungs felt as if they 
were ablaze a moment later, the sight and the sensation became terrifying! 

   Tal caught him by the scruff of the neck, and then took him firmly around 
the rib cage with his powerful forelimbs. His father squeezed gently forcing 
the half hearted mistaken breath from his son's lungs. A touch of pain helped 
him overcome his fear, and then Tal spoke to him gently and firmly. 

   "The air here is thin...You must breathe in a little at a time, all the 
time..You seek to gulp down the air...Now..Breathe in..slowly.." 

   Tal relaxed his vice like grip on his son's deep, well-muscled chest, and 
felt the lungs beneath it begin to fill with air again. For the youth, it 
seemed as if he was trapped underwater, breathing, or trying to, thru a bit of 
broken reed! He began to gulp again, but stopped himself almost before Tal's 
gentle squeeze scolded him. Instead of letting his feelings run wild over him, 
he focused on drawing a single, deep, steady breath that filled his craving 
lungs to capacity as his bloodstream and brain seemed to float in a sudden 
glut of oxygen! 
    Behind him, holding him close and admiring the subtle strength of his 
son's body, Tal felt his rhythm change, his breaths falling into the same 
pattern that the Guardian had learned to live by. As his progeny fell into a 
steady, regular respiration, Tal relaxed his grip and let his son stand on his 
own again. 

   As Tal stood beside him, the Hunter could not help but notice the look of 
pure, simple wonder on his son's muzzle! Suddenly, it was as if he had 
breathed this way every moment of his life! He felt his own Ki rush up to meet 
him, there on the mountaintop, as if the sprint of his life energy had been 
the prize he had come to claim! 

   "Keep to this way of the breath my son.." Tal told him. "When you return to 
the valley below, you shall be able to draw more energy from one breath of 
thick air than others shall be able to gather in ten. Your strength and senses 
will grow strong here, and below, few shall be able to match you." The 
Guardian's teachings were more than words,for as the youth drew breath after 
slow full breath, it was as if his entire bloodstream was becoming a flow of 
electricity, changing one fluid for another in equal measure, but unequaled 
power! The young Skiltaire rocked back and forth slowly not from vertigo but 
from the mild euphoria as his lungs seemed now to pull air beyond oxygen into 
himself, filling his lungs and body more fully than he had ever dreamed 
possible! 

    It began as a small sound founded on the end of one breath, built thru 
another and set loose upon the mountain top by the crescendo of a third. A 
low, guttural sound at first, it swept into something born somewhere deeper 
inside him than his lungs could ever reach. He felt every follicle of his coat 
seem to stand erect under the force of the sound born inside him! It was a 
living entity now, and it sought a place and time to be born from his muzzle. 
It found it's place in the beginning of his breath, and as the savage mountain 
climber let all the sensations of the Kamiyama become in himself, he marked 
the moment of renaissance within himself with a full bodied, roaring growl! 

   Standing beside him, His head canted upward, the Son missed the sight of 
the Father, his lush blue-black coat rising to stand on end as well, in a 
purely instinctual tribute to the Power of the sound, and the Young Guardian 
who had given it birth using the spirit of himself merged with the soul of the 
Sacred Mountain. 

   Miles below, as a pure white streak of strength seemed to catapult over the 
coarse black volcanic rocks. The sense of it reached his feeling before the 
echo touched his ears, Ryokyo stopped where he stood on the slanting rock, and 
took in the feeling like a thirsty traveler stopped at a well for drink. Above 
and behind him, still clinging to his snowy coat like a dark stickleburr, the 
breathless, dizzy young Skiltaire felt the young Great Cat tremble as if 
someone had rung his soul like a bell! 

   HE LIVES!! AND UPON THE SUMMIT HE STANDS!! Ryokyo sent to Shyia  on a band 
of energy so broad that it took all of her natural gift to keep from being 
stunned by its power and modulation. 

   What now, My Prince? Shyia sent back, her mind snapped to a state of 
crystal clear awareness by both the power and content of the thought 
transmission. Shall we get us down, or can we meet them as they journey 
homeward? What says the Law? she asked mind to mind. 

   "The Law sets no conduct.." He spoke as all Astreli did when they spoke of 
the Law, out of respect for its venue. "Nor does Tradition restrict us, for or 
against." He said, with a pause. "So now, it is we who must write our own 
Tradition.." he said firmly. "What say you, Shining One?" The Kurushani Khan 
to be asked his friend. 

   "We shall climb onward, upward and come down together, My Prince!" Shyia 
said, with ringing affirmation in her voice. 

   "Bravo, My Fine Pridemate! The Chosen future ruler sent back strongly. 
Indeed, there is some of the Sacred Mountain in the Young One's kin, I will 
avow. 

   The Kurushani Samurai vaulted ahead, as if launched in part by the energy 
he had sensed and shared from above. Above and behind him, out of his sight 
but not his senses, Shyia swooned lightly, blushing like a dawn rose at the 
poetic complement she had won from him. She reset herself in his coat, her 
senses now sharp, alert and added to his as they seemed to flow together up 
the craggy mountainside as if upon airborne steps! 

   Father and Son Guardian were free to eat now, all fear and threat of 
becoming ill blasted away from the younger Skiltaire by the legendary energy 
of the Kamiyama. For a time, the pair had become true to their mustelid 
selves, gamboling and cavorting in the mountaintop's thick, snowy mantle 
before going back down into the lodge to satisfy a truly earned hunger. They 
sat and ate in silence, their muzzles filled with bread, tea, fruits, and 
nuts, all grown upon the Mountain and gathered in the brief weeks of lush, 
green spring that the peak knew each year. Their muzzles issued no sound, but 
their minds and hearts now shared a bridge that seemed as wide as a thousand 
cut trails. Across it, from Father to Son, and from Senior Guardian to Junior, 
there flowed rivers of thought, emotion and experiences in answer to the 
youth's endless thirst for knowledge of this place, his people, and the father 
he had only dreamed of a day ago. 
   
   It was not custom, nor habit, but the pair of Savages lingered over their 
meal as daylite replaced the deep darkness that wrapped the summit. Almost a 
brace of hours lapsed before Tal collected their plates and his son felt the 
Guardian's powerful mind turn to their journey down the Mountain. There were 
tasks to do before he could leave, even for the shortest span of time. 

   Tal beckoned his son near with a thought, and drew his attention near to a 
place in the floor of the lodge set with the hard ashen grey rocks from the 
peak below the summit. Within the small hearth, there burned b brilliant 
whitish blue fire that at first glance was hard to look at, but after one 
sight, the young Skiltaire could not have looked away for all of the planet 
beneath his paws. The single body of etherial flame seemed to have an 
animation and a sense of being all its own. Wordlessly awed, son turned and 
matched minds with father. 

   This crucible, and the fire it holds as burned upon this summit since the 
Dark Times, when Astreli paws first fell here. So high are we that we cannot 
kindle the Pridefire each nite, so this one we guard alight always. It burns 
of the gas within the Mountain, my Son, and Tradition sets forth that it burns 
as well with the spirit of those who tend and keep it. 

   Tal paused in his thoughts to take two large black stones from a small pile 
of them that lay in the corner. He weighed them carefully, judging and 
considering his choice of stones carefully. Satisfied with the pair he had 
selected, he held them out to his son with a single thought. 

   Here, see for yourself, my Son..Place these on either side of the flame. 

   Me, Tal??, his Son thought back. It is not my place to tend the flame. This 
deed is yours to do, my Father. 

   It is the place of every Kurushani Savage, My Son..And part of your 
birthrite. You break no law, or Tradition. I bid you do this out of my love 
for you. It is my rite. Tal sent to his heir. 

   The young Savage took the pair of slightly greasy stones from his Guardian 
father. He turned again, stones in paws, to look at the pulsating blue-white 
heart of the flame. For a moment, the practical side of him feared being 
burned, but a moment later, some part of his instincts overrode the other. He 
looked again at Tal, nodded his silent gratitude and reverently knelt before 
the hearth. 
    
   He took one stone in each paw, and slowly drew them near the base of the 
flame. He had told himself a moment before that some singed fur was a small 
price to pay for what his Father wished him to do. He felt the heat of the 
flame on his fur as he placed the stones at the base of the flame, but it was 
a gentle, almost benign heat, whose light grew softer and fuller as the flame 
touched the stones. Tal put a paw on his shoulder and drew him back so his son 
could watch what Tal knew would come next.. 

   The flame flickered, and seemed for a moment to pass into a pure white 
colour, and then as it fed from the Stones the young Skiltaire had handled, 
the flame seemed to pass thru every colour in the spectrum before mixing them 
in delicate tones to flare for a moment, and than burn with a deep and 
energetic fire that was peach coloured!! 

   He looked suddenly at his father, and then downward, to the pouch that hung 
around his neck. It too glowed brightly, with a seed of the coulored fire, but 
with a heat that came form more than flame! Once more, Tal saw the awed look 
on his son's muzzle. 

   The Carbon Stones come from deep inside the Kamiyama, he sent to his Son, 
continuing the gentle Teaching that had gone on over their morning meal. Now 
the Flame shall burn for a score of days untended, because you have put your 
energy into it thru the stones. 

   Why with that colour, My father? Hie Son asked. 

   Tal answered, knowing full well his Son already knew. 

   "Did not Master Han Teach you that all Kurushani have a colour onto 
themselves, One that is theirs alone to fire?" Tal asked aloud. 

   His Son nodded. 

   "In tending the flame, you have put your own fire into the flame. The 
Colour the flame reflects is the colour of yourself." Tal explained. 

   His Son looked slowly back into the heart of his fire. The Flame no longer 
seemed to be something so etherial, but something that had found a place 
inside him, and then into the heath he had kindled. It was a part of him, and 
somehow, he carried its heat and light inside him like an old friend, rather 
than something beyond himself. 

   After a moment of reflection, Tal led him away. 

   "Never become so taken into thine own fire that you forget to share its 
light, My Son..Come, we must get us down this Mountain, and back home. You 
have a Challenge to answer." Tal said, as he selected a few of his belongings 
and but them into a pouch. 

    In a moment, he was ready, and turned to the tunnel to leave without pomp 
or ceremony. 

   "Tal?" he asked of his Father as he turned to leave. 

   "Yes, My Son?" 

   For a long moment, the younger Skiltaire was unsure how to ask what he 
felt, so he allowed his thoughts to sublime, and sent them all to his parent 
to feel. 

   Yes, it is difficult to depart this place, even for a while. He sent back. 
As you now feel, this peak casts a magic all her own. You are under her spell, 
even as I continue to be. It is the fate of all who Guard this place, be it 
with their bodies, or their hearts. Come, we must get us down. 

   Pangs of regret shot thru him. Tal was both correct, and practical. And if 
his regret at leaving was so deep, how profound must his Father's be, after 
knowing the wonders of this place for whole years at a time? 

   "I am sorry, My Father..I thought only of myself." 

   Ahead of him in the ascending tunnel, Tal smiled, where his son could not 
see. He let the look and the feeling behind it stand as his unspoken answer. 

   Father and Son emerged from the lodge. The Younger trotted over to the edge 
of the peak, and paused at the edge of open space, trying to feel the best was 
to begin his climb down from this lofty ground. He gauged the grade with a 
paw, and found that it could be stood on if one leaned the way he wished to 
stand. He braced himself, turned around, and prepared to step backward down 
the Mountain side. Only as he set himself for the first step downward did he 
notice Tal, who made no move to join his offspring, and looked at the young 
Skiltaire oddly. The look alone was enough to stop him in mid-step. 

   "Are you not coming down with me, Tal?" He asked aloud. 

   "Why must the young always choose the hardest way?" Tal lamented aloud to 
the breeze on the peak. 

   "Is there another path, My Father?" the Son asked in reply. 

   "Climb down her face again if you will.." He answered back. "But fair 
choose to let me guide your steps, and I shall show you the Mountain you have 
not yet seen." Tal added quietly. 
   Silent and embarrassed at his impulsiveness, he pulled himself awkwardly 
over the summit, where before he had run, and trotted slowly to his Father's 
side. "Lead me home, Oh Guardian of the Kamiyama.." He said slowly, evoking 
the words that Tradition again demanded he speak. 

   "It is well." Tal said in reply. "Follow, and I shall bring you Home." 
Spoke the Guardian as Tradition dictated. Tal walked with deliberate slowness 
to a small opening partly hidden by stones in the up sloping part of the 
summit. He moved the stones easily, revealing a passage barely large enough 
for one of his imposing size to pass thru. Yet, as his Son watched in open 
muzzled awe, the Huge Savage slid easily into the opening in the rocks and 
vanished from sight as if he had never been upon the peak!! 

   A moment later a powerful send that seemed to come from the heart of the 
rocks touched his wondering mind. 

   Follow Along, My Son, and when you have passed thru the opening, replace 
the stones as they were before!! 

   The Second Son of Tal followed on a burst of pleasure and sudden surprise 
so complete, he nearly forgot his father's bidding about the stones. He knew 
this was well, because those of Savage Blood left no evidence of their passage 
for anyone to see, if they could help it. 

   As he slipped thru what seemed to be solid rocks into a narrow, steeply 
sloping tunnel capped by two hollowed out stones, he found there was enough 
room to turn about and replace the camouflaging stones. No enemy to come upon 
the summit a moment later would have any knowledge of who had been there, or 
better, who might watch and see every movement, hidden well by the rocks that 
were not stones! 

   This time, their would be no question about which path was the correct one. 
The narrow ledge upon which he stood seemed to be...Seemed to be..he wondered 
with surprise..Chiseled out of the very rocks...Just like those in the 
quarry!! 

    The Young Savage had a quiet moment of satori, and then raced along the 
narrow, sharply sloping path to stand a paw's width behind his Father, who 
loped ahead and way down the pitch black pathway as if the inside of the 
Mountain stood at full noon, while his son still gauged every pawfall 
carefully to avoid a misstep! 

   As young eyes grew used to the low light, he could see Tal ahead of him by 
a distance, but never out of his sight,or thoughts. The slope of the pathway 
seemed to twist and turn as it descended sharply with each step he took. After 
long hours of work and play on the quarry steps, the young Skiltaire found the 
path beneath his paws to be much their like, and with each body length he 
walked, he let instinct add to his confidence, and wipe away his apprehension. 
After some time of serpentine twisting and turning, the brazen youth dared to 
try to keep a pace with his elder as they trotted steadily down the inside of 
a Mountain! 

   As they came down together, here and there along the hidden trail, he could 
see the darkness broken by shafts of light as the pathway passed near and 
often branched into the ancient volcanic vents that now seemed to honeycomb 
the vast Kamiyama. Yet, his sharp, youthful senses also told him that not all 
of these passages were hospitable. More than one of those the Skiltaire 
trotted past had air flavored like brimstone, here, none could breathe, and 
just as the Scrolls forewarned, they only led out into space, and then forever 
downward, ending only in the fiery heart of the mystical Mountain that was 
their's to hold. 

   Some part of him tried again to keep a tally of his altitude, but held in 
the bosom  of the rocks, away and apart from the sun and sky, his senses knew 
only a world shaded in grey. Perhaps, he thought to himself after a time, it 
did not matter so much how high or low he was. Perhaps, this too, like many 
things of the Kamiyama, was a state of mind and spirit. Numbers knew only 
counting, Master Han had said. What was in mind and spirit passed far beyond 
them. Now, he came to know this lesson well, and would never forget its value. 
He cast numbers into the slight dust stirred by his paws, and in their place, 
commanded his senses and instincts to go out from him as they had before and 
draw upon his open mind a picture of this new place he was in.. 

   The warmth of it struck him first. After long hours on the face of the 
Mountain, and the bracing air of morning on the summit, he had grown well used 
to the chill but refreshing touch of the peak. Secreted now in a part of the 
Mountain's body, he was sheltered from the wind, and closer to her volcanic 
soul... No extremes of temperature told him of the core of molten rock this 
Mountain tapped, but a gentle heat, filtered thru countless layers of rock 
touched the pads on his paws as he moved with sure quickness along the narrow 
pawpath cut from the edge of the rock. 

   There were sounds too, even in this confined space. His ears tracked Tal 
now, just one body length ahead of him in the grey black darkness. His 
Pawfalls were light and quick for one of his size and strength! As he moved in 
the shadows, the Younger Skiltaire's mind painted him a second picture of what 
it would feel like to hunt with One of his Father's prowess, and he chilled 
with the excitement and promise the mental image brought him. The other sounds 
he heard came together in his ears, to form a simple but moving melody for him 
to move to as he loped along... 

   Pawfalls...Four to a beat.. Seemingly a counterpoint to Tal's, but not 
without syncopation.... 

   His own Breathing..Stili lite, and deep, The way Tal had shown him.. 

   The subtle, almost unhearable sound of his coat brushing on the walls of 
the tunnel.. 

   And finally, the soft, persistent sound that filled a part of his hearing 
he had never seemed to use before..His own heartbeat, softly pulsating in his 
ears..!!! 

   He took another moment apart from himself, to see his own form, and to test 
it slightly as he moved with steady energy down the path ahead. He had never 
taken any moment to appraise himself..He had never paused to feel the fine 
body that his Karakami had crafted with such loving slavery. It was odd, but 
only now, in motion, and in the midst of the heart of the mountain did the 
young Skiltaire first allow himself to feel his own well-balanced strengths.. 

   He had always been the smallest of his peers..K'a'lia had never held him 
back from anything accounting for his frailty, but he also knew that his 
Mother had passed many a worried hour because of what he lacked in size and 
stamina. Yet, both Mother and Son had taught one another early in life that a 
strong spirit built many bridges where there where rivers needed crossing. 
Suddenly, as he moved on in the shadows, his mind past over another 
experience..The one that had been the seeds of his changing under Shyia' s 
tutelage... 

    He had no want or will to fight back when his peers beat him. The shock 
and surprise he felt as their blows rained down on him had never allowed him 
to feel their pain. He still could not, and bore his peers no malice, for this 
was not the Way of Pridemates, yet,there might soon come a time when others, 
who doubted what he had found within himself, might again try to drive him 
away.. 

   How ought he answer?? 

   Battle?? He recalled the stunned reaction of his Karakami at the sight of 
the body that she had forged for him...His Mother's reaction was one he had 
always dreamed of, but it was Tal's open moment of absolute wonder that 
convinced him that the change in him was both real and profound. 

   Tal's stature among their people was nearly that of a legend. K'a'lia had 
sent to him many times during her still, quiet moments with her frail son that 
much might be expected of him one day because he was his Father's only 
surviving heir. Now, her thoughts rang back to him like a bellwether, as his 
mind raced ahead of his body thinking about what fate held for him in the 
valley that was now his second home. Seeing the power and grace of his father, 
he had come to realize quietly that his was a fighting stock, as sure as he 
lived. While he had no hunger for battle, especially with his own, nor 
anything as useless as a thirst for vengeance, His heritage and Savage Blood 
had been poured into a Samurai kata, and if battle for his place in his own 
Pride be his lot, he ought not shrink away from it. 

   His mind had turned to the worst possible outcome, and he forced himself to 
think of the alternatives, first because they were far more pleasant, and 
second because he had been taught never to do anything without looking at all 
the sides to a task. Shyia had given him that, along with his true body. 

     He had made friends on this quest of his..Firstmost, his own Father was a 
part of him again, and coming down at his side from the Sacred Mountain would 
be of great help to him. One glance from Tal could melt any who opposed him 
like the snow in high summer. His father thought enough of him to bring him 
down from the peak once it was his prize. Who would oppose that wordless 
gesture that spoke so highly of him? 

   Then, there was Ryokyo. Prince of the Kurushani. How that title and more 
befit the kind, wise young at soul Cat who was as much beloved by all of 
Astrel as his own Father. The Prince Regal was he to whom the young Skiltaire 
would have to approve what he had done. Coupled with the oath of Tal of the 
Kamiyama, who in all Kurusha would doubt what had been done? 

   And there was the Khan..Shen Dai Khan..The Great Khan...Not a title claimed 
by the mammoth snow Cat, but one bestowed freely on the forward thinking 
Monarch by the whole Kurushani People for his Leadership example. The Pack and 
belt that he wore had passed thru his paws, and had seen his climb upward as a 
silent partner, holding bits of his life for him while his paws had been 
filled with stones. Shen Dai Khan would know, even if everyone else failed to 
see what could not be seen. The Khan, who had stood where he had would feel 
the Kamiyama in him. That was his best and most fervent resolve. 

   His thoughts had gone so deep and ranged so far, that it took a mild shock 
from his instincts to slow down what had become a flat out run down the ledge 
and tunnel. Ahead of him, Tal had stopped, and waited for his wool gathering 
offspring to lope down the ledge to the spot where he waited. 

   My Son..! Tal sent to him on a booming wave that helped his thoughts return 
to the present. 
   Yes, Father? 

   Do not race with fate. Fate always wins in the end. To ease your mind, I 
would have you to see something. 
 
   Yes, Tal? sent the junior Skiltaire as he loped up to join his father where 
the tunnel widened a bit. Tal indicated a passage to the left with a glance. 
Follow me, he sent clearly, and in no wise stray from where I bid you walk. 
The ground we are upon is both beautiful and fatal in her ways. 

   The youth understood, and allowed his Father to take a two step lead as Tal 
lead him off of the main passageway. The tunnel they walked in was another 
outlet vent, carved thru the rock of the peak ages ago by fingers of lava that 
had run thru the mountain while it formed from her volcanic soul. 

   He heard the sounds of rushing water not far ahead, and felt the air fill 
with a very fine mist.He also tasted a new taste upon his tongue..It was 
flavoured like the soil, strong and heavy upon his tongue. It was then he saw 
the first blue flashes. At first he thought them mere reflections from some 
body of moving water beyond. That opinion fell a few paces later as Tal led 
him apiece down a narrow ledge and out onto an overhanging rock larger than 
the lodge dug into the summit far above. With a sweep of his paw, father bid 
the son to stand back from the edge, and to look down over it into the pool 
below.. 

   The Scrolls had spoken of it only in veiled poetry that the youth had 
thought to be rapture of the Mountain. But as the young climber cast eyes on 
the pool alive with flame that seemed to reach from the midst of the waters in 
endless riddle of fire and water, living together as one. 

   What think you, My Son? Tal asked from mind to mind, sensing his son's 
amazement and wonder at the spectacle of nature. 

   Fire and water..Two ends of the same thing. How is this so, my Father? 

   Senior and junior looked down together from their perch as the Guardian 
shared one of the Kamiyama's timeless wonders with his son. 

   Tal directed his gaze to what seemed to be a never ending stream of bubbles 
rising thru the water."Do you scent this place?" he asked his son. 

   Yes, Tal...Like old leaves and grass fallen in the mud to rot.. 

   "It is well." Tal answered, momentarily proud of his son's trust to his 
senses. 
   
   It is a gas, My Son, he sent in reply. It is as clear as the air, so you 
see it not, yet, it lingers upon the surface of these waters, also filled with 
the gas as it passes thru the liquid. The heat of this place fires the gas in 
the water, but the water also tames the fire, so the fire lasts only a moment 
to see...Water that burns, as was written in the Scrolls. Guard this sight 
well, my son, and never forget that even opposites can find harmony and life 
in nature's Way. We of the Savage Blood are like as to the flame, burning 
brightly, but never out of harmony with nature which flows around us as water. 
Do you learn, My Son? he sent finally. 

   Yes, My Father. I must flow as the water, while never fearing to hold the 
flame, for both are as one in the flowing, He sent to his father. 

   Tal looked at his progeny with shining eyes and bowed deeply as they stood 
together upon the great rock. Seeing Tal bow to him made the youth unsettled, 
but he returned the gesture without lowering his eyes to his father. 

   Hold this lesson well when you stand again before your peers, Tal sent to 
his son as both loped slowly back to the main passageway and continued their 
decent. 

   Below them and climbing apiece up the face of the Mountain, Ryokyo paused 
on a familiar ledge. Both instinct and scent told both the Cat and the young 
female that the native stones had been moved gently aside! 

   At this, Shyia brightened, knowing full well that her rock had passed this 
path hale and well, and by the traces, not half a day before! For his 
Karakami, a greater gift could not have come from the barter treasures of the 
Khan! Ryokyo's Savage senses could also scent the stale signs of his illness, 
but this he kept to himself. After this point, the Prince knew the young 
questing Skiltaire would begin to feel the raptures of the thinning air. His 
climb would be slower, as it had been for him, but the rocks of the peak were 
hard and left few traces for them to follow. 

   He stood and watched the intrepid female who had come with him. She tried 
to make a gallant show of not portraying her own labored breathing, but in the 
end, the Kurushani Prince took her gently aside. 

   "Come, my Shining One..I shall show you in what wise to breathe upon this 
Kamiyama of ours." Ryokyo said to Shyia without tone of reproach. He admired 
the young Girl's stamina and ferocity of purpose. Others would have cried out 
in desperation for air many thousands of feet below! Indeed, she had the 
Mountain in her! 
   Shyia fell to the new rhythm as if she had been born to it every day of her 
life! The Kurushani Samurai watched and admired as a half dozen breaths seemed 
to recharge the female Skiltaire and bring out of her a new reserve of spirit 
and vitality. In less than a moment, she seemed to him to be the very flower 
of a Savage, despite her half blood! When Shyia pounced again gently upon his 
snowy back, it was with a resolution and fire that made the Samurai wonder who 
might lead whom up the second half of the peak! 

   Fired by her driving spirit and restored by his own respite, Ryokyo 
gathered himself fluidly and sprang up the sloping rock face as if both the 
Skiltaire and the Lion had been shot from a huge cannon in the Valley below!! 

   As they walked along the inside of the heart of the mountain, The young 
Skiltaire walked in silence, but never without wonder at his surroundings. The 
Scrolls had never spoken of some of the places Tal knew so well. Yet, there 
was one memory of his climb up that left him both pained and puzzled. 

   Tal knew his question before he asked it, and bid his son to remember the 
crystal that hung around his neck, a priceless souvenir of this treasure house 
of wonders.. Tal paused in his tunnel walking to turn on his son, and swear 
him to secrecy before leading him again off of the steep path. 

   You have become a far way, My Son.. Tal's send was quiet this time, almost 
solemn. What You shall see now is meant only for Guardian Eyes to see. You 
have opened yourself to the Mountain, now she shall reveal her deepest secret 
to he who holds so much of the Kamiyama within him. Stand ready, and walk with 
me, My Son. 

   As they made their way step by step along a narrowed passageway, the young 
Skiltaire felt his fathers mental energy grow to a frightening peak, almost 
beyond ant that he had dreamed possible. He was more shocked a moment later 
when he felt that awesome energy place itself in harmony with his own, their 
pair of minds summing to create one of matchless energy and sending power 
never before imagined! A moment later, Tal and his son stepped into the 
fullness of the crystal cavern, and it was as if a nova exploded against their 
combined consciousness!! 
   
   The blast of radiant energy from the peak caught Ryokyo in mid leap, and 
Shyia was terrified to feel the huge young Cat buckle to the sloping rocks a 
moment later, roaring with all his being in what seemed to be agony beyond 
endurance!! 
   She was so overtaken with terror that the backblast of psyonic force that 
swept her from his back felt dull, almost merciful in its agony as it reduced 
her to a quivering mass that almost felt like seeping away into the rocky face 
of the Mountain!! She too writhed uncontrollably on the rocks, a thousand 
voices from her body and beyond it, each screaming its own profound level of 
suffering as their two minds were swept over by the freed energy of two 
million more!! 

   Within the crystal cavern, it seemed to the young Skiltaire as if his body 
had ceased to be...He reached out with his mind and felt Tal near to him. 
Rather than stand and fight the sweeping tide that flowed outward, Tal seemed 
to seize hold of his son's consciousness, submerging and subliming it with his 
own as both stopped resisting the energy, and instead became together yet 
another drop that flowed outward with the energy of their world.. 

   Then, in a no less explosive moment, it seemed to be no more..Or was it 
they who had ceased to be..together..?? 

   They stood together, as they had the moment before..Tal could feel the 
ringing in his son's ears, as surely as in his own..Yet, his son was both warm 
and solid as he held him in his embrace, where mind and body had sought 
instinctive refuge at the last instant...Or was it..the first?? 

   Tal thought gently toward his cowering son, and embraced him warmly, 
banishing all of his fear in a moment. Father and Son held each other, their 
minds shared one and at equal with the other, and the years of separation gone 
past as if only a moment in time! 

   Now, the Son knew without being told that the crystalline rocks, baked, 
formed and purified by ages of heat and pressure before the cataclysm had 
found their resonance in the mental energy of those who had come onto the 
peak. Each of the crystals within the lattice that lined the cavern was a 
storehouse..Matching psyonic energy with them..took energy..finding the 
harmonics....released it... 
   
   Yes, my Son..Now you understand the secret of the Guardians of the 
Kamiyama. Tal's send felt at home in the young Savage's mind as if they were 
his own thoughts. For generations, all Kurushani have placed a part of their 
energy into this peak. All Kurushani may draw upon some part of it. We who 
guard this ground may tap into it's sum...Two of our Blood have never stood 
together in this place, my Son...Until this moment..                         

   Is that the reason that All who Guard the peak are Skiltaire of Savage 
Blood, My Father? 

   Yes..It is true...None but our minds might channel so much power, My Son. 

   The junior Skiltaire was so overcome that he barely noticed Tal was 
carrying him like a newborn, cradled tightly in his forelimbs as they walked 
out of the shimmering cavern. 
   
   Tal set him down again on the ledge carved into the rocks outside the cave. 
As his son groomed himself and became centered again, he saw the young 
Skiltaire look oddly at the pouch that hung around his neck. 

   It glowed with enough fire to light the spot where they stood as if it were 
noon! 

   My Father? He sent to Tal. 

   Yes, My Son? 

   You teach that the heart of the mountain holds energy from all Kurushani? 
He asked mind to mind as he held the pouch turned lantern in his paw as if it 
were brittle. 

   That is so. Tal sent back with a slight nod. 

   His son looked at the pouch long and deep, as if considering the riddle of 
his own life. After a moment, he sprinted past his father, running along the 
ledge and back into the great crystal cavern! Tal moved to go after him, but 
after a step he held his place. 

   In a moment, His son was back at his side, and the pouch was nowhere to be 
seen! 

   You could have kept your prize, My Son..The Mountain would not have been 
diminished..It is your rite.. Tal sent to his offspring as the loped quickly 
away from the cavern. 

   "If the energy flows from all the People, no one save a Guardian has the 
right to claim a part for himself." His son told the Guardian. "My crystal can 
wait. When I am a Guardian, of all the People, It shall find me again. I can 
wait." The young Skiltaire added quietly. 

    Tal loped on in silence, ahead of his son, tears of joy flowing freely 
down his muzzle as he ran ahead, so his son could not see. 

   As they loped downward, matching one another stride for stride now, in a 
joyous test of themselves, both Skiltaire felt their shared minds touch a pair 
of others! It was Tal who came to the sensation first, as his Guardian 
instincts bid him know that two more had come onto the Mountain. One mind, the 
Guardian had known since his youth, but the other, he had never felt before, 
and instinct made him bristle. 

     Intruder..! he sent to his son on a powerful bolt of mental energy. 

   Instantly, the younger Skiltaire matched minds and power with his elder, 
and sent his mind flashing toward the strange presence. When their combined 
minds touched, the youth practically exploded with happiness!! Young paws 
moved to restrain the elder Guardian, who had moved ahead in the tunnel, 
poised to attack the strange one he felt on the rocks outside a nearby vent... 

   "Hold, My Father!" The youth both said and sent on a strong note of 
urgency. "She who draws near is all but my own blood." He said. 

   Impulsively, The younger Skiltaire darted around his father in a dead run 
for the passage up thru the face of the rock..!! 

   Wait! My Son!! The power of his Father's send nearly blasted the young 
Samurai off of his paws! He froze just short of the opening and held as still 
as death. Tal came up behind him, taking a small pebble in his paw. He 
motioned his son to move, and tossed the pebble past him, out of the mouth of 
the opening. 

   "Look well over the edge, and watch the stone.." he told his Son. 

   It was a long, cautious stretch out of the short vent, but he did as his 
Father bid  him do. He watched in morbid fascination as the falling stone 
cracked a large hole in the surface of the seemingly solid snow pack, sending 
huge shards of ice, tens of tons of snow and the unfortunate pebble plunging 
into an ancient chasm that seemed thousands of feet deep! 

   The young Skiltaire drew in his head with a loud gasp, and turned an openly 
frightened muzzle to his Father! 

   Upon the Mountain, Tal sent to him calmly, one must learn to hear and feel 
a second time. Come, they are not there, but upon this path. 

   Tal walked slowly up to his offspring, and led him gently away from near 
death, to the path the pair had shared before. "Come along, My Son.." He spoke 
flatly, as if it had never happened."Guardians ought not keep their Prince and 
their Kin on the Mountain alone." He said as Tal loped ahead by the stride, 
leaving his son walking away by the slow pace from the vivid lesson he had 
learned! 

   The young Skiltaire broke into an easy lope to catch up with Tal as he led 
them expertly thru an interconnecting maze of tunnels and vents hewn in the 
volcanic rock so long ago that not even the first Kurushani could remember it. 
As he raced along the passages, he tried with all his will to touch the mind 
of his Karakami, but the bow wave of energy from the peak miles above him 
seemed to swallow his sending impulses almost before they could leave his 
head. Now he understood why you had to be able to see the other before you 
could send on the Mountain. 

   After a time, he wondered what Shyia's reaction would be, and took the role 
of a playful hunter, allowing surprise to become his weapon. Why announce 
their coming? It would seem all the more magical if the Hunters simply 
appeared before them!! 

   Tal stopped in the tunnel just ahead, holding up his paw to slow down his 
son's wide open run. Tal had played this game as well, and indicated with a 
silent gesture that his son ought to take a short tunnel off to the left. His 
son nodded, and sprinted with pure mustelid stealth. When he stopped at the 
very edge of the opening in the rocky outcrop ahead, he used his senses to 
hear Shyia's soft pawfalls on the rocks below... 

   Off to the right, a quarter of the tunnel away, Tal could gauge far more 
than the younger of the pair. Two sets of breathing, both with mountain 
rhythm..A single,powerful set of four clawed paws bit deeply into the rocks 
with a familiar scratching sound..Tal could almost hear the brawny muscles of 
the Prince flex and gather as the Lion leapt over the rocks with a grace and 
ease that belied his monumental strength. 

   A moment later, he heard his friend pause in his climb...That same moment, 
both Skiltaire stood ready...! 

   The prince of the Kurushani stopped where he stood in the craggy 
depression, gauging the next set of target points for his easy leaps. He cast 
a glance up and back and felt Shyia's warm and sleek form pressed tightly into 
the thick fur of his coat, her head breaking the wind by tucking her head 
under the thick fall of his mane. This young female, he thought to himself was 
quite unlike any other he had ever met. She had guile and courage in legion 
amounts and had shown herself fearless in their use. She was to be admired. 
Perhaps, he thought to himself again after a moments rest, he might ask Shen 
Dai Khan to--

    His thoughts were broken by two shapes that seemed to spring suddenly from 
the surrounding rocks! For a split second, pure instinct told him to attack, 
but instinct gave way to reason as a pair of sends touched the Cat's sharp 
mind. 

   HOLD, INTRUDERS!! Boomed a like pair of thoughts across the rocks and into 
their minds! 

   Shyia sat bolt upright from where she lay!! No amount of time-space or 
energy could disguise one of the senders from her own mind!! 

   MY OWN ROCK--!! Her galaxy eating mind sent in all directions at once. The 
power of the emotion behind her send made even the Prince's powerful psyonic 
mind wince for a moment, before Shyia modulated the thought that beamed to a 
place high in the rocks, where the first shape was well camouflaged. But no 
amount of nature's cover could keep a loving Karakami from feeling a proud 
cousin as he stood his ground opposite another huge figure and beamed down at 
them with a smile and send that was pure elation and unrestrained joy!! 

   Shyia wanted to leap from the prince's back straight at him, like a living 
missile aimed high at the rocks above. She crushed out the impulse and set her 
eyes to seeking any path at all up the stones that would bring the two 
together! Her sharp mind worked fast, but her kin moved faster, hopscotching a 
path down the escarpment as if he had spent all of his young life in these 
very same stones! Before Shyia could move, and almost before she could think 
another thought at all, The littlest Skiltaire was springing and lofting 
downward toward her! He hit the rocks near where they stood with the power of 
a cannonball and the resilience of a living spring, who seemed to bounce off 
the rocks and onto Ryokyo's back in less than a heartbeat!! 

   Shyia was swept up in a powerful set of limbs and launched high into the 
sunlit afternoon as if she weighed less than nothing! The movement was so 
spontaneous and strong that Shyia could draw in no breath to shout her 
happiness and relief!!! 

   She was caught a moment later by those same young, black paws she had 
helped to forge and caught up in a gentle hug that challenged her thick ribs 
not to crack under a loving squeeze, accented by a loving bite on the neck as 
he held her close and snuggled deeply into her soft, brown coat!! 

   "Chirp!" both said and sent to one another in the same instant, in a 
greeting so loving and profound that it defied any definition save the pure 
affection the two shared. 

   They melded into one another then and there, embracing on the back of a 
Prince, as Tal watched contentedly! 

   "Do you know this one, My Prince?" Tal asked with typical deadpan humor. 

   The Prince of the Kurushani smiled just a bit. "Which one?" he asked Tal 
matter -of-fact! 

   Their reunion seemed to wipe away altitude, wind, and the gathering cold. 
The Kurushani Prince led the way, opening thought links with everyfurry with 
an ease a Skiltaire would envy. Even in this lofty place, their were 
Traditions to be observed. Ryokyo let the young Skiltaire take the lead, and 
as aunt and cousin broke their embrace, he turned Shyia to face his Father. 

   Tal of the Kamiyama, she felt him send to the tremendous, strikingly 
handsome figure before her, I present to you she who is my Dearest Karakami, 
Shyia-San. 

   Shyia looked up at Tal with a steady, proud, gaze that betrayed no sign of 
intimidation or fear. The Shining One had never met Tal, but had spent many 
nites with K'a'lia wherein she had thought of no one else. She bowed slightly 
her eyes never leaving his, nor blinking. 

   Inwardly, Shyia's impression of him was passing quietly from respect to 
awe. More than three times her size and more than that in her weight, she fell 
under his fiery eyes, and felt the power behind them. In one head to tail 
sweep, it was as if the hunter had plucked up her spirit, held it up to his 
gaze, seen everything about her that ever had been and put it back inside her. 
He stood still for a long moment.. 

   Shyia knew the Tradition. Any who did not belong here were the Guardian's 
meat. She was strong, but even the merest tap from his forepaw, even without 
claws, could wipe her away like morning mist on the wind. She stood before him 
unafraid, unwavering, and steady. 

   Tal reached out suddenly, grasping her in his iron forelimbs, and lifting 
her from the ground as if she wasn't even the wind! Shyia braced to hear her 
bones cracking as her body crumpled like paper as she fell toward death! She 
was stunned beyond thought as the mammoth blue-black Skiltaire swept her into 
his grasp like a newborn, nuzzling her with a powerful gentleness made of nips 
and touches that were the usual greeting for members of one's blood family! 

   The sound of his greeting "Chirp" carried the power behind his voice and 
spirit, and the gentle and genuine admiration that Tal already felt for the 
female who had more than earned her name! 

   When Tal set her back upon her own paws a full minute later, Shyia was so 
dizzy that she had forgotten to breathe! It took a deep hug from her cousin to 
break the strong, but gentle spell that Tal had cast on her! Shyia issued a 
soul deep,utterly contented sigh, and became so limp that the littlest 
Skiltaire had to hold her up for another full minute before Shyia found her 
paws or her wits about her! 
   In the interim, both Skiltaire witnessed, thru hazy eyes, the reunion of 
Pride and Guardian, and a pair of friends whose inter-relationship went far 
beyond, Titles, Traditions, or trappings and had come to honest friendship, 
joy and caring long before the pair of Pridemates had stood in this place. Tal 
sprang at the gargantuan young Cat, almost as if by pure reflex. Ryokyo didn't 
lower his forequarters to meet him. Tal had done this leaping embrace before, 
and the Prince's size, statue, and station were no barrier to the Guardian's 
Skills. 

   Shyia and her cousin watched in utter amazement as the Skiltaire and the 
White Lion met in a hug that became a headlock, and dissolved in the same 
motion into a gentle wrestling match between them, ten thousand feet up the 
side of a Mountain! Their Prince had size and strength, but Tal had quickness 
and the added bit of will. Hanging on around young Ryokyo's neck, Tal slid 
downward, across his friends strong chest and thick crest fur. He Took a 
gentle pawfull of the snowy white fur to hold himself steady, and once 
anchored in the Cat's undermane, went to ferocious but gentle work massaging 
the Lion's huge rib cage with three free paws at once, and adding the constant 
tickling brush of Tal's tail to his friend's underbelly! 

   The Skiltaire saw the Cat stop suddenly, shudder just once with deep 
pleasure, and then collapse reflexively, spread eagle on the rocks under the 
sensation of the Skiltaire's paws! They were surprised to hear their Prince 
issue a slightly submissive "CHIRP!" to his old friend before the Guardian 
allowed him to sit upright again, returning his affection with a soft nuzzle, 
and the same tone of sigh that Shyia had issued only moments before! 

   Tal bowed simply, as if nothing at all had happened, and then permitted 
himself the barest trace of a smile! 

   "Hail to the Chosen Prince of the Kurushani, My Kamiyama is your home." Tal 
added with a flourish of speech. 

    The conversation dissolved into a patter of speech and thought fragments, 
sent and spoken from every mind at once to every mind at once! After a moment, 
Tal overrode everyone into a moment of stillness, then he spoke aloud. 

   "Wait! My Pridemates..!" He fairly shouted. "The Sun marks the afterday, 
and the moon is rising. We may talk for days around the Pridefire, but now we 
must get us down home to Astrel." he said with quiet resolution. 

   Ryokyo nodded, knowing the wisdom of his friend's words. There was only one 
question remaining. The Prince took charge, solving it without issue or 
dispute. 

   "Tal, You shall take your kin thru the hidden trail to High Point." he said 
simply. 

   "And what of you, my gallant Prince?" Shyia spoke up, showing her concern. 

   Ryokyo returned her anxious look with a warm and openly affectionate smile. 
"Worry not of me.." he began. "The hidden trail is much too small for the like 
of me. I shall climb myself down over her rocks again. My Father waits at High 
Point, and there is much to say and do before tomorrow." 

    There was a moment of silence. The reunion had been such a moment, that 
all, including the young climber, had forgotten what had brought them to this 
Sacred place, or what would have to follow on the morrow if his seeming 
success was to become real victory. The calm realization, spoken without 
emotion helped the group touch their common goal once more with gentle but 
renewed dedication. 

   The young Skiltaire took his Karakami gently by the paw, and with a limb 
around her middle, embraced her gently. 

   "Come, My Sweet Karakami.." He said with gentle modesty. "Let me show you 
Our Mountain." 

   Both Tal and Ryokyo shared an unseen but knowing nod of approval as the 
youth lead the whole group toward the vent turned tunnel. 

   Ryokyo walked with them as far as he could, and as he saw Tal's tail 
disappear into an opening in the rocks that seemed to disappear a moment 
later, the Kurushani Prince turned, reversing directions and sprinted over the 
rocks as if he had chosen to fly back to the meadow below! 

   Within the rocky passageway, the trio of Skiltaire came to a quick decision 
mind to-mind. Their day had but a few hours left, and another nite on the bare 
Mountain, while not fatal, would be most unpleasant, even within the shelter 
of the rock heart of the mountain, for both males knew the wind howled like a 
wounded animal thru these very openings in the rock. 

   The Young One had much he wanted to say to her, and show as well, but the 
safety of visitors to the Mountain was their responsibility. There would soon 
come another day when aunt and cousin could come to the peak again. As the 
Scrolls said, the Mountain would wait... 

   He let Tal take the lead down the sloping tunnel, because he knew the 
trails. Shyia followed him in the center, so as not to get lost as her eyes 
grew used to the darkness. In this case, there was no harm in following a 
female, for the young Guardian knew that between them, her steps would be safe 
and sure. And for the one he loved so dear, the young Skiltaire would have it 
no other way! 

   They seem to race down the Mountain together as Shyia made an admirable 
showing of keeping pace with the seasoned hunter. The three of them dashed 
along the path with such aplomb that only after a long distance did the 
younger Skiltaire notice that the carved out passageway did not incline as 
sharply as before beneath his paws! 

   There was little sense of time, there within the heart of the Mountain, but 
it seemed scarcely a score of minutes to him before Tal reached back with his 
mind to call a halt to his two guests. Ahead of him the carved trail ended 
abruptly, slanting almost vertically upward into a short vent. Since he had 
seen it's like upon the peak, the younger of the Savages knew now that this 
one also ended in a stone that was not what it seemed to be! 

     But the Senior Savage had within him another reason. He sent a special, 
quiet thought probe to the mind of the young female as the trio stood and 
waited in the passageway. 

   What you now see, you must forget. Tal the Guardian sent to the young 
female. What you have seen is the preserve of those who first climb up the 
Sacred Mountain. You can tell no one save your blood kin of what you have 
done, and you must never speak of the Trail that has lead you here. This is 
Our Law. Do you understand? 

   Yes, Oh Guardian..I swear it! Shyia sent back with deep and silent 
solemnity. She knew that her alternative was death where she stood if she had 
not taken an oath of silence, and such would be her fate upon Kurusha if ever 
she revoked her promise in the future. 

   "It is well." Tal spoke. "Now, let us return home." As the Guardian of the 
Sacred Mountain spoke, he reached his body upward, and using strength that 
only a Guardian could muster, moved aside the ancient rock that capped the 
opening of the passageway! 

    Tal went up first, as was both his rite and duty. He stood on the soft 
green grass of the meadow and helped Shyia to pull herself from the heart of 
the rocks. She had braced for the chill fingers of wind she had felt upon the 
mountain, but she was greeted by the slightly warm breeze that marked a quiet 
nite on the Meadow! Instantly, she was at one and at home! Together, the 
elders waited for the youngest member of their group. 

   He came up gently, cautiously from the opening as he had seen his father do 
before him! Indeed he seemed to be learning and growing with every moment. Tal 
and Shyia exchanged hopeful and happy glances, and Shyia sent her elder a 
mental picture of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon as his Son pulled himself 
unaided from the passageway, to stand beside his Father as if the young 
Skiltaire had undertaken no more difficult a task than an easy romp to the 
Meadow from his home cave! 

   Both Tal and Shyia looked at him with eyes brighter than Pridefires, their 
hearts and powerful minds too filled with emotion to speak or send. The young 
Skiltaire looked at his elders strangely for a moment, and then turned to 
replace the stone cap over the tunnel opening. He shook the dust from his paws 
and made a move to lope down the hillside. When his elders made no move to 
follow, only then did he pause to look at the transfixed pair. 

   "Father, Karakami, What is wrong? Have I broken some Tradition?" He asked, 
with a rising note of urgency. 

    After a long moment, and a difficult, hard swallow, Tal spoke quietly to 
his Son. 

   "No, My Splendid Son, you have broken no Tradition. You have become one. It 
is the Savage Way to stand in silence when one sees a wonder." 

   Tal took him gently by the shoulders, and embraced him deeply and lovingly. 
As he was lost in his Father's tender embrace, Shyia too, draped herself over 
them, joining as one in the embrace, and began to cry softly! 

   "Females--" Said Tal to his Son, struggling to keep his voice from 
breaking. 

   "Y-Yes.." He replied softly, a waver in his young voice. "They are always 
so emotional..!" 

   The trio turned as a group, still locked in mutual embrace, and walked 
slowly down the hillside toward home. 

   The next dawn was brighter and warmer than any they had known. Their new 
day had really begun under the nite's silvered moonlite as the young Skiltaire 
had seen his parents reunited in a moment of joy that he swore someday to 
carve into stone for the whole of Kurusha to share! 

   So when the PrideGround torches blazed with full fire at mid-day and the 
Young Skiltaire walked into the circle to stand before his Pridemates and his 
Khan, another fire altogether brighter than the torches burned inside him. 

   Before they fulfilled the ancient rite, the Leader of the Kurushani People 
paid the youth the full tribute of a bow as he entered the circle and took his 
place before Shen Dai Khan. 

   "Hear Oh Astreli..!" The Leader began, both speaking for the group to hear 
and sending them at the same time into every heart and head within his range. 
"He who stands before us this day is by a Challenge marked. He has set before 
his people and Pridemates a quest, to prove that the challenge be false. Who 
here shall approve of his deed?" Shen Dai Khan asked of the full company. 

   After a moment, the assembled Astreli saw their chosen Prince rise from his 
place at his Khan's left paw, and step down from the dais, to turn and stand 
beside the young Skiltaire at his right side. The Prince looked back at the 
Khan and bowed deeply. 

   "I do, My Khan!" Prince Ryokyo said and sent for all to know and 
understand. 

   Shyia looked over from her favored place in the circle toward the 
assemblage of her cousin's peers. She relished their fallen expressions as 
their hopes of revenge were crushed out like a stray ember from a firepit. In 
one wonderful instant, that vain, malicious hope flicked and died! But her 
Cousin's victory was not yet complete. She looked back at the Khan as he 
looked at both of them, and spoke again. 

   "Do you acclaim on your life and honor that this Quest is fulfilled?" 

   "Yes, My Khan..Upon the Honor of all Kurusha, I so proclaim it. He who 
stands before you, Second Son of Tal, has become up to the Summit of the 
Sacred Mountain, as he swore before you to so do." 

    The future Khan paused in his answer, to allow a murmur of awe to trickle 
thru the assembled Pride. 

   Shyia's joy broadened with her smile. Far better than any physical 
punishment, her rock's detractors were being crushed under the one avalanche 
even they could not escape. 

   Astreli Honor and Pride bound Tradition. 

    These hurt them now more than any physical blow, and they were a thousand 
times more crushing. 

   "It is in Order." Spoke the Khan. "Is there any challenge to his standing?" 

   Shyia was tense for a moment. Even now, if any said nay, the only resolve 
would be battle. 

   Prince Ryokyo stepped back up to his place on the dais, so as not to 
intimidate ant challengers. His young friend would have to fight his own 
battle, if battle was his lot. 

   Shyia felt her stomach knot. For a long moment, there was no sound save the 
soft wind and the flickering flames of the torches. Toward the back of the 
assembled Pride, Shyia kept an even gaze on each of his peers. 

   Slowly, and one at a time, they came forward to look upon the fine, wild 
Savage who held his place before Khan and Pride... 

   ..and each in turn bowed, dropped their eyes, turned and walked away! 

   On the far side of the circle, Shyia saw Tal and K'a'lia embrace and share 
a warm nuzzle and a proud look at the newest member of the Pride of Astrel! 

   But for the Young Skiltaire who stood forth, there was a more important 
matter. 

   "How shall you be called, Second Son of Tal?" Asked his Khan with an 
approving nod of his stately head. 


   "Oh Great Khan, I am born of the Stones upon the Sacred Mountain. And Those 
whom I love best have acclaimed me their Rock. My I become as Solid and Steady 
as the Kamiyama, Symbol of the People that I cherish, and remain as simple and 
Savage as the Stones from which I found a path to follow. I would that My Khan 
and all of Our People call me as what I am. Roci Stone." 

   "So mote it be!" Ordered the Khan. "You have fulfilled your quest, Roci-
Sama. What can a Khan offer you from the heart of the People in Gratitude?" 
The Leader of the Kurushani asked. 

   His question was a shock and unexpected delight. A request such as this was 
usually given only to those who brought an extra measure of Honor to the 
Pride. He knew the Tradition, but never expected to apply it to his own 
wishes! True to his new name, he betrayed no emotion, but the thought pulse 
that touched Tal, K'a'lia, and Shyia in turn as they moved to the inside edge 
of the crowd to stand together made each of them tingle all over!! 

   Roci knew that he was entitled to whatever time he needed to consider his 
request. It could be any amount of goods of barter, any task or position he 
wished, or anything he could do for any of his Pridemates or kin.. 

   For his kin..Yes!! he screamed to himself, suppressing his body's urge to 
quake at the delight that his thought brought to him! He took another moment, 
weighing each word as if his life hung in the balance, and then spoke, quietly 
and evenly, his wish to the Khan. 

   "My hope has two parts, Oh Khan.." He began slowly. 

   Shen Dai Khan nodded easily, listening intently with eyes agleam. 

   "For My Father, a time to be with his mate again. They have had less than a 
moon together since my birth. For my Mother, a Mate and A Guardian as well, 
and for myself, a Father, who may school me in the Ancient Ways of Our Savage 
People." 

   Roci looked over at his parents, and could see both of them deep in embrace 
as they struggled to hold back tears. Then he looked back in hope at His Khan. 

   "Master Han, Stand Forward!" called the Leader of the People. 

   The huge Skiltaire, once again resplendent in iron armor, helmet and bow, 
walked forward, stood before his Khan, and drew his katana holding it aloft in 
the ancient salute. 

   "Hail and long life to the one Khan." He repeated the ancient Astreli 
greeting, and then stood rock still, absolutely ready to carry out the will of 
his Khan. 

   "In fulfillment of the wish ye have heard spoken by Our Pridemate, we ask 
you to go onto the summit of the Sacred Mountain, There to abide for ten moons 
in Stewardship of our Kamiyama." 

   "Aye, My Great Khan..I swear it with my body, life and soul." 

   The gravity of what his Khan had done with such quick and commanding ease 
awed Roci to the soul. Yet, he was troubled, and moved to speak. 

   "I thank the Khan beyond price or measure of my spirit. But this is too 
much done. Who shall educate the young?" Roci asked in open wonder. 

   "You have spoken well, Roci-San. Can you call your Shining Karakami to 
stand before us?" The Khan asked his newest Pridemate. 
   Slightly stunned and unsure what to do, Roci walked to the edge of the 
throng, and lead Shyia out by a paw so that the openly shocked female could 
stand with him before the Khan of all Kurusha!! 

   The mammoth Khan looked down and smiled warmly at the Skiltaire. Shyia felt 
a steadying, re-assuring finger of energy touch her mind. It helped to keep 
her from falling over! 

   "Master Tal shall assume the Training duty to our young. This is an 
Honorable Task, but a large one. He shall want of help from time to time. Will 
you assist him, for Our sake, Please?" 

   Shyia was absolutely speechless. The best she could manage was a dazed nod 
as Roci caught her around the middle!! 

   "It is well." said the Khan finally. "We should like to hear of you all 
from time to time as we tend affairs of the People. Know you have the favor 
and lasting Gratitude of the Khan.." 

   Shen Dai Khan paused in his words and cast an odd look at the Skiltaire. 
Shyia had steadied herself by locking eyes with Ryokyo! They were both beyond 
his hearing, so he sent a thought into their communal minds. 

   And, I believe, much for the better, the attraction of the Royal Prince! 

   Thought the Khan to the Skiltaire and his adopted son. After a moment, his 
father leaned gently into the Prince, lifting the haze, but not breaking the 
spell. 

   "Are you well, My Son?" The Khan asked with a trace of a smile. 

   "Very well indeed, My Father!" Prince Ryokyo replied. "Is there room at our 
Feast table for one more guest this evening, My Father?" The Kurushani Prince 
asked with a hopeful tone in his ringing voice. 

   "So mote it be, My Son..So mote it be!" 






   As the last of the shared images faded from his consciousness, Bill needed 
all his strength to bring his eyes open slowly, breaching the cocoon of warmth 
that had wrapped him gently. 

   Both Skiltaire looked at their Pridemate, sharing a moment of concern. 

   Bill's senses told him that he was ringing wet, both his shirt and the 
chair back drenched in perspiration, while his face was drawn tight with the 
traces of the tears that had flowed so easily. The Human could not see 
himself, and in that singular moment, did not care if the whole world saw him, 
nor what they would think if they did. 

   He was tired of body, for reasons he did not know, but the fire which 
blazed within his mind and heart seemed to dry and warm him all at once. 

   He spread his arms limply, in a gesture whose meaning was universal. Both 
Shyia and Roci sprang litely from the chair opposite, into Bill's lap! The 
venerable old chair protested with a slight squeak as the weight it bore more 
than doubled, but held firm as the Man wrapped an arm around each Skiltaire, 
gazing at both with a wonder the astronomer reserved for the stars! 

   The creak in his neck  vanished under a gentle massage of paws, and after 
another moment of warm contentment, he looked at the aged clock over the gaudy 
brass lined front desk. Quarter to three.. 

   He never looked at the time before their odyssey had begun, so he would 
never be able to gauge how much time had passed between them, and was left in 
silence, wondering if time, as he had known it until this evening, would ever 
pass between them again! 

   At length, He had an urge to pick them both up, but as he rose from his 
chair, he knew and respected Roci's feelings about being carried if he could 
walk. Now, Bill understood why. Shyia had no such feelings. She wrapped 
herself around his neck, and across his chest as he walked toward the 
elevator. 

   The Humans upstairs had given up on their "Furry Party" more than an hour 
before, and as Bill came into the dark and silent room to curl up in a 
secluded corner with Shyia, Roci, and the sweetest dream he would ever relive, 
Bill felt a sudden spike of pity for the Humans. 
   Perhaps someday, he thought for Shyia and Roci to feel, these poor Humans 
would come to learn the real definition of "Furry Party" 
                                  (FIN)            

