About this story
Red-Eye picks fights over branches and blames you when your warning saves the horde from a sabertooth. You and Lop-Ear steal an ember from the Fire People for a defense against him — and bring his hunting party straight to their camp, fire loose in the grass and Swift One seized as a hostage. You wake before learning who the ravine spares.
How it opens
Since childhood, sleep had returned you to forests no waking experience could have supplied.
MotherNight again, and that old terror has found your voice before you wake.
MotherYour dreams return with smells and movements no city child has practiced while awake.
Within them you were Big-Tooth, a young member of a cliff-dwelling horde.
Red-EyeMove from that branch, young one; height belongs to whoever can keep it.
Lop-Ear, stay above him and do not let anger choose the ground.