Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

It turned back. It remained unmoving.

He continued moving, his body hovering just above the snow, his breath even and steady.

Crash!

He stayed close to the ground, but he could not help turning his head to see the flash of fire and smoke off in the distance. It was not uncommon here; things plummeted from the sky all the time. One had once killed a packmate of his when he was a cub.

But the moment had arrived: the perfect distraction.

He glided over the ice. The creature aboard the other was making noise. Fear? Concern? Communication? He did not know. He just crept ever closer, stilling only when the beast cried out. This was it. If they spotted him, a chase would certainly follow. He would surely catch them, but he didn’t want a chase.

He wanted blood.

He rushed forward.

His massive arm was in the air, and he swung it down and roared as loudly as possible, so as to strike fear into their hearts, to freeze them in place. The smaller one’s body thumped on the snow after one slash, and then he grabbed the horned beast by the neck, snapped it with one powerful squeeze.

Neither creature moved.

And he would feast tonight.

But first, the preparation. He grabbed each of the creatures by a leg and dragged them back to the empty cavern he was now using. It was a long trek, and normally he would worry about other clans taking advantage of him. But many of them were gone as well, most likely frightened away by these strange beasts and the strange thing they had constructed out of the snow, that burst up into the sky.

He was alone out here in the ice and snow. He had been for some time.

He knew he would preserve the tiny one and consume the other. He needed the energy, and it would help him with what came next.

This would not be a lone act.

No, he would seek out the others. Pick them off one by one. Each time he took one of their lives, he would be closer to getting his home back. His den-mate. The cubs. The mother of his children.

He would get them all back.

And he had all the time in the world.

He strung the carcass in the rear of the cavern and focused on the other, the one that was still living. He examined its head. It only possessed a small tuft of hair there. He sniffed. It was wearing the fur of others. A strange thing. How did they survive in the cold of this world?

Well, this one would not survive a moon or two. He lifted it by its legs and used his breath to melt the ice at the top of the cavern. He licked the odd material at the end of its legs, spread as much saliva as he could over it, and then held it against the wetness above.

A small object fell from its body and landed in the snow piled on the ground. He thought nothing of it. Moments later, his prey hung solidly from the ice.

He studied it again. Its breath was shallow. It was built to be so frail, so useless. He did not comprehend how this thing had managed to survive; it did not appear to be a cub. Its arms were not suited for striking their prey, and it possessed no claws. Its legs were too short to run quickly across ice or snow.

He peered into its face. Did it have a family, too? A home? Did it know that it had taken everything from him? What did it think about? Did it hate his kind like he hated its kind? Was that why they had stolen his home?

It did not matter.

He would get back what was owed to him.

He ate. He tore at the flesh of the horned beast, devoured it quickly, then focused on the fatty insides. He wished that it was still fresh; there were few things more satisfying than warm blood in the throat. He ripped at the sinews and muscles in one of the legs, lost in the sheer thrill of the feast, and the frenzy was what kept him from noticing it sooner.

He froze.

Heard a grunt.

A small crack.

He looked up at the creature, and it strained against the ice, stretched its arm out, and the rage filled him again. Did this thing believe it could escape? That it could fight back ? That it could conquer him ? He roared, loud enough that the cavern seemed to shake, loud enough that the creature’s eyes went wide after it plunged to the ground. It stood and faced him and then—

A light. A beam of it. Again.

His kind never forgot. Their memories were what helped them track down prey, to remember which ranges give way to treacherous, deadly gorges. He remembered. His home. The scream. The flash of light that hurt so terribly, the blood, the chaos.

But this was different. Somehow. The beam was not moving toward him. It did not move at all, like the two of them in that tiny space.

This being could hold the light.

No.

It seemed to be wielding it.

He sniffed and caught a scent of the same sharp odor of the debris scattered around his former home. Was that what this creature held?

But he was not afraid. He couldn’t be. The anger rushed up and out of him.

He would not let this happen again.

He charged forward, certain that he would crush this awful thing with one blow, and then the beam cut through the air, and there was no pain at first, and then it crushed him, filled his every thought, and he had never heard a sound like that, of flesh being severed so quickly, had never looked down and seen his own arm resting before him.

He roared again.

No.

He screamed.

The creature escaped out into the snowy unknown. It would surely die soon; it could not possibly survive the ice and wind like that. But he could not think of it anymore as the pain raced through his body. He packed his stump with ice, much as he had done that day long ago, and it stopped the bleeding. His mind drifted, first to the pain, then his den-mates, then to the cubs he might not ever see again.

He slept.

He hurt.

The pain did not subside for many moons. There were times when he felt his arm was still there, as if he could tear at the flesh of another with claws he could not see. He continued to hunt alone—more poorly than he had before—until his strength came back. Until he believed he was ready.

He finally ventured down into the valley when he was strong enough, when he had adapted to his new reality. He had feasted recently, and his hunger was now for retribution. Perhaps this would be fruitless; not every hunt was a success, and he knew he might fail, that this might be the day it all came to an end. Still, he had to try.

But when he crested the ridgeline, his body curled in anticipation, he found himself relaxing, unfurling.

He saw no strange objects on the ground.

No strange creatures fluttering about near the caverns.

He still descended slowly, assuming that at any moment, those things could ambush him with their beams of light and drive him back. But he heard nothing. Saw nothing. There was no stench of their sweat or odor. He sniffed again.

Something had recently been burning.

There was more debris at the mouth of the caverns: twisted pieces of something hard and sharp. A smear of frozen blood. Charred remains of what was once here, what came after his clan.

He crept into the entrance, his body low, but there was no torrent of sound, no clinking or clanking, nothing that pierced his ears as it had before. It was not long before his wandering was not cautious. He had risen upright and slunk from one cavern to the next, all of them empty, abandoned, forgotten.

There were many more nooks he needed to search, more places to examine, but standing in what was once the home for him and his clan, he knew that this place had been returned to him.

And that cavern within him shrank, replaced by something new.

Hope.

Hope that a reunion was possible.