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Summer in northern climates is an amazing thing to behold. In places where snow and ice reign for six months of the year, nature must do what she can in a few short months before the frost returns and things green and growing die out beneath the snows of autumn. As soon as the snow is gone, the forests and meadows literally explode with life as plants and animals use the precious long hours of sunlight to make sure the next generation of life has a good foothold on survival before the all too short summer fades away. Summer is a happy time, a time where cold fingers and toes are things forgotten; where there days of bright sunshine and warmth thaw out moods worn thin after a long, cold winter.

The warmth and light of that first summer of mine on this world summer brought a welcome change into the lives of Sharra and I. We had been through so much and had been so close to disaster that we both felt an exhilarating sense of freedom grow into our lives with the onset of warm days and bright sunshine. We left the cabin for days at a time and became wandering nomads, travelling through the forests and the valley below as we followed the animals we hunted for food. We wandered through the trees during the long summer days and slept under the stars within the secure circle of light cast from a small fire, resting our weary bodies on beds of soft moss. Those were happier times for the two of us and despite everything that this world had put me through I actually began to enjoy some aspects of the hard life I now lived.

I learned so much that first summer. One of the first, and hardest lessons, was that no matter what I had thought before, I wasn't in the greatest physical shape. I had thought that the hockey and softball I had played in my old life had me in better than average shape for a guy in his mid twenties and I guess that was probably true in the early twenty-first century. However, when you get thrown into a situation such as the one I found myself in, you realize just how unprepared the average guy is for the kind of life that requires constant hard work in order to survive. To put it bluntly, Sharra showed me just how out of shape I was and bruised my ego in the process.

We did a lot of exploring late that spring and Sharra had this annoying habit of breaking into a jog and trotting along the trails at a pace that chewed up the miles faster than one would think. It was no problem for me to keep up with her for the first fifteen or twenty minutes or so but after that it was pure hell. She wouldn't stop for what seemed like hours and I would slowly start falling behind. Often after thinking that she had abandoned me to my fate in the forest I would round a corner and find her leaning against a tree or perched on a log, waiting impatiently for me to catch up. Most times she would have a slightly bored expression on her face, as if she'd been waiting there for hours. She would stare at me and the rivers of sweat trailing down my skin and shake her head at the wheezing gasps that escaped my lungs while she herself was barely panting. I could see the amused glint in her eyes at those times and I would usually just glare at her because that's all I had the strength to do. She would usually stand up and want to get moving again right at the same time I would collapse for a few minutes of much needed rest. I wondered how the hell she could just keep going like that, hardly taking a break and barely showing any signs of exertion. She was built for this kind of life I soon realized. Lean and rangy with hardly an extra ounce of fat, she wasn't all that different from the wild wolves that she resembled in so many ways. Wolves are notorious travellers and if she had evolved from those four legged canines the genetics were there for endurance and speed. Me, on the other hand, I wasn't so fortunate. Life in the early twenty-first century did have a tendency to make people a little soft.

Needless to say, I got whipped into shape very quick. I had little choice in the matter as it was essential to my survival and Sharra was as unforgiving to me as an army sergeant to a green recruit. Many times I lost her as she ranged out far ahead and I got a little worried as the forest closed in around me. There was an unexpected bonus that arose out of such things. I learned much about tracking and looking for the subtle signs of a recent traveller through the underbrush, knowledge that would help me immensely down the road.

The lessons learned on one hot spring day in particular remain stuck in my mind. I was following Sharra's trail, head down, eyes intent on tracking the faint signs left by her feet on the forest floor. We had been travelling through a dense part of the forest with huge spruce trees clumped tightly together and as usual Sharra and her untiring legs had gotten way ahead of me. A narrow game trail wound its way between those monstrous trees and I was concentrating on following the subtle signs of Sharra's passage and little else. I was about to learn a lesson about being so single minded.

That wolf had a playful streak a mile wide and she loved to play little games like wandering off the trail and hiding her tracks from me, sometimes backtracking to make it look like she had taken more than one trail, or in this case, hiding behind the huge trunk of an ancient spruce, waiting until I drew up right beside it and became preoccupied with her carefully prepared diversion.

I knew something had happened right in the middle of the trail beside that tree.

The earth was all scuffed up and there was a short stick on the freshly disturbed earth that had been broken in half and looked suspiciously like it had been placed there. I knelt with a furrowed brow and did my best to figure out what Sharra was up to this time. I plucked the stick from the ground and eyeballed it curiously, trying to figure out what it meant. I should have realized that something different was up when that spark in my head suddenly seemed a little too mischievous behind a facade of forced silence.

Sharra barked right into my left ear. I had the briefest of glimpses of grey fur, white teeth and amber eyes before instinct took over and I launched myself away from that explosion of sound. The stick in my hand went sailing away to parts unknown and the next thing I knew I had my knife in my head and was staring wide eyed at a wolf that was just about killing herself laughing about ten feet away from me. She'd been hiding behind the trunk of that big tree and had laid a carefully contrived trap for me. In my distracted state of mind I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. She levelled a finger at me and said "gotcha." The grin on her face was ear to ear, her eyes were laughing and her tail was wagging like crazy.

Once my heart rate returned to normal, I put the knife away and glared at my so-called friend. She smirked.

"Jesus Sharra, don't do that. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

The grin on her face never wavered. "Not yet." There was an unabashed twinkle in her eyes.

"I am trying to teach you how to survive. The forest is not always a friendly place for you or for me for that matter. Get it into your head that you have senses other than sight. Remember to use them. Wandering through the forest with your eyes on the ground in front of your toes is a good way to get hurt, or" her grin got wider still "scared half to death."

I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic but stopped when my brain finally kicked into gear. I had to admit that she had a point, and a good one too. There were several animals in the woods that would likely try to make a meal of me. One already had tried and I had no desire to relive that experience.

"Always pay attention to the trail ahead, but more importantly keep an ear to the trail behind. Your sense of smell may be nearly useless and your hearing subdued but there are animals in these woods that will reveal themselves to even your poor senses if you learn how to look and listen for them." She paused for a moment and looked at me intently. Her grin faded and her voice and manner became serious. "Listen for the chattering of a squirrel in the distance, for they often make noise when some creature invades their territory. Keep an ear to the forest and listen for those sounds that stick out above the background of wind in the branches and the squeaks of the trees. The snap of a branch, the regular thud of feet against the forest floor, those are things you need to teach yourself to hear."

It suddenly felt like I was back in school and I had to force away some of the old feelings that suddenly were pushed to the forefront. Funny how memory works sometimes. As Sharra started her lecture, the only thing I could think of was plain white rooms, neat rows of hard-seated desks, dark green chalkboards and the scent of chalk dust wafting through the air. Vivid memories of the flat, monotonous voice of my high school English teacher suddenly were bright and vivid in my head. I ground my teeth and pushed that particular memory away to a place where I hoped it would never return. I can say without fear of lying that I never thought I'd ever have a wolf for a teacher though nor did I ever think I would ever need these kinds of lessons. Despite my aversion to being lectured I did realize that Sharra was doing her best to give some much needed knowledge. However, I had the distinct impression that she really didn't know what to do with a slow, lumbering, and scent-blind human. Despite both mine and also her thoughts to the contrary, she was actually a very good teacher. I, on the other hand, had never been a good student. Stubborn, independent, and strong willed, I hated school and getting educated on somebody else's terms had never really agreed with me. Oddly enough, I actually paid attention to Sharra and what she sought to teach me. Her lessons, I knew without a doubt, were vital to my continued existence.

"Remember that your eyesight is your greatest asset and use it wisely. Do not get too focussed on one thing. That only allows sneaky people like me to play games with you and get some payback for scaring me half to death."

I had to grin at that. I had almost forgotten that little episode a few months back where I had snuck up on Sharra when she had been sitting in twilight shadows on the porch of the cabin and had given her a good scare. It seemed like years ago already.

Sharra's amber eyes glittered in amusement. This was all a game to her, a game she thoroughly enjoyed.

"I gave you plenty of chances to discover me. Had your gaze been up where it should have been, you likely would have seen me creep through the trees to my hiding spot. Had you been listening, you would have heard the snap as I broke that stick in half and saved yourself the embarrassment of getting scared." Her grin reappeared and the tip of her tail began to wag again.

I nodded. Good lessons, all of them.

"I'll try to remember that Sharra."

"Good. Now come on."

Instead of taking up taking up that relentless jog again, I was surprised when she led me away at a walking pace and we broke for a quick lunch by a clear and icy cold creek that wound through the trees between banks of soft moss. Usually Sharra wouldn't have wanted to stop for another hour or two and I wondered what she was up to. We ate quietly as the creek burbled and trickled beside us and barely a word was said. Sharra was giving me time to think about what she had told me, I realize that now, and I never forgot her lessons. I also didn't forget any of her practical jokes and was soon planning revenge.

I'm just happy that by the time that summer began to fade into autumn my stamina had grown to the point where I was able to keep up with Sharra's fast pace most days and had learned enough to avoid or catch her in many of her tricks and games. I even came up with a few of my own tricks and managed to catch her off guard on the odd occasion, something that both surprised and pleased her. I was in incredible shape by then, my body becoming a human mirror image of Sharra's. Lean, wiry and three notches tighter on my belt, I figured that my six foot frame had slimmed to somewhere around a hundred and fifty-five pounds from the one seventy I'd been before I ended up in Sharra's company. Any extra fat that I'd had melted away and my endurance slowly grew. I could run for hours carrying a good load of supplies on my back, stopping only to eat or have a drink of water. My strength grew to the point where I was able to carry the carcass of an average sized deer over my shoulders without much trouble. I could climb a tree like a monkey and haul a travois like a horse. A rough and tough life to be sure, some times I loved it while at others I hated it with a passion that made Sharra wonder about my sanity.

No matter what I thought of what my life had become, what I had become, I had no choice but to live with such things and try to make the best of them. There were many times indeed that proved to be very difficult.

***********

In many ways that first summer was the summer of lessons and I often wondered if there was enough room in my brain for all of the things that Sharra laboured to teach me. The skills I learned in the first twenty-six years of my life were now useless for the most part and I was forced to learn how to live all over again. That was a long and very frustrating process, but an absolutely essential one if I was going to survive in this place for any length of time.

Making leather was one of the first things Sharra taught me after I recovered from my fever and wounds. An invaluable skill to be sure but I never imagined the amount of work it took to take the skin of an animal and transform it into useable leather. After all of the messy work of hunting, killing, skinning and butchering is done you have to make a rack on which to stretch the hide. Hours upon hours of scraping and stretching the hide with a knife blade or a piece of sharp stone follows. Add in a few more hours of soaking the skin in order to loosen the hair and then there's a total disaster zone of a mess while removing said hair. That's only the prep work. After that comes the rather gruesome task of splitting open the head of the animal that provided the skin in order to remove the brain. I was almost sick the first time Sharra did that and it got even worse than I imagined. The brain must be pounded into a pink, gooey paste and then rubbed onto the flesh side of the hide, a messy, smelly process that kicks the gag reflex of any sane and normal person into overdrive. I still hate doing that.

The hide is then folded flesh side to flesh side and left to sit for a few days. A check every now and then to see how well the skin is softening is a good idea. After a day or two, more work begins. The hide must be softened by working it over a piece of wood and stretching it by hand. A couple of hours of this and believe me, fingers cramp, knuckles scream, wrists and elbow joints complain, and you can feel the calluses on your hands growing thicker by the minute.

Once the hide is finally soft and supple it must be smoked to keep the bugs from devouring it and to add some small element of waterproofing. This is the easy part. Dig a hole about a foot deep, build a fire and let it burn down to a bed of coals. Find a few pieces of wet wood and throw them on the coals. Massive amounts of smoke are produced and as an added bonus, the bugs won't be bothering you for the next few hours. You have to make a rack to hang the hide over the hole and use a few stitches here and there to make the hide into sort of a tent shape to catch much of the smoke. Here, finally, you are able to sit back and relax, massage cramped fingers and sore muscles, and wonder how the hell living became so much work.

There is a payout to all of that hard work. The leather produced with this technique is wonderfully supple and soft, if slightly odorous, and shows great promise for replacing my worn out and much abused clothing. Sharra also showed me how to keep the hair on the hide during the tanning process so there's hope for some warm clothes for the winter. I eyed the huge grizzly hide in the corner of the cabin from the bear incident with thoughts of a new parka in mind.

To actually do anything with that leather I had to learn other important skills. I learned how to make thread from sinew and awls and needles from stone and bone or small scraps of metal I found lying around the cabin. That was a painstaking process and I soon discovered that patience is a great virtue. It was very difficult for me to not get frustrated trying to learn skills that were second nature to Sharra. There were many times when I just wanted to give up and those times usually came after a few hours spent hunched over a sliver of bone or antler carving delicate slivers away in an effort to make something that would pass for a needle. I broke more than a few of those and I think something in my brain snapped with each one that broke under my clumsy fingers. Many times I threw everything down in frustration and stomped away to go do some wandering in an effort to cool down. I've always had a bit of a temper. It's not something I'm proud of and I've tried hard over the years to control it with varying levels of success. Some days, though, it still gets the best of me.

Those episodes of anger and frustration had an odd effect on Sharra. She didn't like such strong negative emotions, they left a bad 'taste' in her head she told me. Often when I got mad about something I found her looking at me like a scared and submissive dog, even though it was a very rare occasion indeed that any of my anger was directed towards her. I wondered if there was something in her past that made her react like that. Fortunately, I found it difficult to be angry for long around her. She had a soothing effect on me when she knew I was getting frustrated about something and the sensations that flowed through our Link at those times usually made me realize that getting angry wasn't going to help anything. Yet another bonus of being linked to one such as her.

Old habits die hard and there were times when my frustrations with the life I had been forced into drove me out to wander the forest and be as alone with my thoughts and feelings as I could be. The Link I shared with Sharra, for all of its many benefits, sometimes made me feel as if I had lost the privacy of withdrawing into my own thoughts when problems weighed heavily on my mind. It's not that I couldn't block her out if I wanted to it's just that it took some effort to do it and I always felt a bit bad for doing so. Sharra was usually very open with me on her end of the Link and I felt guilty for not being the same way with her on those times when I felt the need to shut her out of my head.

I've always been a very private man, an introvert, a thinker and an observer more than a talker. In my old life I lived the role of a quiet bachelor and while I did greatly enjoy the company of the friends I had, I never felt a driving need to be around people and the steady pulse of humanity held little appeal for me. I wasn't a total shut in but I did enjoy my own company and preferred the quieter and less travelled roads of life. A lone wolf, one old friend called me, a solitary wanderer seeking his own path, and I'll admit he was not too far off the mark.

That reclusive, introverted aspect of my personality confused Sharra to no end. She just couldn't understand that there were times when I needed to be alone and the disappointment that she felt when I left her out of some aspects of my life was easy to see and feel. She needed the companionship of others and I was beginning to suspect that if anything her people were more gregarious than humans and because of that I sometimes I thought it odd that we got along so well. In some ways her personality was the polar opposite of mine. I enjoyed my own company and often avoided large gatherings of people while she reveled and blossomed in the companionship of others. That part of her had been buried deep within when I first arrived her and I had to shake my head when I thought about how she had changed over the last few months. Recent events had transformed her into a completely different person than the quiet, depressed and empty one that had saved my life so long ago. I think I was finally getting a glimpse of the real Sharra, the person she had been before her life was put into the blender.

Other things were changing as well. I wasn't the same person I had been either. Something deep within me was slowly moving and shifting. Ever since I had come out of that dark tunnel of fever and injury and helped Sharra deal with the pain of her past, I felt different on some level that I couldn't quite pin down. Sharra was in my thoughts a lot those days and I often wondered what lay down the road for me. There were hints and subtle sensations galore, a bunch from Sharra and a few from other sources. Some of them outright scared me.

************

It's hard for me to keep some of these old memories in order. So much happened in that first year that everything tends to blend into one big blur. If some of these memories seem a little fragmented and chaotic, well, that's just the effects of the last fifty-odd years on my grey matter. My beat up and battered old brain doesn't work as well as it used to.

One of the things I do remember well that summer was the food. For nearly three months I had been on a meat only diet but once the snow melted off and the wonders of spring returned to the forest I finally was able to add some much needed variety to my diet.

The clearing around the cabin was literally choked with bushes and plants of almost infinite varieties. Within that tangle were hints of a rainbow of colours and memories that still set me to salivating like a Pavlovian dog. There were berries to be had by the thousands. I found bearberries, wild strawberries, blueberries and saskatoons and once again I was reminded that food could actually have flavour. Gone were the hungry days of winter and I revelled in the bounty of spring. Upon my first discovery of the cornucopia in the clearing, I happily gorged myself and promptly got sicker than a dog. My body had become accustomed to digesting one thing over that last few months and effects of the sudden change in diet made for a very unpleasant few days and a fervent prayer for a few rolls of real toilet paper. I'll never forget the look on Sharra's face as she wrinkled her nose in disgust and asked me why I kept eating those things when the results were hazardous to any living thing within a day's walk.

My system slowly adjusted to the changes and the wealth of berries was just what I needed to regain my strength after my injuries and fever. Not having to worry about food eased many of my concerns and I think in that early spring of my first year I was finally able to relax and see the world I had been thrust into for the first time. I grew stronger and more confident by the day and a restless urge to figure out just where I was became my constant companion.

Needless to say, I did a lot of exploring, some of it on my own and much of it in the company of Sharra. I made a crude pack out of deerskin and had been experimenting with making a sort of pemmican from the berries, some fat, and dried meat. It tasted horrible that stuff, and eating it was one hell of a workout for the jaw muscles but it gave my body what it needed to survive and it was light enough that I could carry enough to last me for a few days. A definite bonus, that, as my hunting skills still weren't to the point where I wanted to rely on them alone to keep me fed while out wandering. Carrying drinking water with me presented a problem until Sharra showed me how to make a watertight container from leather. I was a little bit leery of drinking any water that I found out in the woods and so I resorted to filling my waterskin full of water boiled back at the cabin. Sharra thought me a bit odd for doing so but I had no desire to get sick drinking contaminated water even though the taste of the water coming out of that waterskin was almost enough to make me sick on its own.

The long hours of spring daylight made for some good hikes. I'm sure that some days I managed to get a good ten or twelve kilometres from the cabin before turning to head back home. Many days I left the cabin shortly after sunrise and staggered home just as the last bit of twilight was fading behind the mountains in the west. Spending a night out in the forest held little appeal for me, especially on those times when I ventured out on my own. The incident with the bear was still fresh in my mind and I knew there were other creatures out there in the trees that would be a serious threat to me if our paths crossed. I remembered Sharra's lessons and always kept an eye and an ear to the background whispers of the forest. In all the searching and exploring that I did, I never did find out exactly where I was. The closest I could determine was that I was somewhere to the left of the Middle of Nowhere.

I saw many things on those long hikes but one thing I never did find was a sign of any other people. I was a bit concerned about this but when I brought it up to Sharra she just nodded and told me that it had taken her more than three moons worth of walking to get to this place. Her clan had never ventured out this far, nor had any others that she had heard of. During the two years she had lived in this place, she had never once seen signs of any of her people. I could feel the old sadness in her as she told me this and I could feel the longing within her for the company of others of her kind. I knew how much she missed them and she did her best to not let such things get to her. Most of her old pain she had dealt with but there were some things that weren't so easily overcome. It was her very nature to desire the company of her own species. She was a lot happier with me around but it was easy to see that there were times when she longed for the life she once had. I really couldn't blame her for such thoughts. There were more than enough times when I had thoughts along identical lines.

I had other thoughts too, strange ones that came out of nowhere and caught me by surprise. I recall one that hit me on a sunny afternoon when Sharra and I were out hunting. We were following a game trail that wound through the trees deep in the valley. Sharra's unreal sense of smell had told her that several elk had very recently used this same trail. She was in the lead and I followed, straining eyes and ears as I searched my surroundings for any sign of the elk that Sharra was sure had been here only minutes before. The trail meandered at the edges of a patch of muskeg and all of a sudden I realized that I had come to a sudden stop. The spring sun had found a way to cut through the thick trees here and my eyes had found a skinny birch tree that grew just off the trail. That tree was a deciduous spark in a sea of conifers and the sun had caught the young and green spring leaves and lit them up in unreal brilliance against the darker background of spruce and lodgepole pine. For some odd reason my gaze had become riveted upon this single tree. Before I knew it I had pulled out my old Swiss army knife, flipped out the small saw, and was busy sawing away at the papery bark. As the teeth of the blade bit into the wood I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice quietly speak into my ear. Sharra had been calling to me, both vocally and mentally, and I hadn't heard or sensed her. I blinked in surprise and stared into her worried eyes, unsure of what had just happened. For a moment it was like she hadn't even been there. The Link had been silent, almost dead and the world around me strangely subdued. All of my attention and energy had been bent towards that tree because as soon as I had laid eyes on it a word had been whispered in the back of my mind.

Bow.

I had experimented with making a bow before but had given up on the idea simply because I didn't have a clue about how to make an effective one. Things were different this time and a thrill went through me when I suddenly understood on some level that everything I had tried before had been wrong from the very beginning. I had used the wrong wood of the wrong length and had even carved the bow to the wrong shape. The birch tree I had started to cut down, for some very weird reason, felt like the right way to start. The thrill I had felt moments earlier evaporated instantly. I suddenly had knowledge in my head that had never been there before. I knew I had to split that birch staff in just the right way and I knew how to shape the limbs of the bow for power and strength, and I was suddenly very unsettled. Those were things I had never learned, things that shouldn't have been inside my head. I stared at Sharra with wide eyes, the old Swiss army knife clenched in my right hand. Mosquitoes buzzed around my head. Sweat trickled down my forehead and the sun was hot on the side of my face. A squirrel chattered somewhere back in the trees and shadows danced on the undergrowth as a gentle breeze swayed the trees above. My brain raced in a dizzy circle then all of the sudden the world realigned and I nearly fell flat on my face. Sharra reached out and caught my arm as I stumbled. The pads of her fingers were cool and rough against my skin. At her touch something buzzed in my head and I looked to her sharply. Worry, confusion and curiosity washed against my senses, mirrored in Sharra's amber eyes and perked ears. I felt her unspoken question and nodded my head. I was fine, I just had a momentary dizzy spell or something like that...

Deeper down, I was a little uneasy and I think Sharra picked up on that. She was quiet as I finished the job of cutting down the birch tree. This was something I had to do. When the job was done and I had a staff as tall as I was and as big around as my forearm we returned to the trail and resumed our hunt. Not a word passed between us as we moved silently through the trees. I let Sharra and her sharp senses do the searching. I simply followed behind her, the forest around me distant and subdued as I retreated within my thoughts. Sharra was there at the edges of perception, as she always was, but nearly everything else faded into the background as I bent my attention inwards. My feet followed the path on their own. I barely even remember moving.

I could see it all in my mind, every single step and tool needed to convert the rough piece of tree trunk clenched in my right hand into a stout longbow. I was excited but a bit nervous at the same time. Here, finally, was something that could very well improve my chances for survival. A good bow was a powerful weapon, far superior in range and accuracy to my throwing stick and spears.

Hope blossomed and the world around me slowly returned. Sharra looked back over her shoulder at me and there was a look in her eyes that I couldn't quite pin down. It was oddly quiet on her end of the link as well. She was holding something back, her thoughts too were bent inwards but I could feel the curiosity within her bubbling up like spring waters through cracks in stone.

There were going to be questions later, that much I knew. At times Sharra had an almost childlike curiosity about the world around her. It was a trait I found endearing most days yet trying on others. I can imagine she must have given her parents fits as a youngster. It was easy enough to picture a little fuzzball with her nose into everything and a handful of questions for every occasion. That thought brought a brief smile to my face before the reality of the last few minutes killed it. I had my own questions about what had just happened and I wasn't sure if I would like the answers if I ever got them.

We plodded on in silence through the shadowy undergrowth. Hunting was nearly forgotten as we retreated into our own thoughts. We didn't stop until twilight grew upon us.

**********

Earlier that summer Sharra had led me to a sanctuary she had discovered almost two years ago. Nearly a day's travel from the cabin it was perched high on the northern wall of the valley, surrounded by scattered lodgepole pines seemingly growing of solid stone. There was a dark opening there underneath a rocky outcropping that jutted out from the mountainside like the stump of an ancient tree. A cave, and a place that had become a second home to us as the warmth of spring brought life back to the land.

We wove our way around jumbled boulders and over beds of crumbling shale and approached the mouth of the cave from the downwind side. There were other creatures that had used this cave as a shelter in the past and we were careful to make sure than none had taken up residence while we had been elsewhere. Another encounter with a bear or a confrontation with a mountain lion was not something either one of us wanted to experience.

Sharra sniffed the wind intently, her ears twitching and swivelling as she listened for things that I couldn't hear. When she signaled that all was clear we slowly moved up to the cave. Thick clouds had crawled over the setting over an hour ago and the light was fading fast. The north west wind suddenly had teeth to it. Sharra could smell rain on the back of that wind and I wanted to get inside and get a fire going as soon as possible. I was tired and hungry after hiking all day but I was also itching to start work on my bow.

Even though Sharra had told me the cave was empty, I still approached the opening with caution, a spear clenched in my hands. Sharra's senses were good, far better than mine, and I trusted her judgement but there were times when I still had to be sure with my own senses. A lifetime of relying on sight was a hard thing to overcome and I'd never liked relying on other people for anything.

The cave was indeed empty. A faint, lingering scent of smoke reached my nose and no fresh tracks marred the dust brought into the cave on eddies of the wind. The circle of stones that marked the hearth at the mouth of the cave remained undisturbed. With a sigh of relief, I dropped my pack next to the hearth and stretched muscles fatigued from running and hiking all day. Sharra dropped her pack beside mine and wandered past me towards the back of the cave, sniffing intently. I could hear her claws click on the stone as she disappeared into the dark. Shortly, she reappeared, a lithe grey shadow against the darkness that lay at the back of the cave. Nothing had been here since we had left seven days ago, she told me, and the supplies we had stowed here were undisturbed. I nodded and set about making a fire. I had brought in a bunch of wood the last time we were here and stacked it along one wall of the cave. The importance of having quick access to dry firewood was something I had learned very early in my days on this world.

I fumbled around in the fading light for a moment before I found the pile of dry tinder. I grabbed a couple of handfuls and walked to the mouth of the cave to get more light. I sat down on the lip of the cave mouth and started to make a fire bundle.

I had gotten much better at starting fires in the last few weeks. After a ton of experimenting, I had discovered that a fine piece charcoal will catch and hold a spark very well. Some gentle blowing and dry tinder were all that were needed to get things going after that. Generally it only took me a few minutes to get a fire going now instead of messing around for over an hour and getting pissed off. I pulled my fire making tools from my pack and made careful preparations to catch a spark.

Sharra was uncharacteristically quiet as I swung flint against steel. I could see the glint from the sparks reflected in her eyes as she stood a few paces away and watched me. Her thoughts were hidden from me but I had the distinct feeling she was waiting for something. It felt as though she were on the cusp of asking a question that had been on her mind for some time. I tried to ignore what I was feeling from my Linkmate and get the fire going. While the weather had been warm recently, it was still early summer and the temperature had dropped sharply after the sunset. My fingers were getting cold and I wanted the fire going before I did anything else.

The expected curl of smoke finally materialized from the fire bundle and I carefully placed it in the hearth and built a nest of dry twigs and sticks around it. A few moments of gentle blowing and a welcome tongue of flame began to consume the wood. I finally relaxed as the fire got going and a smile came to my face as warmth began to return to my cold fingers, a smile I saw echoed on Sharra's muzzle. She went and pulled out the hides we had stored here and spread them of the rocky floor. We both collapsed gratefully on these and Sharra leaned into me and relaxed with a sigh and a couple of wags of her tail. I raised an eyebrow at her sudden physical contact and after a moment of hesitation I gave her a quick scratch behind the ears. She sagged into my side and her tail wagged a little faster. My hand came away coated with loose fur. I made a face and did my best to shake the offending hairs away behind Sharra's back. The recent warmer weather had sure kicked her shedding into overdrive. I was finding wolf fur in everything, in my food, stuck in my beard, even wedged in the dark recesses of my pack. Little balls of fur had even collected in the corners of the cabin and along the walls of this cave.

Dinner was the first order of the evening and Sharra reluctantly left my side to dig in her pack. From it she produced two big slabs of pemmican and a chunk of bear fat. The pemmican she placed on flat pieces of stone, added a little of the bear fat to each and then put them close to the fire to fry. I still wasn't crazy about pemmican but Sharra had grown to absolutely love the stuff and it was one of the very few foods she would actually cook. It was better warmed up and with a little extra grease, and it sat in your gut like a chunk of lead, but man, the flavour left a lot to be desired. When you're used to foods that actually taste good it isn't easy to have to eat one thing day in and day out, especially when it tastes terrible. I never understood why Sharra liked that stuff so much. When it was being cooked it did smell far better than it tasted and that may have been part of it. I have a suspicion that Sharra tasted food more with her nose than she did with her tongue. When she was hungry, most food seemed to bypass her tongue anyways and go straight down her throat. Wolfing down food isn't a figure of speech with her, it's a fact of life.

I was pretty hungry and the pemmican went down easier than usual. A full belly made me drowsy and I was almost ready to go to sleep right after eating but I picked up the staff of birch I had cut and began to eye it intently. I was just visualizing how to begin making it into a bow when Sharra finally broke the silence.

"You have changed."

I looked up sharply to where Sharra had taken a seat across the fire from me. A grin crossed my face briefly before fading. She was right. I had changed, and in more ways than one. I could feel the touch of her curiosity gentle in my mind and I heard it in her softly spoken words.

"Really? In what way?" I asked, half jokingly. It was obvious that I had changed. I'd had to adapt to a whole new way of living. Staying the same probably would have gotten me killed.

Sharra's next words took me by surprise.

"Ever since you recovered from the fever you have felt different." She tapped the side of her head. "I feel it up here through the Link. Something deep within you has awakened and it is gaining strength by the day." She shook her head slowly. "It was strong earlier today when you cut down that tree and for a moment it was like the rest of you was not even there. You did not hear me when I called out to you and I could not even reach you through the Link."

I put my staff of birch to the side and contemplated Sharra's words with a frown. Something odd had happened then. When I was silent for a long moment Sharra spoke again.

"The Mother warned me that the healing might change you but I did not expect anything like this."

That statement got my attention a hurry. Sharra was still very tight lipped about that episode and it was a rare occasion indeed that she talked openly about it. I decided to dance around the issue and see if she would reveal anything else without me trying to force it out of her.

"I know I've changed Sharra, I had to. The man I once was wasn't able to survive this new way of life."

Sharra shook her head, staring down at the hides upon which she sat. "This is something different, something I do not exactly know how to explain to you." After a long moment she looked up to me. Her eyes were guarded and her face a carefully schooled mask. Her ears were back a bit and I could sense her uncertainty.

"And you think that this 'Mother' has something to do with it?" Despite my best efforts a sharp edge crept into my voice. I couldn't help it. I had a rather jaded view of organized religions and the subject never failed to rub me the wrong way. Old habits die hard, I was tired and I didn't really feel like getting into a theological discussion and I nearly said something else. The words caught in my throat when I saw Sharra's ears snap back at the tone of my voice and I couldn't help but feel bad. It wasn't my place to poke holes in her beliefs. She didn't have the knowledge I had, the understanding that there was so much more to the world and to the universe than her simple religion could explain. I took a deep breath and tried to force old feelings away. The feelings that came through the Link at that moment made me understand the pure and simple belief that Sharra had in the religion that her people held dear. It was what she knew, what she had always known and I, in a moment when the old bitterness poked through, had come very close to saying something condescending and likely hurtful. I made a mental note to steer clear of that subject if at all possible.

Sharra didn't say a word. Her eyes were down. She nodded slightly and then her eyes found mine. Her ears were still back and I felt that my statement had hurt her. I smiled apologetically at my friend and what she saw and felt from me brightened her up somewhat. I did my best to explain to her my thoughts on the matter.

"The only constant in life is change. I may feel different to you because this life, this world, has forced me to think in ways that are completely new to me. I've had to learn new skills and I've had to relearn how to live." I made a wry face. "It's almost like having to learn how to walk again. There's plenty of bumps in the road and I've tripped and fallen flat on my face a few times."

Sharra smiled at that and I felt better seeing her face light up after my earlier statement. I decided to go out on a limb and try and lighten things up a bit.

"Work of the Mother or not, I _am_different. After all, you could hardly expect me to stay the same after hanging out with a weird fuzzball like you for nearly four months." I said pointedly.

The look of shocked surprise on Sharra's face was priceless. She opened her mouth to say something but no words came out. Her jaw snapped shut and she glared at me, a slow grin spreading along her muzzle. Her eyes twinkled and I could feel her playfulness rear up through the Link. She wasn't just going to let that statement slide.

"You are calling me weird? You have not looked at yourself recently have you?"

"I tried that. For some reason every mirror I look in cracks before I can get a good look...." I shrugged and toyed with my beard, looking off into the distance. Sharra almost choked on her laughter.

"It could be worse though. I could be covered in fur and have a nose that's ten times too big for my face." I scratched my chin thoughtfully and smirked at Sharra.

Sharra sputtered indignantly. "My nose is not too big for my face! It is far better than that tiny, useless thing you call a nose. At least I can smell things with mine."

I feigned thoughtfulness for a moment. "You know, if that involves knowing what I smell like after four months without a bath I think I can do without your sense of smell." I said at last. Sharra nearly howled with laughter.

"You'd look terrible with a nose like mine anyway." I added..

Sharra cocked her head and glared at me. There was a twinkle in her eyes. She was enjoying this playful banter as much as I was.

"You are absolutely right. You are a bit ripe. I like my sense of smell the way it is so I try not to breathe to deeply around you. I think your stink has even been scaring the animals away." It was my turn to glare at her. She just grinned back, a wide toothy grin that spoke volumes. "You do need a better pelt though. Only having fur on the top of your head and the bottom of your face is enough to give people like me nightmares."

"I don't think I'd want a pelt like yours. Seems like stray hairs get everywhere and into everything." I plucked a ball of wolf fur that had taken up residence in my beard and stared at it for a moment before I flicked it away. It drifted slowly to the floor, swirling as hidden air currents driven by the fire caught it.

Sharra's ears went back and I got the feeling that I had struck a nerve. She took great pride in her pelt and cared for it as best as she could but she was lacking in the tools necessary to do so. Her blunt claws, not a whole lot different from my fingernails, could only do so much when she was shedding her thick winter undercoat. She was losing big tufts of fur and left a trail of hair wherever she went. She looked a bit ragged and unkempt and I knew that it bugged her a lot more than she let on.

Her reply to my offhand remark had a different tone than her earlier playful words. I sensed her embarrassment and her frustration over her inability to keep her pelt looking good. Females, I thought automatically, always putting image first. I quickly pushed that thought away and hoped that Sharra hadn't picked up on it.

"I cannot do much about that. It always happens this time of year." She sighed and her whole body sagged. She picked a tuft of fur off of her arm and looked at me helplessly. "See?" She asked in a plaintive voice before looking away. In the flickering firelight I could see the sad expression on her face. The earlier, playful Sharra had disappeared and for a moment the old, sad Sharra returned.

The smile melted off my face and I suddenly felt like a fool. I had learned over the last few months that Sharra was a very sensitive individual and I'd always had a reputation for being sarcastic and a bit blunt. I shook my head and stared into the fire. My tendency to say exactly what I thought had gotten me in hot water before. When was I going to learn to keep my mouth shut?

I had watched Sharra's struggles with her shedding for nearly three weeks. I felt bad for her because I could easily feel the amount of frustration it caused her. It can't be easy, having a pelt like hers, losing half of it every spring and not having the tools to brush out that loose hair.

A couple of weeks back an idea had come to me. I had found a shed moose antler in the woods on one of my solo excursions and as soon as I laid eyes on it, a voice deep in my brain said 'comb'.

It was another one of those weird episodes where I didn't really understand where the idea had come from. I didn't argue though, as my hair was getting quite long and I had no way to straighten it out. However, most of my thoughts on the matter were about Sharra. A comb would really help her deal with the spring moult.

I spent nearly two weeks trying to make combs out of that moose antler. I used the saw on my Swiss army knife to saw out sections of the palm of the antler and then used the knife to try and carve tines out of the resilient material. The first three combs I broke in quick order when I tried to make the tines of the comb too thin. On the fourth one I tried making the tines a little thicker and farther apart and had far better success. A good thing too as I was starting to run out of antler.

It wasn't easy hiding my project from Sharra. I wanted it to be a surprise but with a bond like ours it can be difficult to keep some things hidden from one's partner. Sharra knew I was up to something but wasn't sure what. I used most of my solo trips into the forest to work on that comb and I had finally finished the thing two days ago.

I had been waiting for exactly the right moment to give it to her and there was no moment better than right now. A slow smile crept over my face. I nonchalantly slipped a hand into my pocket and concealed my gift in the palm of my hand as I stood up. Sharra looked at me oddly. I felt her curiosity wash over my mind.

The mouth of the cave was like a dark hole in our world. Flickering firelight danced off of stone walls and in Sharra's eyes as she looked up at me suspiciously. She was a bit nervous, and very, very curious about what I was doing. I smiled at her reassuringly and when she moved to stand up I gestured at her to remain sitting. She stopped and cocked her head as I sat down beside her and slightly behind her. She craned her neck around to look at me and her wide eyes met mine.

"What are you...?"

Her words hung in the air and her jaw dropped wide open as I reached up, the comb concealed in my right hand and stroked it gently down her neck, starting on the back of her head, between her ears and slowly going down through the thicker, coarser fur on her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes and let out a half sigh, half groan of what sounded like sheer pleasure and literally melted under my fingers. I raised an eyebrow and chuckled at that. Just the reaction I had been hoping for. It was nice to give something back to Sharra after all that she had done for me. I continued down between her shoulder blades, working out a loose tuft here and there and finally stopped at the base of her tail. When I was done that one long stroke her ears shot straight up and her tail thumped against my leg like crazy. She reached around, grabbed my unresisting arm and turned to face me.

I held my fingers tightly closed over the comb for a moment. Sharra did her best to pry my fingers open and after a short moment of resisting I let her peel my fingers back. She stared down at the crude antler comb that lay in the palm of my hand for a long moment, her tail thumping against the floor.

When she turned her face to me there was a look of wonder on her face that warmed my heart. "You made this... For me?" She was absolutely stunned. She wasn't hiding her feelings from me in the least and there was a veritable flood of them that curled around me in a soft embrace.

I smiled at her. "When you first started shedding a few weeks back I saw how much it bothered you. When I realized that you didn't have a comb or a brush and were trying to use your claws to straighten out your pelt I figured I'd make a little surprise for you."

Sharra said nothing. Her jaw was still hanging open and she seemed to be nearly on the verge of tears. I had the feeling that she never suspected that I would do something like this. I had gotten a better reaction to my surprise gift than I could ever have imagined and that made the moment that much sweeter.

"It took me almost two weeks to figure out how to make a comb without breaking it but now that I see your reaction it was worth every minute."

It took Sharra a while to find her voice. When she finally did, the emotions that accompanied her words set my mind to buzzing. I blinked in surprise. There were feelings there that took me by surprise and really made me wonder. I zoned out for a moment, trying to sort through the feedback I was getting from Sharra when her words jerked me back to reality.

"I do not know what to say... Or how to thank you for this." Her voice was on the verge of breaking.

"No thanks are necessary. You've done so much for me over the last four months Sharra and gotten very little in return. It is finally time for me to give something back." I grinned at her and motioned for her to turn around. She did so slowly and a bright spark lingered in her eyes as she looked back at me. Her tail thumped evenly against the floor as I reached up and began to comb out her pelt. She melted under my touch and leaned back into me with a big sigh. I had to chuckle at that. She was feeling so relaxed and so content that she likely wouldn't have been more than a puddle on the floor if I wasn't holding her up.

Combing Sharra was a lot like brushing out a big furry dog. I'd had an old, long-haired, shepherd cross mutt back home so I was no stranger to brushing out a thick pelt every spring. As I worked out the loose hair in Sharra's pelt I really began to enjoy the task and the feeling of closeness that grew on me as I tended to her. It was so easy to see and feel how much Sharra enjoyed the attention and that emotional feedback relaxed me as well. I felt better and more content than I had in ages. Perhaps it was the primate 'grooming' reflex working on my brain or maybe it was something else. Either way, it was an experience that both of us enjoyed immensely.

Hardly a word passed between us for quite some time and Sharra very nearly crawled into my lap as I combed her. I took my time on her thick pelt, and was as gentle with her as I could be. At every stroke of the comb she would close her eyes and lean into me, a silly grin appearing on her muzzle. At the end of the stroke, her tail would thump against me a couple of times and still at the start of the next stroke. She was in heaven and I had to smile at seeing her like that.

After a long while of brushing Sharra with her trying to curl up in my lap, I carefully disentangled myself from her and motioned for her to lie down on one of the deerskins that we had spread over the floor of the cave earlier. She looked at me, a question in her eyes but she eased herself down onto the rough deer hair without a word. She stretched out on her stomach, and rested her muzzle on her crossed arms. I began to work through the thicker fur on the back of her neck and shoulders. She let out a happy sigh and closed her eyes. I slowly combed out her back, working my way down, hesitating around the base of her tail and the back of her legs. I wasn't sure about trying to comb out certain areas so I decided to let her take care of those areas herself. I returned my attentions to her back. There was more than enough loose fur there to keep me busy for a while.

I'm not sure exactly how long I spent brushing out Sharra's pelt but by the time I was done the fire had died down to a bed of red coals and I had enough wolf fur on the ground beside me to stuff a pillow. I stared at the mound of it on the floor and shook my head in wonder. It was hard to believe that someone her size could lose that much fur and still be fuzzy. I didn't know what to do with it so I pushed the ball of fur back towards the dark recesses of the cave.

My combing had relaxed Sharra so much that she had fallen asleep as I groomed her. She still had that silly little grin on her muzzle and her breathing had become slow and deep. I grinned and stood up to stretch a few cramped muscles. I quietly added some more fuel to the fire and took up a seat on a soft elk skin. Sharra stirred slightly and stretched, sighing deeply and her tail wagged a couple of times. Her eyes remained closed and she didn't stir again. I looked her over in the flickering firelight. She definitely looked better now that she was rid of a whole bunch of that loose hair. She looked a little thinner, sleeker, but there were still a few ragged edges to her pelt and loose tufts of fur in places I hadn't combed. There would be more grooming work for me in the days ahead, and I had no problems helping Sharra with that. As I sat beside the fire, thinking and watching, I realized that there was a beauty to my wolfy friend that I had never let myself see before. It wasn't the same kind of beauty I would associate with a human female but Sharra's sleek lines, the markings of her pelt and her personality all added up to a beauty I had overlooked for months.

I felt a frown slowly crawl across my face at that realization. I considered Sharra to be a very good friend. She thought the same way about me, that much was easy to see and feel, but there was a hint of something more than that from her. It wasn't just the Link that bound us together. This was something else, something deeper, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. A big part of me wanted to believe that it wasn't true, that it couldn't be true, while some other smaller part was overjoyed, if a little scared at the understanding of what Sharra was feeling towards me. With all of our obvious differences, physical and otherwise I was amazed that such a thing was possible.

My eyes searched Sharra's face as she slept. She rested deeply, a small smile on her muzzle. I caught hints of her dreams as she slept and they were good dreams, happy dreams, things that put a contented smile on both her and my face.

I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear the nagging thoughts from my mind. It didn't help much. A frown creased my face as I picked up my nearly forgotten staff of birch and strained my eyes and brain in the flickering firelight, tying to distract myself from odd thoughts and figure out how to start turning that chunk of wood into a deadly weapon.

***********

It snowed overnight, but that was only one surprise that the morning had in store for me.

I had slept incredibly well and had not even felt the cold that had crept into the cave overnight as the fire died out. Usually I awoke several times during the night to add more fuel to the fire but this time I had slept through the entire night and well into morning.

There was a warm weight pressed against my left side. I barely registered it at first as I blinked muzzily at the roof of stone over my head. There had been some dreams during the night, I couldn't quite remember them accurately but they had left me feeling relaxed and at ease with my surroundings.

It was a day that I could have spent the entire time in bed. I was on my way to falling back asleep when something in the vicinity of my left shoulder twitched. I nearly jumped out of my skin. My head snapped up and the warmth pressed against my left side was quickly explained.

Sometime during the night Sharra had gotten up from where I had left her and had stretched out beside me. She was on top of the deerskins while I was underneath them. She was lying on her side with her back pressed up against my left side. The back of head was against my left shoulder and the motion I had seen was a sudden twitch from one of her pointed ears. I let my head fall back against the hides, my heart thudding dully in my chest. This was unexpected, but good. It actually felt very good to have Sharra snuggled up to me like this. The events of the previous night flooded back to me and I raised an eyebrow and stared up at a bland ceiling of grey stone, wondering for the umpteenth time if I was slowly going crazy.

I don't know how long I lay there like that, just staring off into space. I was hesitant to move because I didn't want to wake Sharra. Besides, it was cold out and I was deliciously warm under the deerskins. I rolled my head to the side and stared out the mouth of the cave. There was a good couple of inches of snow out there and I could see a few flakes still drifting down out of the grey sky. I made a face and turned my attention back to the ceiling. Not the first time I had seen snow in the middle of June and I hadn't liked it the last time I'd seen it either. Winter was a six to eight month test of endurance in my old life, and apparently here too. I sighed and tried to gently adjust my position. Sharra had my left arm pinned between her body and my side and my fingers were starting to go numb. She stirred slightly as I moved but I didn't feel her wake up. She was close though, her mind floating just below the surface of consciousness. She'd be awake soon.

I turned my eyes back to the snow outside. June was supposed be a time of growing warmth and green things under long hours of sunshine, not an overcast, snowy copy of February. I knew the snow would disappear quickly but it still annoyed me. I'd had my fill of winter months ago. Today was definitely shaping up to be a good day to stay in bed.

Sharra stirred again and I felt her mind slowly rise out of the depths of sleep. She stretched, arms and legs straight out and arched her back. She settled back into quiescence against my side with a contented sigh. With a smirk on my face I let her settle down for a moment before I reached over as quietly and as slowly as I could and stroked the hairs on the tip of her exposed ear as lightly as possible. The air was cold on my bare arm and shoulder and I suppressed a shiver.

The ear twitched like mad a few times and I waited a moment after it stilled before continuing. I worried the hairs again, the ear twitched violently and Sharra suddenly bent her neck at an impossible angle to turn her amber eyes on me. I grinned at her mischievously. Her tail thumped against my leg a couple of times.

"G'morning fuzzface."

She yawned and I had a very up close and personal view of rows of sharp teeth. I made a face. Dog breath, yuck.

"You need to brush your teeth." I said, waving my hand in front of my nose. Sharra glared at me and shifted position to rest her muzzle on my chest. She blinked heavily a few times.

"So do you." She mumbled. "You need a bath too. I will bet that the river is nice and warm right about now. I can push you in if you want."

"Only if you feel like taking a swim too."

She actually thought about it for a moment before replying. "I think I will pass on that. It takes me too long to dry out in this cold weather."

"Yeah, crazy weather." I muttered as my eyes wandered to the layer of snow on the ground outside. "I thought it was supposed to be summer."

"The snow will melt quickly and the sun will probably return this afternoon." Sharra yawned again. "By tomorrow morning the snow will be a distant memory."

"I hope so. Summer is too short as it is."

Sharra grinned at that. "I happen to like the snow and cooler weather."

I glared at her. "Really? Let me shave you bald and see what you think of it then."

Sharra gave me an indignant look and jabbed me in the side with an elbow.

"Okay, okay. No shaving the wolf." I chuckled "I don't think I need to anyway. At the rate you're losing fur you'll look like me in a couple of weeks anyways."

Sharra snorted and rolled her eyes. "I doubt it. I could never get _that_ugly."

I raised an eyebrow. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder you know."

"And that is your whole problem. You do not know _real_beauty when it is right in front of you." There was a bright spark in her eyes and a smirk on her muzzle.

I had to laugh at that. Sharra just wagged her tail a few times and grinned that silly grin. I reached out, still chuckling, and scratched her ears. "I don't think you give me enough credit fuzzball." Her tail wagged harder and I couldn't miss the burst of warm feelings that coursed through our Link.

Neither of us was feeling particularly energetic that morning and as our words trickled to a stop silence crept back into our cave. Sharra continued using my chest as a chin rest, eyes blinking lazily as she tried to fight off the urge to go back to sleep. She yawned and soon I found myself trying to fight off a yawn of my own. My eyelids began to feel heavy and before I knew it I had slipped back into sleep.

I'm not sure how long I slept but when I opened my eyes again it was definitely brighter and the air was slightly warmer. The heavy cloud cover outside had started to break up and the sun managed to peek through every now and then. Water trickled and dripped everywhere as the snow quickly melted away.

As soon as I woke up, I felt Sharra's tail thump against my leg. She still had her muzzle on my chest and she grinned at me as I opened my eyes.

"Going to stay in bed all day?" She asked as I stretched and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

"Thought about it," I mumbled, "but I'm starting to get a little hungry."

Sharra nodded and licked her lips.

I stretched again, putting my hands behind my head. Something in my back went 'pop'. Sharra's ears perked up briefly at that sound. I let out a long sigh which trailed into a bit of a groan. I really was feeling pretty lazy this morning. I probably could have slept all day but the dubious comfort of the two deerskins between the stone floor and my back was starting to wear thin.

Sharra rolled over and flopped onto her other side. She didn't appear to be all that energetic either but I needed to get moving before I _did_stay in bed all day. I pushed myself up on one elbow and yawned hugely. Something tickled my cheek and I frowned and plucked a clump of wolf fur from my beard. I eyed it suspiciously and flicked it away. Sharra's ears went back and she looked away from me.

"What are you doing over here anyways?" I asked absently as my fingers sought to remove any other clumps of Sharra's pelt that had taken up residence in my beard during the night.

Sharra looked at me oddly. "What do you mean?"

"As in finding you curled up beside me this morning." I looked her right in the eyes, gauging her reaction. Her ears flicked back and she wouldn't meet my eyes. A hint of embarrassment tickled my senses. Had Sharra been human she would have been bright red. A slow smile grew on my face.

"I..." Her voice faltered for a moment. Her amber eyes met mine and there was sudden strength in her stare and in her words. "I was lonely."

No big surprise there. The last two years of Sharra's life had been pretty lonely.

"When you groomed me last night I realized that you do actually care about me." She paused for a moment. "I wanted to be close to you. I hope you did not mind." she said quietly, eyes downcast.

That did surprise me and I was momentarily at a loss for words. I felt my eyebrows go up and Sharra smiled at the look on my face.

"Given the Link that we share, are such things really that much of a surprise to you?"

"Yes! I mean no, I...umm..." I just stared helplessly at Sharra and she laughed as my tongue did its best to tie itself in knots.

"Come on," she said with a laugh, "Let us get the fire going and warm up some breakfast. You will have plenty of time to think about such things later."

I couldn't argue with her about that. Food was always a good distraction.

************

We had a rather quiet and unexciting day. After a breakfast of warmed up pemmican, neither of us felt much like going outside and getting wet so we spent the bulk of the day in the cave. Sharra worked on her spears, sharpening the points and checking the rawhide bindings while I busied myself with my bow.

I had figured out most of the steps needed the night before and I had come to realize that this bow was going to be a most interesting project.

The first thing I had to do was split the staff of birch exactly down the center, and that was going to be one of the toughest steps to do correctly. A table saw would have worked beautifully for that step but the best tool I had for that job in this world was an old hatchet.

The hatchet I had found a couple of months back buried in a corner of the old shack beside the cabin. There was little left of it when I unearthed it, the handle had long since rotted into oblivion and the head was severely rust pitted and weathered, so much so that it was difficult to see what this misshapen lump of rusty metal had once been. After several days of cleaning and sharpening it and another day or two spent whittling a handle, I finally had functional hatchet.

It was going to come in very handy for this job.

I turned the staff of birch over and over in my hands, sizing it up, looking for the best way to split it. It wasn't going to be an easy task.

The real trick of a good bow is a delicate balance of tensile versus compressive strengths. The darker heartwood has good compressive strength and will make the belly of the bow while the outer sapwood is resistant to tensile forces and becomes the back of the bow. The arms of the bow must be shaped carefully, tapering towards the ends, and care must be taken to avoid any nicks and cuts that might weaken the finished product. Final draw weight, length and durability were going to depend on how well I split and shaped that piece of birch, and I could see the whole process eerily clear in my mind. I laid out the staff on top of a deerskin on the stony floor and took up my hatchet in my left hand, and a big chunk of stone I grasped tightly in my right. I took in a deep breath, let it out slowly and began the laborious process of splitting six feet of wood lengthwise.

Starting at one end I tapped the hatchet into the wood with my stone hammer. I pried it out, moved the blade down a few inches and repeated the process. The resilient wood slowly began to crack as I hammered the hatchet into it. I flipped the staff over and repeated the process on the other side, trying my best to get the staff to split precisely down the middle.

It took me over an hour to split that chunk of birch. By that time my back was getting sore from staying hunched over in one spot for so long and my knees were screaming from being mashed against the stone floor for the last hour. I'd whacked my left hand good a couple of times when I missed the back of the hatchet with my hammer stone. Bleeding slightly and flexing stiff fingers, I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally parted the staff of birch into two pieces. Sharra sat quietly across the fire from me and watched intently. I'd almost forgotten about her and I grinned at her briefly before turning my attention back to the bow.

I inspected the two halves of the staff with a critical eye. The staff had not split precisely down the middle so I ended up with one piece that was thicker than the other. That was the one I was going to use. The thinner half soon found its way into the fire.

I pulled my flat sharpening stone from the pack I carried with me wherever I went and took a moment to sharpen the blade of my hatchet with that flat piece of sandstone. When it was sharp enough to shave a few hairs off the back of my hand I went back to work. An hour or so later, I traded the hatchet for my knife and began delicately peeling the bark from the back of the bow, taking great care to not cut too deeply into the outer layer of the sapwood as that would weaken the bow considerably.

I spent a few more hours roughing out the final shape of the bow and by mid afternoon, I had gone as far as I was going to go in one day. The wood now needed time to dry and season. Green wood didn't make for a very strong or reliable bow. In two or three weeks, I would be able to do the final whittling and shaping. Until then, I was stuck with the old throwing stick and spears. I still needed to find a good source of wood for arrows and what exactly to make a bowstring out of was another question I wasn't quite able to answer. I had a few weeks to come up with solutions to those problems though, and I had a suspicion that the answers weren't all that far away.

As I put the staff down, Sharra's voice drew me back to a reality that I hadn't realized I'd withdrawn from.

"I have rarely seen such concentration." She said softly. "You have great skill with your hands."

I smiled, not really knowing how to reply to the compliment.

"Thanks Sharra." I said as I sheathed my knife. "I've always been pretty good with my hands. That's one thing that has served me well over the years." I stood up and stretched, wincing slightly as my knees complained about the sudden change in position.

I wandered stiffly to the mouth of the cave and looked out into a day that had brightened and warm back to June from the February-like morning. The snow was almost all gone now and the land was once again green. The sun shone among scattered clouds and I could see the river down in the depths of the valley glittering like greenish brown ribbon. I could only imagine the torrent flowing between those banks as the runoff from all of the snow worked its way down to the valley floor.

Too long I had been sitting in one place and with the return of the sun I was itching to get out into the open air.

"Care to go wandering?" I asked Sharra over my shoulder. "I'm getting hungry again and I wouldn't mind having something other than pemmican for once."

Sharra jumped to her feet so fast that she raised a cloud of dust. In an instant, she had her belt on, the only item of clothing she really ever wore, and her spear had appeared in her hand seemingly out of nowhere. I had the feeling that she too had been getting bored sitting there and doing little but watching me work. In a flash she was at my side, sniffing intently at the air currents that swirled into the mouth of the cave. I raised an eyebrow and stepped back into the cave to scoop up my spears and throwing stick. When I turned around Sharra was already halfway down the trail, waiting for me with an impatient look and a wagging tail. I trotted ahead to join her and we headed downhill towards the valley.

We covered a lot of territory at the fast paced trot that Sharra favoured so much. My stamina had improved to the point where I could keep up with her for a little while now, and I had discovered that there was a simple joy in running in the fresh spring air. Maybe that was why Sharra enjoyed it so much. In any case, she loped through the trees with an ease born out of a lifetime of hard work, pausing here and there to sniff scent trails and markers. I followed behind her, sweating like mad in the humidity and getting absolutely drenched to the skin as I jogged through the soaked underbrush. Thankfully the sun was warm enough on my shoulders that being wet didn't bother me that much.

While Sharra usually had an edge over me as far as spotting potential meals went, on this occasion she completely missed one.

My endurance was starting to give out at that point and I was lagging about forty paces behind Sharra. I spotted something in the trees about eight or nine meters up above ground level. At first I thought it was a magpie nest but it stirred as Sharra loped by underneath the tree it was in. I slid to a halt a few meters away, my heart pounding in my chest and sweat pouring down my face.

The critter moved again, crawling nonchalantly up the trunk of a lone poplar tree as I watched. A porcupine, and a big one too. I wondered if it was edible.

I called Sharra and at the sound of my voice the porcupine moved a little faster and crawled higher up the tree yet.

Sharra was beside me in an instant. She followed my gaze up into the tree, using her hand to shield her face from the droplets of water that plunged from the branches overhead. Water beaded on the ends of her long guard hairs and she was as drenched as I was. Even I could smell her heavy wet-dog scent. Oddly enough I didn't mind it that much.

"Ever eaten one of those before?" I asked.

She nodded and I could see her black nose working overtime. She licked her lips. "They are quite tasty." She said.

That was all I needed to hear.

"How do we get it out of the tree?"

"We will have to try and knock it out somehow. Do you think that you can hit it with one of your spears?"

"Maybe..."

I judged the distance carefully and knew right away that it wasn't going to be an easy shot. There were plenty of branches in the way and aiming that far upward would make the spear cast very awkward. I really needed the bow for this.

It was worth a try anyways. I nocked one of my two spears into my throwing stick and aimed carefully.

I missed by two feet. The spear clattered harmlessly off of branches and disappeared out of sight. The porcupine was startled into motion and crawled a little further up yet. I swore and reached for my other spear. I hesitated as I was about to try again and ended up putting my last spear to the side. If I lost that one I might as well head back to the cave and have more pemmican for lunch. I wasn't about to let that happen. I looked around instead and found a suitable chunk of wood. I hefted it and eyed the porcupine intently.

I threw it at the porcupine as hard as I could. I didn't miss by much that time. The piece of wood bounced off of the tree trunk scant inches from the porcupine. The prickly rodent scrambled away from the impact as fast as it could, almost falling out of the tree as it did so.

Better, I thought.

Sharra got the idea and started throwing sticks and rocks at the porcupine as well. It was hit several times under our combined onslaught and finally tumbled down from the heights. It hit the ground with a squeal and was instantly off and running as fast as it could towards another tree. Sharra and I charged madly after it. Sharra got to it ahead of me and intercepted the rodent before it could start climbing again. A quick stab of her spear and the chase was over.

Sharra had a happy grin on her face and her tongue lolled as she panted from the exertion. I was sweating profusely but grinning as well. We would eat some fresh food for once. It had been a few days since we'd enjoyed that particular treat.

Sharra knelt beside the dead porcupine and performed the now familiar ritual of thanking the forest and the earth for the gift of food. Through her, a sense of belonging and of the interconnectedness of all living things coursed through our Link and swelled within me briefly before fading into the background. I had come to enjoy that sensation greatly in recent times. It never failed to send a tingle down my spine and every time I experienced it, the sensation was deeper and more defined than on the previous occasion. Life and death are not so black and white here as they were in the life I used to live. Here they are interwoven and inseparable, the one blending seamlessly into the other and coming back full circle in the same manner as the black spiral etched into my shoulder. In the maze of concrete and asphalt, old houses and run down fences of my old home the same forces were at work but the signs were subtle and hidden from the distracted minds of the human populace. Those same minds were far more concerned with things like money, gas prices, work, and trying to survive in the technological age than they were with the cycles of living world around them.

Their loss. I like things this way better. There is a beautiful simplicity to this way of life that I've really grown to love. Mind you, there are plenty of times that it pushes me to the edge of insanity but I never said things were perfect here.

Sharra expertly gutted the carcass, placing a few choice giblets back inside the carcass for later. I grinned a lopsided grin when I saw her do that. At least she had given up asking if I wanted to share some of those with her. She pulled piece of braided deer hide rope from the pouch on her belt. This she looped around the porcupine's neck and away we went, taking turns hauling our catch back up to the cave. We took it a lot easier on the return trip, walking instead of jogging, chatting and enjoying an afternoon that had turned warm and sunny enough to quickly dry us out after our run through the soggy underbrush.

By the time we reached the cave, performed the delicate task of skinning out the prickly carcass and cooked my share the afternoon had worn into evening. I was relaxed and at ease as the meat sputtered and sizzled over the fire. Sharra had already eaten her share, raw as usual, and had busied herself with cleaning up some of the mess created from dinner.

Sharra was right, porcupine was definitely tasty stuff. Perhaps a little on the greasy side but it sure hit the spot after three days of nothing but pemmican and a few berries that I scrounged up during my wanderings. There was even enough left over to warm up for breakfast. It needed pepper though and some onions would have made a world of difference.

Content within the warmth of the fire and with full bellies, Sharra and I relaxed in the shadows of the cave. As the sun had dropped to tickle the summits of the mountains in the west, golden light slowly crawled into our sanctuary. I leaned into back into the cave wall and closed my eyes, smiling as the warmth and light from the sun caressed my skin. An incredible evening considering that the day had started out with snow. Sharra sat down beside me and leaned against my shoulder. She was silent but I could sense that she enjoyed the evening sunlight and the view out of the cave as much as I did.

The greasy flavour of porcupine still lingered on my tongue. I twirled a couple of quills from the porcupine in my fingers. They were tack sharp and I could feel the barbs on the points. As relaxed as I was it was easy for me to let my mind wander and think of other times. Sharra watched as my fingers roved over the sharp points of the quills and an old memory was triggered.

"I remember pulling a bunch these things out of my old dog." I mused. Sharra's ears perked and she looked at me oddly.

"Poor thing was barely more than a pup at the time. Old Mutt was quite the hunter and I guess she couldn't resist the chase." I smiled and shook my head. "In any case, her curiosity and instincts got the best of her and she got a little too close. She ended up getting a nose full of quills. She never tangled with another porcupine after that. I guess having me sit on her and hold her down while Dad pulled the quills out of her muzzle with a pair of pliers was something she didn't want to experience again." I smiled sadly at the old memories and watched the sun dip slowly behind the mountains.

Sharra was staring at me intently and I felt the light touch of her curiosity in my mind.

"I have not heard you talk much about your past before." A statement instead of a question, definitely not what I had been expecting. I hadn't thought that Sharra would be able to deflect her curiosity so easily.

I realized that she was doing so for my sake. She wasn't trying to push me into talking about something I would rather leave alone. I was grateful for that but I had no intention of leaving her in the dark forever. She had a right to know who I was and where I came from.

"No, I've been keeping pretty quiet about that." I paused and stared emptily at the sunset. "It's still difficult for me to think about my old life. There are so many things about it that I miss." I smiled sadly at Sharra. "I guess that's one thing we share."

She nodded slowly. The last rays of evening sunshine made the long guard hairs on her pelt glow in liquid gold.

"One other reason that I've kept quiet about my past is that I'm not sure how much of my people and the way we live you would be able to understand. We are a strange race Sharra, much older and learned than your people."

Sharra looked at me strangely and I could really feel her curiosity build up. I had to smile at that and my mood lightened significantly.

"We are great builders and thinkers Sharra, and we are driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand how and why things work. We build machines and complex tools to do our work and we are able to change the face of the Earth with monuments and cities. Our curiosity has sent us to the moon and to the stars beyond as we seek to unravel the secrets of the universe. We have created things of unreal beauty, incredible works of art and imagination, music that captivates the emotions, stories that grip the mind and keep the reader looking forward to the next turn of the page." I paused for a moment at that point, thinking carefully before I started speaking again. The good things about my race had a limit and I had to go easy when I got to the bad parts or Sharra would likely think that humans were a race of unstable psychopaths.

"While there are great many good things about my people there is also dark side to us and our ways of life. We have damaged the environment of our world in our quest for money and progress." I shook my head slowly. "We are equal parts genius and monster Sharra, for we also create many things that have no other purpose than creating great destruction and very effectively killing each other."

The smile had faded from Sharra's muzzle and her ears were back a bit.

"Most of my people live in huge cities where the populations can run into the millions. Some of those cities are home to towers of steel and glass that reach over half a kilometre into the air. To many of the denizens of those concrete jungles, a place like this," I gestured to the rugged wilderness outside of the cave, "is nothing more than a figment of the imagination, a place seen and admired in photographs but rarely, if ever, visited. While we may enjoy the beauty of such wild places, there are those among us who would flatten and destroy such places if they could make a profit from it."

"Many of my people think themselves above nature and are masters over it and do their best to ignore the life that abounds everywhere. They have no understanding that they are but a small part of the living world and masters of nothing. We are trapped in a world of our own making and most of us don't even realize it."

I took a long, deep breath and gathered my thoughts. Some of my suspicions regarding the fate of my people were coming to the surface. I wasn't sure if I should be telling Sharra some of my deeper thoughts on the matter, but there was no holding back now. The lid was off that buried part of my thoughts and it was going to take some work to get it back on.

"My people live on a world much like this one. In fact, I'm almost certain that this is the same_world that my people inhabited. I think that the only difference between this world and the one I remember so well is time,_lots of time. I have seen signs that my people were once here, but those signs are unfathomably ancient."

"I think the failings and oversights of my race finally caught up with them. They are gone, extinct, likely at their own hand in one way or another. They are a frail memory now, a memory that lives on only in me. " I swallowed convulsively and my voice became quiet, barely heard above the crackling fire.

"I am the last of my kind Sharra, the only remaining human left alive, a stranger in a familiar land with no hope of returning to the place he belongs."

The look on Sharra's face was one of stunned disbelief bordering on shock. I smiled sadly at her. Too much information too fast, too many things that were so far beyond her understanding. However, the stunned look on her face brightened my mood and I almost started laughing as she just stared at me. Humans definitely were a strange bunch when you stopped to think about it. I had come to terms with my race's failings long ago and had gotten to the point of just shrugging such things off.

I chuckled and patted Sharra on the shoulder. "Don't worry," I said, "Not all of us are like that. And don't fret about me being the last of my kind either. I always thought that we'd kill ourselves off someday and there's there's not exactly much I can do about that."

She just looked at me. I grinned in return.

"Ok, ok. Enough about my insane race" I chuckled, "you probably want to hear more about me."

That_really_ piqued Sharra's curiosity. I could feel it come through the Link in waves that had the power of the ocean behind them.

"In many ways I'm a very ordinary and average example of a human male and I led a pretty simple life before I was brought here." I stared into the sunset, fighting the homesickness that suddenly welled up. Sharra said nothing but I could feel the gentle touch of her presence around me, close and comforting as I felt the weight of my past heavy on my mind.

"I lived in one of those huge cities I spoke of, one that was home to nearly a million people. I rented a house there, I had an old pickup truck, a dog, and a life that consisted mostly of work." I paused when I realized that many of the words I was going to say would have little or no meaning to my lupine friend.

I need not have worried. Sharra was as good of a listener as there ever was. She definitely had the ears for it anyways.

"That life was repetitive, often boring, sometimes even bleak, but it was comfortable and I still miss it. I miss my friends most of all and I miss my old dog. She was often the best friend I had." A frown settled on my features and I could nothing but stare at the floor for a moment.

"You might have noticed that I'm a quiet and often solitary man. I learned early in my life that the world is a harsh and unforgiving place and that the only person I could rely on was me. That's the hand that fate dealt me and I can no more change that than I can walk on water."

And so I went on to tell my friend about a different life and the man that had once lived it. There was a distance, a detachment to some of those old memories that made me feel like I had never been a part of them. Other memories were as sharp and painful as a fresh paper cut. The shadows in the cave deepened and shifted as I began my story. The fire was stoked up and soon odd patterns of light danced on the cave walls.

I hesitated for a bit and my first words were halting and unsure as I started right from the beginning. I told here where I was born, and some of my old childhood memories. I told Sharra of how my mother had died of cancer at a young age and how my father had withdrawn from the world in his grief to become barely a shadow of the man he had once been. He turned to alcohol to numb his pain and soon drank himself away from the world that had taken the love of his life from him. He lingered on for eight years after my mother's death before a heart attack sent him to join her. I had just turned nineteen when I found him face down in the garage of his old house. There was a half empty bottle of whiskey on the workbench amid scattered wrenches, shiny sockets and greasy parts. He'd been working on his truck when his time came. When I rolled him over to check for signs of life his half-lidded eyes stared right through me and he had a look of peace on his face for the first time since my mother had died. He was with her now and that was all that he had wanted.

Despite his alcoholism my father had done his best to raise me right. He wasn't entirely successful in that task. He was never an angry or violent man, even when drunk, but he was resentful of the world that had taken his wife from him. It was from him and his bitterness towards the world that I learned to be self sufficient and to not let myself get too close to anyone and risk becoming like him if things didn't go right. Despite such problems, I no longer harbour any ill feelings towards him. At first I hated him with a passion that only adolescents seem to be able to wield for leaving me on my own but as I grew into adulthood I began to understand what he had been through. I can't hate him anymore. Life is what we make of it. He made his choices and all that remains within me is a deep sadness that he had to endure what he did. He's been dead for nearly ten years and I still miss him. Despite his problems in life I loved him and I am at last happy that he finally found peace.

Sharra remained quiet as I talked, occasionally nodding her head, squeezing my shoulder or wagging her tail. I watched her expressions and felt her emotions change as I told my story. As I had been there for her earlier, helping her deal with her pain in the way that another of her kind would have done, so she now did the same for me as another human might have. All she had to do was be there and listen. There was no intimate linking of minds, no mental pictures or reliving of past events. There was only my quiet voice in the firelight and I took comfort in the warmth of Sharra's body next to mine.

I was on my own after my father's death. He had no life insurance, no money left, and the bank took the house. There I was, nineteen years old with no place to live and only my father's old pickup truck, my dog and little more than the clothes on my back. The only family I had left to me were a few distant relatives and none were able or willing to help.

Those first few years on my own were tough. I bounced from place to place, job to job. One summer I spent living in a tent in a campground, other times the dog and I lived out of the truck. Things slowly changed for the better when I landed a decent paying job on a construction crew. With the help of that job and a few close friends, I finally found a place to rent at the edge of the city.

From there I settled into a somewhat comfortable life. My earlier problems were behind me and through my job I lucked into a circle of incredible friends and that is what I miss the most about that old life.

I remember the parties around the fire at a buddy's acreage. I remember the camping and the ski trips, the games of hockey on the outdoor rinks during the winter. I recall the backyard barbeques under the heat of the summer sun and I fondly remember the telling of old stories over a few cold beers. I miss seeing the smiling faces, hearing the laughter. I miss watching hockey games on a friend's big screen. I even miss that old house I rented, and I really miss my dog. She was the one friend I could always depend on whenever my buddies were busy with work or family. She went with me nearly everywhere, I even took her to work with me where she would beg for treats from the rest of the crew and then find an out of the way corner to curl up in and watch the activity. She was always at my heels when I wandered the wilderness on fishing or hiking trips and I often wondered what had happened to her after I disappeared from that world. She was getting old and had few years left in this world and I fervently hoped that one of my friends had taken her into his family. The alternatives were not something I wanted to dwell on.

And there my voice trailed into silence. There wasn't really that much more to tell of my life. I had never let myself get close enough to a girl to get married and start a family and I hadn't even had a girlfriend since I was in high school. However, those things never bothered me that much. I was a solitary wanderer, a perpetual bachelor, and that was a life I had enjoyed, despite its many faults.

When I ran out of words I just smiled at Sharra and shrugged. She returned my gaze and there was compassion written all over her features. Her tail wagged gently and she leaned into me and put an arm around my shoulders. I had lost all of my friends, but here, in Sharra, I had gained a new one and I was very grateful for that.

It was getting late. The twilight glow had retreated to the northern part of the horizon and lingered faintly there. It would never go away this time of year, simply moving along the horizon until it heralded the approach of the morning sun in the northeast. A few stars were visible through the mouth of the cave, glittering like diamonds in the velvet curtain of the twilight sky. I stood up and stretched stiff muscles and walked to the entrance to gaze out over the darkened valley. The mountains to the west were hard saw blade silhouettes against the last gasp of twilight. The air was cool and crisp and it sent cold fingers through the dubious protection of my stained and battered sweatshirt. I suppressed a shiver.

Talking openly about the life I had left behind had a strange effect on me. I understood that it didn't exist anymore and that it was something I would never be able to return to. My life was right here, right now, and that was what I had to concentrate on, not things, places and people in the past that I could never return to. I had been reluctant to fully embrace my new life because I always held some hope that I could get back to what I had left behind. What I realized now was that this life, while almost totally different than what I was used to, was just as good as the one I had left behind me.

I looked over my shoulder, back into the gentle yellow-orange glow of the firelight dancing on the walls of the cave. Sharra caught my eyes and smiled, wagging her tail a few times. She was sitting cross legged on a deerskin by the fire, a piece of leather in one hand and an antler awl in the other. She remained quiet because she understood that I needed to think. Her body language combined with the Link was enough to let me know that she was there and that she wasn't going to desert me any time soon. She understood what is was like to lose friends, family and loved ones, and more than I, she understood the Link that bound us together and what it truly meant.

I smiled gratefully at my wolfy friend and made my way back into the cave. I sat down beside her and before I could open my mouth to say something I was captivated by the shifting and crawling patterns of light and shadows on the stone walls. Something twitched in my head and I was seized by sudden inspiration. I scooped a large piece of charcoal from the edge of the fire and before I knew it I was standing in front of a relatively flat portion of the cave wall and the voices of memory were singing in my veins. Lost in thought and memory, I began to draw.

I used to have some small bit of talent in art and I drew on that long unused part of me to bring heavy charcoal lines together into pictures on stone. I drew the skyline of a city, a plane flying above buildings and towers, crossing under a shining sun. I drew cars and trucks, trains and people on crowded sidewalks. With blackened fingers I recreated an image of my old house. An image of a man and a four-legged companion beside an aged truck took shape next to that. I paused for a moment there as memory nearly overwhelmed me.

Soon I found myself drawing a range of jagged mountains on a curving horizon below a setting sun. Quick strokes of the hand became trees and two figures took shape in foreground. One was human, tall, lean, sinewy, a spear as long as he was tall held loosely in one hand. The other was shorter, but also lean and wiry and also with a spear. Longer in the nose department and with pointed ears and a furry tail this figure and the human stood shoulder to shoulder and they stared back at me from the cave wall with an unspoken message showing in their eyes.

The lump of charcoal dropped from my numb fingers and I stepped back in a daze. My pictures covered a huge amount of the wall and they seemed to come alive, moving and shifting of their own accord in the dancing firelight.

I barely remember sitting back down beside Sharra. I absently wiped my blackened fingers on my jeans. Why had I drawn that? I couldn't quite remember. Perhaps it had been the same force that had driven primitive man to put charcoal and paint to the walls of places like this millennia ago. Maybe the only difference between me and those distant ancestors was that instead of creating images of mammoths and saber toothed tigers I had created images of cities and vehicles.

Sharra was transfixed by my images. I don't know if she had seen anything like them before. I still wasn't even sure if her people even made any sort of art. For a long time she stared at the images I had created, seeking with amber eyes to unravel the mysteries of the charcoal lines in the dancing firelight. At length she turned to me and there was awe in her quiet words. There was a Power in those images, she said quietly, something my touch had transferred to charcoal and into stone. She was silent after that and her eyes rarely left the drawings on the wall. Her eyes glistened in the firelight and the spiral pendant about her neck glowed with an unearthly radiance.

I didn't sense what she did about my drawings. To me they were simply a curiosity, something that was the result of a restless mind and a bored set of hands. One big doodle is what I thought of them as I stretched out on the cave floor and pulled several deerskins over me, yet for some reason I could not get them out of my mind as I drifted towards sleep. It had been a long day and I was very tired.

The dreams that seized me that night were of astonishing strength and clarity. As I was pulled into the dream world I began to understand what Sharra had said about the Power in the drawings I had made on the wall.

I'll never forget that dream as long as I live. I saw my old home, my old world, and I learned what had become of them.