In the dark, a small angry spirit begins to scream.
It lives on the flat rock beside where I sleep. It has no mouth, no teeth, no legs, yet it shrieks like a bird with its wing caught, and it does this at the same moment each dawn, before the sun has finished climbing. I do not know what it wants. It cannot be fed. It cannot be fought. When I strike it, it goes quiet, but it does not die. It waits. It always comes back.
Here is the strange thing. My tribe made this spirit. They shaped it from the same cold shiny stones they shape everything, and then they set it to scream at them. On purpose. They lie down at night and they tell the spirit exactly when to wake them, and then they hate it when it obeys.
A good hunter wakes when the light says wake. When the birds say wake. When the belly is empty enough to say wake. These humans no longer trust the light or the birds or the belly. They trust the little screaming stone.
So each morning they lose. They open their eyes full of rage at a thing they built, they strike it silent, and they rise anyway, dragging themselves toward a hunt I cannot see, in a forest made of more cold shiny stone.
They have caught a spirit that steals sleep and given it a home by their heads.
No wolf would sleep beside its own trap.