A man has dug a den beneath the ground and filled it with meat that never rots.
I go down the ladder into his hole. It is dry. It is warm, warm from a fire I cannot find, a fire that lives inside white sticks on the wall and gives no smoke. Good trick. I want it.
He has meat here for many winters. Meat in silver stones, stacked to the roof. Water in clear skins. He shows me, proud, the way a strong hunter shows the kill. But the meat is old. The meat is dead a long time and sleeps in the silver, and he waits. He waits for a bad thing to come. He does not know what bad thing. He only knows it comes.
This I understand. The dark always comes. The cold always comes. The big cat in the grass always comes. So the wise one digs, and stores, and sharpens the spear.
But he digs alone. One den. One man. Food for many, and no many. No woman. No child. No old one to tell the stories. No hand to take the watch while he sleeps.
I count again. Meat for twenty winters, and no tribe to eat it.
A man alone in a warm hole is not safe. A man alone is meat.