I follow the sound of drums into a great cave with no roof, and inside it every hunter has become the beast they hunt.
Here is a man wearing the fox. Here is a woman wearing the wolf. Here a soft blue creature I have never chased across any plain, with a tail longer than its legs. They walk on two feet still, so the disguise is bad for hunting. But this is not a hunt. No blood. No fear-smell. Only joy-smell, thick and warm.
I understand this. My tribe does it too, when the moon is fat. We put the antlers on the boy who is afraid, and by morning he is not afraid, because the herd has seen him be the deer and live. You wear the skin of the strong thing until the strong thing is in you.
But these have gone further. They did not skin the beast. They made a new beast, softer than the true one, with big kind eyes that no wolf ever had. They hug. Wolves do not hug. They took the shape of the thing that could kill them and drained the killing out and kept only the warm.
One paw touches my arm. Fur, but no bone under it, no hunger. A gentle beast that was never born and cannot die.
The tribe that fears nothing enough to play at being the fox is a tribe with a very, very full belly.