The tribe puts its young in a cave with too much light and no fire, and tells them to be joyful.
I have watched. The young ones line the walls. Boys on one side, girls on the other, like two herds who fear the same watering hole. Nobody moves toward the meat. Nobody moves at all. They stare at the small glowing stones in their hands, because looking down is safer than looking across.
A false thunder pounds the air. It shakes the chest the way a drum shakes it before a hunt, and their feet twitch, but they do not run. They only sway a little, arms locked to their sides, ashamed of their own bodies, as if the body were a thing borrowed and not yet paid for.
Then a small brave one crosses the open ground. Alone. Everyone watches the crossing the way we watch a boy walk out on thin ice. He reaches the other herd. He says a thing. And whatever he says, it decides where he sits at the fire for a whole season.
I understand this now. This is no dance. This is the first hunt, and the prey is another person's want, and the spear is a single sentence, and most of them are too frightened to throw.
They will go home hungry. But the brave one, the one who crossed, he will sleep tonight bigger than he woke.