The tribe builds a small dead tree and no one hunts from it.
I watch. A man sits on the flat wood. He does not sharpen anything. He does not wait for prey. He puts his face in his hands and breathes slow, like a beast too tired to run, and there is no beast chasing him. When he goes, a woman takes his place. Then an old one. Then two who share meat from a loud paper skin and drop crumbs for the little sky-rats.
The wood remembers no one. Each body warms it, then leaves it cold again for the next. This is strange. In my cave, a sitting place is yours. You warm it, you keep it. Here the warmth is given away to a stranger, over and over, all day, and no one fights.
The bench faces the water and the trees and nothing that must be killed. It faces only the looking. I think the tribe made this thing for a hunger I do not know, a hunger that eats no meat. The tired man came empty. He left empty. But he sat a while first, and something in his shoulders came down.
Good. A place to be still is a place to stay alive. I sit. I look at the water.
Nothing comes. That is the whole gift.