The herd has stopped moving, but the herd is still angry.
I stand on the high rock and look down. So many beasts, red-eyed at the back, white-eyed at the front, all shining hard shells that hold a person inside. They do not walk. They sit. Nose to tail, longer than any river of deer I have ever chased, and none of them can run.
This is wrong. A herd that stops is a herd that dies. When my people freeze on the open plain, the big cats come. So I wait for the cats. I watch the sky for wings. Nothing comes. The beasts just sit, breathing hot smoke from their tails, and inside them the people sit too, faces gray, making the sound a wounded thing makes to no one.
One beast barks. Then another. Then all of them bark, loud and stupid and pointless, at nothing, at the beast in front, which cannot move either. This is not the barking of hunters. This is the barking of a tribe that has forgotten there is no enemy. The enemy is only the tribe, packed too close, all wanting the same trail at the same time.
I have seen fear before. Fear makes you fast. This is a new thing. This is fear with nowhere to run, poured into a hard shell and left to boil.
They built beasts to make them fast. Now the beasts hold them still, and they scream inside them, safe, warm, and going nowhere.
I climb down. My feet still work. I go around.