Excavation Report, Chamber of the Trembling Vigil.
We have identified a recurring shrine-type across nearly every settlement of the Screen People: a long room lined with rigid seating, its walls hung with images of the smaller, four-legged companion-beings, and always, always, the pervasive residue of a fear-scent we have named the Ceremonial Musk. Here the Ancients came to perform what we now believe was the most sacred rite of their species: the Surrender of the Beloved.
The evidence is overwhelming. Note the wear patterns on the seating: a smooth, polished hollow at the forward edge, where the devotee sat perched, never resting, spine rigid, prepared to rise at the utterance of a Name. Note the small woven cages and rope-tethers recovered in great number, in which the companion-beings were carried, close to the chest, in the posture our texts reserve for the transport of holy relics.
The companion did not wish to be there. We know this from the deep claw-grooves gouged into the tables and doorframes, a language of refusal.
What strikes the excavator most is the arrangement of the bodies at the moment of interment. In one remarkably preserved chamber we found a devotee's remains still cradling a smaller skeleton, one hand curled protectively over its skull, the glowing rectangle (that instrument of worship in all other rooms) set face-down and ignored upon the seat beside them. In this one chamber, and this one alone, the sacred screen went dark and was forgotten.
We had believed the Screen People incapable of attention that did not glow. We were wrong. These were a people who could, when they most feared to lose a thing, at last put the light away and simply hold what was warm, and dread, and theirs.