Chapter Text
The moon was shining bright, but not as bright as the fire he was feeding. Fire was the greatest pet, it ate a lot, but it kept them warm.
He was speaking to it, keeping it entertained, at the same time he was telling it all about his thoughts, concerns, hopes and more.
"And so I told her, 'Amee, you can't possibly think that feeding a goat all throughout winter is easier than hunting it.' And she told me that milk was apparently worth it. I don't know, I really don't know. If we let children drink milk of goats, will they not become goats themselves? It's just hard to really tell. The logistics of it and the long-term consequences are kind of not defined well enough... Keeping a bear, you say? Well, they sleep the whole winter, you know. And if people don't sleep enough, they get funny in their heads. No, you listen to me, I tried once..."
He often spent nights like that. Somebody had to feed the fire and he did. He was chatting to it all nicely and respectfully while catching lice off of himself and eating them. They weren't that tasty, but it was something to do. One of his greatest fears was dying after eating a louse, because what if you became what you'd last eaten after you died. Not that he knew for sure, but what if.
Meanwhile fire was making a great point.
"No, if I put a child with a bear, it will forget it's a human. And it will teach bears to hunt with spears and that would be catastrophic. Although, actually, maybe it would become our ally. And bring peace to our tribes. Bear and man would become one family... But I still don't think I can just take a child and take him into a bear lair. It's dangerous. But, yes! But what if we could milk a bear?"
***
He ran away from the freshly awaken bear and onto a frozen river. Ice broke under him and he fell into water.
He never thought he'd die so early. And especially not after eating nothing but lice. There he went. He'd become a louse.
But that didn't happen. He got out of the river and saw the bear getting out of its lair. The bear saw him too.