Summary
When he carried me into the back chamber, my eyes opened in wonder and awe. The staff tipped with the angry consuming heat god was wedged into the rock wall and was sending light reflecting all over a chamber slightly smaller than the one at the cave entrance but with much thicker veins of the sparkling earth between the white-gray rock.
That’s not what caught my attention, though. The inside walls of the cave were covered with wondrous, colored scenes of animals and men in motion. Literally all of the walls were alive with action, depicting the lives of the Meateater Sharpspears. The paint—in rich reds, and browns, and yellow and defined by tracings in black—on the wall beside the lighted staff, however, was still wet.
Big Sharpspear set me down on the rock floor of the cave, and I slowly approached this obviously still-unfolding scene. I knew now what all of the ritual was about. Big Sharpspear was creating a scene on the walls of this inner sanctum. And not just any scene. He was a master depicter. I could clearly see that he was painting our life together from the scene of his having taken me—saving me, I now knew—to our first breeding and the attack of the two Meateaters and his learning of what I could eat and our trip to the outside world for our food—and for the colors he was painting with. And I could see now, looking down at the lumps of moss with paint on them, for the brushes. The twigs with the blackened ends were there, obviously used for the outlining.