Immortal

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The dream is always the same.

  It starts on the hunt—running hard through the tall grasses in the heat of a blazing, midday sun. My tool is a stick with a sharpened stone tied to the end of it. The second crudest weapon imaginable, barely one technological step up from a heavy rock. It resembles a spear but that’s misleading because throwing one of these would be a stupid thing to do. Rather, one is advised to hang onto it until close enough to stab something. Even then you’d better hit the thing you’re stabbing in just the right place or the point can bounce off bone and you’ll have succeeded only in pissing off something much bigger than you.

There are four of us in this chase, and we’re tired. We’ve been after the beast for two solid days without food or water. We want to stop, all of us, but we won’t because this is our job.

The youngest one keeps lagging behind. It’s his first time on the hunt, and he’s only just discovered it’s not a lot of fun. We call him the Kaa, which is what we call all the young ones. He won’t get his name until he’s made his first kill. Which will be soon, provided he doesn’t quit on us.

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