Blue eyes blazing, he got to his feet, expecting her to attack any second. He dropped the tail. He crouched to fight. She didn't attack. Nor, for some reason, did he. The way her chapped lips were stretched back over her teeth disturbed him ... or rather it unsettled him, because it _didn't_ disturb him. At least not the way a snarl did. It didn't put him on guard, every muscle tense; it didn't make him feel that he had to fight. She didn't look angry or eager to have anything he had or ready to kill ... he didn't know the word for how she looked. She weighed her knife in her hand. Then she struck it in her belt, and said again, "_Friends_, little boy." He stared. At her strange snarl that wasn't a snarl. At the knife she had put away. He had never seen anyone do that before. Slowly he felt his own lips curl back into an expression he could hardly remember. He felt the way he felt sometimes late at night when, safe and alone in his room, he would play a little with his toys. He didn't feel like killing her any more. He felt like ... like _friends_. He looked at the squirrel tail lying on the ground. He worried it with a foot, then kicked it away. It wasn't good to eat--and he thought of how the squirrel had looked scrambling off, and felt his lips stretch tighter. He tried to think of the word. Finally it came. "Funny squirrel," he said, through his tight lips. He stuck his knife in his belt. They stared at each other, feeling each other's pleasure at the peacemaking. She bent, picked up a small stone and flipped it at him. He made no attempt to catch it, and it struck him on the hip. He half-crouched, instantly wary, hand on knife. A thrown stone had only one meaning. But she was still smiling, and she shook her head. "No, little boy," she said. "_Play._" She tossed another stone, high in the air. He reached out and caught it as it descended. He started to toss it back to her, and remembered only at the last moment not to hurl it at her head. He tossed it, and she missed it. He grinned at her. She tossed another one back at him, and he missed, and they both grinned. Then he grunted, remembering something from the dim past. He picked up a small fallen branch from the ground. When he looked up, she was poised to run. This time he shook his head, waving the stick gently. "Play," he said. She threw another stone, eyes warily on the stick. He swung, missed. He hit the next one, and the sharp crack, and the noise the stone made rattling off into the bushes, flattened him to the ground, eyes searching for sign of men. She was beside him. He smelled her body and her breath. They saw no one. He looked at her lying beside him. She was grinning again. Then she laughed; and, without knowing what he was doing or why--he could hardly remember ever doing it before--he laughed too.