'Twenty winters ago I saw a sign in the heavens and marked it well. I saw the light of its second full moon surrounded by a misty halo which seemed to reach down towards the earth. Another, smaller halo erupted suddenly, and three stars passed through it as they fell from the sky, all in the same direction, and each within a breath of the other.' Now it was Kalus who did not understand. 'But how does this passing touch me?' 'I think that perhaps one day you will answer that question for me.' The Mantis turned and retired to his lair. Kalus stood watching for a moment, then turned himself and retreated toward the shelter of the smaller cave: wondering. Akar had already passed that way before him. Chapter 7 The hours passed slowly. Using the wood Akar had brought him, Kalus built a small fire and they divided the cooked meat between them. Sylviana had protested slightly, but given in when informed that regardless of the Mantis' decision, there could be no more free meals of sebreum. There was an air of restless tension in the small enclosure. For though being banished from the mountain did not mean certain death, it did mean a much harder and more treacherous life. Both Kalus and the wolf knew just how difficult living without a home could be; Sylviana could only imagine it. Akar had not forgotten that he and the girl were already welcome to remain there, but he kept this knowledge to himself. His friend needed the companionship of her own kind, and he had made a pact of mutual protection, however tentative, with the man-child. And Akar was a creature of his word. As morning yielded gradually first to early, then to late afternoon, the three had still seen or heard nothing of the mantis. Exhausted by his seasonal battle with the mating spiders, he lay unmoving and death-like in the larger cave below them, buried in the deep, recuperative sleep of an insect. With time hanging heavy around them, Kalus and the girl were given the chance, denied them by the turbulence of previous days, to study each other more closely, and to ask, if they would, the unspoken questions that had been forming in their minds. Kalus had finished with the carcass by mid-day---cutting and shaping the skin, sharpening the ribs against the rock to make bone needles---but showed no sign of interest in talk, moving instead to look out from the entrance, apparently deep in thought. Sylviana watched him there in the sunlight, with the wolf sleeping peacefully beside her, as she gently stroked his fur.