'You must eat.' She looked at him. 'I know today was very hard for you. I know you don't like to kill..... We will try to gather berries and water plants tomorrow, but I cannot promise it. Please, Sylviana. You must try to be strong just one more time.' Her eyes finally saw him, and yet again he was not an animal, but human like herself, suffering the same pain and empty confusion. For what little that was worth. 'All right.' She got up and sat with him on the floor. She ate from the wooden bowl without relish. But still the food gave her sustenance. Kalus watched her, saddened, then rose and walked into the chamber beyond. He returned a short time later, his bowl filled with the green, sweet-smelling sebreum. He placed it in front of her. 'I know it's not easy for you.' 'But the Mantis.' 'Has a heart the same as I do. Eat.' She regarded him weakly, blinked from the smoke, then lowered her head and ate. Kalus returned to his cooking as the fire grew less, and after perhaps an hour went to sit beside her on a flat stone near the entrance. She stared out into the formless darkness beyond, a fur wrapped around her for warmth. But still she shivered. They were silent, then he spoke. 'The Cold World will be coming soon. Winter. Already the days grow short, and the evenings cool. It is the time of year I like best. We will be safer then.' 'Safer. How?' 'The herd animals travel south in search of living green, and the predators must follow. We will be able to move about more freely.' 'But how will we eat?' She didn't want him to stop talking. 'We will eat.' Silence. 'I feel more at peace in the Cold World. For there, if a man is strong, he can breathe the free wind unafraid. Only the hardiest predators remain, and among them is respect.' 'What about your people?' 'They will follow the herds, as they always do.' 'Then how do you know what the winter is like? Or will you go with them?' A hurt, disbelieving look came over him. 'NO.' He felt frustration pushing back at his own will to live. 'These past three Winters I have lived alone.' He looked out, and thought he might know what she was feeling. 'I have known loneliness, too, though perhaps it is another kind. Your sorrow is for friends and ways that have died. Mine is for companionship that I have never known. Because to my people I am what this world is to you: something beyond their experience. And because of that they fear it, and mistrust..... I would be your friend, Sylviana, but I don't always know how.' She turned, and in the shadows his face looked worn and grim: there was no doubting his pain. She lowered her eyes to the ground.