EndlessChase/HD1.31.04
Hidden Diary Entries for 01.31.04
I was born in my village. I call it my village because that’s exactly what it was to each person that lived there. It was each person’s home. Our tribe was small, no more than a hundred adults. Our village bore no name. Our clan bore no title. We were nearly as close to the edge of creation as one can get. We merely left enough space that our children were born without any strangeness in them, though once every decade or so one would be born a little different despite our distance from the edge. I never realized, at the time, what position I really held there. I was the chief hunter, the leader of the Men. I was barely through my twentieth year, and I had the most honored position that a man in our village could bear. My father was chief before I, and he was a damn good hunter. I remember only once when our village went hungry as I grew up. The hunting party had been raided by barbarians, and my father brought back the wounded so they might be tended to. Before he left with the few men they had that were still able bodied, the woman’s council berated him on coming back with no meat. They did this in front of the entire village, as a way to belittle him.
My father stood with no expression while they blamed him for our lack of food. He waited until they were done before he spoke. “The wounded needed tending. They could not be left to die.”
I heard these words, and they sounded like truth in the purest form to me. The council women deliberated for a moment, and replied to him, “Your benevolence may have given a better chance to those that you brought back, but it has also risked the strength of the entire village. We are no as strong as we could be. If our home is invaded, we may not be able to defend it. We may run out of food before you return again with nourishment. We could die of starvation. As much as we care for the lives of the wounded, the village must come before the individual.”
Their words had a modicum of truth. I was barely ten years, my stomach empty and blaming me for it, and I felt ashamed for what my father had done to our village. He looked at the women with what I took as guilt on his face. I was wrong.
He moved to stand directly in front of the council women. He never raised his voice, though I am sure that everyone in the village heard what he said. “I will not trade the life of my companions for food. That is no better than eating someone to avoid the hunt. You may feel free to be cannibals if you wish, just leave my hunters out of it.”
I never doubted his reasoning again.
