Fear → Flight → Courage
The goats knew something was wrong before the humans did.
Weiknos watched them from his position among the rocks, his body pressed low against sun-warmed stone, breathing in rhythm with their breathing. The herd's heads lifted as one—not the lazy, half-interested surveillance of animals at rest, but the sharp, total attention of prey sensing predators. Their ears swiveled. Nostrils flared. The old billy, the one with the notched ear that Weiknos had tracked for fourteen winters, took three careful steps toward higher ground.
Then Weiknos heard it too: voices. Human voices, rising from the valley below with the particular quality of men on the hunt.
His own body responded before his mind could form the thought. Heart rate spiking. Muscles tensing. The overwhelming urge to flee—not away from the herd, but with them, as he had done a hundred times before in practice, in play, in the strange communion that his brother called madness and Weiknos called understanding.
The goats bolted.
Weiknos bolted with them.
Seven winters had passed since Wenh had drunk mushroom tea and changed the cave game forever. Seven winters since she'd sat by the fire with a strange boy who thought like goats and told him to come back when he was ready. Seven winters, and The Great Rest had grown from seasonal gathering place to something approaching permanent settlement. More structures now, more paths worn into the earth, more people who stayed through all seasons to tend the sacred fire and keep the patterns alive.
Weiknos approached along the forest path in late afternoon with twenty winters behind him, lean and gangly with his brother Mons's features but none of his easy confidence. He moved with an odd gait—not limping exactly, but bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, head tilting at angles that suggested he was listening to sounds no one else could hear. Which, in a sense, he was. The sounds goats made. The way they moved. The language of prey animals navigating a world full of things that wanted to eat them.
At his belt hung a woven basket containing objects that made sense to no one but him: dried grasses from the meadow where the herd spent summers, shed antlers from the billies who'd grown too old to keep them, twisted roots from the salt licks where goats came to supplement their diet. And sitting atop the whole collection, worn openly despite the stares it would draw: a crown of sorts, fashioned from shed goat horns bound together with sinew and leather.
His brother walked beside him, a full head taller and considerably broader. Mons carried fresh kills—rabbits, a young deer—and moved with the rolling confidence of a man who'd never questioned his place in the world. Where Weiknos was all angles and awkwardness, Mons was curves and ease. Where Weiknos mumbled and looked at the ground, Mons laughed loud and met every eye.
"You don't have to wear those," Mons said quietly as they approached the outer camps. He meant the antlers.
"I do," Weiknos said. Two words. Final.
Mons sighed but didn't argue. They'd had this conversation before. Many times before. Mons was a good brother—protective, concerned, perpetually trying to smooth the rough edges that made Weiknos so difficult for other people to understand. But there were some things even good brothers couldn't fix.
The gathered tribes filled the amphitheater with their different sounds and smells. Perhaps three hundred people now, maybe more. Weiknos's hand tightened on his basket as heads turned to look. He felt their attention like physical weight. Heard the whispers even when he couldn't make out words: Odd one. Touched. Goat man.
But then, across the space near the cave entrance, he saw her. Wenh. No longer sixteen and nervous but twenty-three and radiating the kind of quiet authority that comes from being right about important things. She wore her moldavite pendant openly, green stone catching sunlight and transforming it into something that seemed to glow from within. Her eyes found his across the distance, and something flickered in her expression.
Recognition. The same look she'd given him seven winters ago, sitting by the fire after her pattern had been marked. I see you. I know you. You're not alone in your strangeness.
She smiled—not a polite social smile, but the fierce genuine thing Weiknos would later learn to call her "knowing grin." The expression that said: Another pattern-seer. Another outsider. Another one of us.
Some of the weight lifted from his shoulders. Not all of it. But enough that he could breathe.
The ritual preparations began as the sun dropped toward the western ridges. Weiknos sat in a corner of his temporary shelter, apart from the main camps, trying not to think about the fact that in a few hours he would have to stand before the entire gathering and explain why he'd spent fourteen winters learning to think like an animal that most people considered nothing more than ambulatory meat.
A small girl appeared at the shelter entrance. Perhaps six winters in, clutching something carefully in both hands.
"Goat man?" she said, voice piping and uncertain.
Weiknos looked up. The girl's mother stood behind her, expression carefully neutral. Encouraging her daughter but ready to intervene if the odd one proved dangerous.
"Mother said..." The girl held out her hands. "We found this near our camp. She said the goat man might want it."
In her palms: a shed goat horn. Curved and ridged, still carrying the scent of the animal that had worn it. From the old billy with the scarred flank, Weiknos recognized it immediately. The one who'd been with the herd for at least fifteen winters, who limped slightly in his left rear leg, who always positioned himself upwind to catch predator scent before the younger goats noticed.
Weiknos's face transformed. The awkwardness fell away, replaced by pure delight. He took the horn with the gentleness reserved for sacred objects, turning it in his hands, examining the wear patterns that told the story of the animal's life.
"This is from the patriarch," he said softly. "The old one. The leader. He shed this maybe... three moons ago?" He looked up at the girl with eyes that actually focused on another human face for once. "Thank you. This is precious."
The girl beamed, not entirely understanding but knowing she'd done something right. She ran back to her mother, who watched Weiknos with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and grudging respect.
Mons had witnessed the exchange from a short distance away. He approached slowly, sat without invitation—they were brothers; invitation was implied.
"You really do know them," Mons said quietly. "Each one. Individually."
"Of course." Weiknos said it like it was obvious. Which, to him, it was. How could you spend time with creatures and not learn their names, their personalities, their stories? The goats were as distinct to him as the people in his tribe. More distinct, honestly. The goats made sense. People were confusing.
"They think you're mad," Mons said. Not cruelly. Just fact.
"I know."
"What if... what if they don't understand? What if the cave game doesn't help them see what you see?"
Weiknos traced the horn's ridges with his finger. "Then I was wrong to ask for it. But..." He paused, trying to find words for something that didn't quite fit in language. "The pattern is there. Fear, flight, courage. I've lived it three times. If I can show them... maybe they'll understand that the goats live it too. And if they understand that, maybe they'll understand what I'm trying to do."
"Which is?"
"Make them stay. The goats. Near us. Not as prey, but as... neighbors. Companions. So we don't have to hunt for days to find them. So they don't have to run from every human they see." The words came out slowly, each one pulled from some deep place where Weiknos kept the visions he couldn't articulate. "It's possible. I know it is. I just have to make them see it."
Mons looked at his brother with an expression that mixed exasperation and affection and something close to awe. "That's insane."
"Probably."
"I'll stand with you anyway. When you tell the stories. I'll validate what I can."
Weiknos met his brother's eyes—a rare thing, direct eye contact. "Thank you."
Mons gripped his shoulder briefly, then left. Alone again, Weiknos sat with the horn and tried not to think about all the ways the evening could go wrong.
The drums began as twilight settled over The Great Rest. Deep rhythmic pulse like heartbeat, like the thud of hooves on hard ground. The three-hole flutes joined them, and their melody was different from Wenh's pattern seven winters ago—sharper, more staccato, with sudden stops and starts that mimicked the way prey animals moved through dangerous terrain.
Weiknos stood with the other petitioners near the cave entrance. There were three others seeking to mark patterns tonight, but he would go first—whether by random selection or because the elders wanted to get the odd one over with, he wasn't sure.
The tribe arranged itself in concentric circles around the central fire. Elders innermost, then adults, then children on the periphery. Weiknos saw Wenh take her position among the priest tribe—no longer a petitioner but one of the keepers now, one who validated patterns and helped others see what they might otherwise miss.
She caught his eye. Nodded. Not encouragement exactly—she wouldn't insult him by pretending this would be easy. But acknowledgment. I see you. I remember. Tell your stories.
The elder priest who'd validated Wenh seven winters ago now looked impossibly ancient, as if those seven winters had been seventy. But his voice still carried authority when he struck his staff against stone three times.
The signal. Begin.
Weiknos stepped forward. Every eye turned to him. The weight of attention pressed down like physical force. His hands trembled. The goat-horn crown on his head suddenly felt ridiculous, a child's game rather than sacred regalia.
But then he saw them. At the edge of the gathering, drawn by some instinct or sound humans couldn't perceive: three goats from the herd he knew. The old billy with the notched ear. A young female with distinctive white markings. And a yearling male who'd been born during the first spring Weiknos had tried sleeping near the herd to prove he meant no harm.
They watched him. Not with fear—not anymore. With something closer to curiosity, as if they too wondered what would happen when their human tried to explain their shared language to others who'd never learned to speak it.
Weiknos's trembling stopped. He stepped to the storyteller's stone—smooth and slightly elevated, placed perfectly so the speaker's voice would carry to all the circles.
He sat. Awkward. Uncomfortable with being seen. But the goats were watching, and somehow that made it bearable.
The elder priest spoke, his tone clear: You seek to mark the wall. You have traced the glyph. You claim to have lived the pattern three times. Speak. We listen.
Long pause. Weiknos's hands found his knees, pressed down to still their shaking. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.
"The pattern is Fear... Flight... Courage." Another pause. "I've lived it three times. With goats."
A few chuckles rippled through the gathering. Not mean-spirited, exactly. But not respectful either. Goats. Of course the odd one would have goat stories.
Weiknos pushed through, voice still quiet but gaining steadiness from the truth of what he was saying. "The first time... I was small."
The drums shifted, began the pattern-specific rhythm that would weave through his stories. The world narrowed to the fire, the watching faces, and the memory rising like water from a deep well.
The Charge
Eight winters in, Weiknos had already spent more time with goats than with children his own age. There was something about them—the way they moved, the way they thought, the simple clarity of their fear and contentment. They made sense in ways humans didn't.
On this particular day, he'd managed to get close to a small herd grazing in the meadow near his family's temporary camp. He'd been patient, moving slowly, bringing fresh grass as an offering. For hours he'd crept closer, inch by inch, until finally he was near enough to reach out.
He held the grass in his outstretched hand, hardly breathing. The young billy watched him with one liquid eye, suspicious but tempted. This could be the moment—the first time one of them took food directly from his hand. The beginning of everything he'd been working toward.
"I'm a goat too!"
His little sister burst from the tall grass behind him, laughing with the pure joy of a child of four winters who thought she was playing the best game ever. She grabbed the grass from Weiknos's hand and stuffed it in her own mouth, making exaggerated chewing motions. "Look! I eat grass like goat!"
The effect was instant and catastrophic.
The young billy's eyes went white-ringed with panic. In the animal's perception, something that looked vaguely human had just become something else entirely—something unpredictable, possibly dangerous, definitely wrong. The goat charged.
Weiknos had time for one thought—no, wait, I can explain—before the animal's lowered head caught him square in the chest.
The impact drove the air from his lungs and sent him tumbling backward. He hit the ground hard, ribs singing with pain, unable to breathe. The billy stood over him, deciding whether this threat required another charge. Young Weiknos's vision went grey at the edges. His sister's laughter had turned to screaming.
Then Mons was there—already ten or eleven winters in, showing the strength that would make him a respected hunter. He appeared like thunder, yelling and waving his arms. The billy bolted. The rest of the herd scattered in panic, disappearing into the rocky terrain upslope.
Mons scooped up Weiknos, checking him for serious injuries with hands that shook despite their confidence. "Stupid!" The word came out harsh because Mons was frightened. "They're FOOD, not FRIENDS! They'll KILL you!"
He grabbed their still-crying sister with his other arm and hauled them both back toward camp, muttering about touched children and dangerous animals and parents who didn't watch their offspring closely enough.
That night, Weiknos lay on sleeping furs with his ribs wrapped, bruised but not broken. Through the shelter's opening, he could see the meadow silver in moonlight. The goat herd had returned to graze, distant shapes moving peacefully under the stars.
His mother fussed over him. His father spoke sternly about the dangers of wild animals. His sister, subdued now, sat nearby and wouldn't meet his eyes.
But Weiknos barely heard them. He was replaying the moment before the charge. The look in the billy's eye. The way the animal's whole body had tensed. The decision point where curiosity had turned to fear.
"It was scared too," he said quietly.
His mother paused in her fussing. "What?"
"The goat. When sister scared it. It didn't mean to hurt me. It was afraid."
His father's expression suggested this interpretation was exactly the kind of thinking that got children killed. "Doesn't matter what it meant. Goats are dangerous."
But young Weiknos stared at the moonlit meadow and understood something his father didn't: fear went both ways. The goats were as frightened of humans as humans should be of goats. Maybe more frightened. They lived every moment knowing that creatures larger and smarter wanted to eat them.
If he could approach them in a way that didn't trigger that fear...
If he could move like they moved, think like they thought, show them he wasn't a predator...
The next day, against explicit orders, he returned to the meadow.
In the cave, present-moment Weiknos touched his ribs where the bruises had long since faded but the memory remained. The tribe was quiet now, absorbed in the story. The chuckles had stopped. Even the skeptics leaned forward.
"I went back," Weiknos said, his voice stronger now. "The next day. And the day after that. Eventually..." He paused, searching for words. "Eventually the billy let me approach. Because I understood: the fear wasn't about me. It was about sudden movements. Loud noises. Things that seemed like threats. My sister being chaotic."
He looked out at the gathered people, made himself meet some of their eyes. "I learned to move like them. To BE less frightening."
A woman in the crowd spoke up, tone somewhere between curiosity and mockery: "You became like a goat?"
Weiknos nodded simply. "Yes."
Murmurs rippled through the gathering. Some derisive, some genuinely curious. Wenh's voice cut through the noise: "The second story?"
Weiknos breathed deep. Nodded. The drums shifted rhythm, preparing for the next memory.
The Mountain
At fourteen, Weiknos had been following the goat herd for two full cycles of seasons. He knew their patterns, their territories, their preferences. He could recognize individuals at a distance by their gaits, by the way they held their heads, by the constellation of scars and markings that made each animal unique.
But there was one place the herd went that he'd never followed them to: the high mountain peaks where the terrain became too dangerous for humans to traverse safely. Goats managed it somehow—their split hooves and uncanny sense of balance letting them navigate cliff faces that would kill anything else.
On this day, something in Weiknos insisted he had to follow. Had to see where they went. Had to understand this part of their world even if it terrified him.
He'd never been good with heights. Even climbing trees made his stomach twist. But he started up the mountain anyway, shadowing the herd as they picked their way through increasingly difficult terrain.
For the first hour, it was manageable. Steep, but his hands and feet found holds, and if he didn't look down, the fear stayed manageable. The goats moved ahead of him with casual grace, barely pausing to assess the path before committing to seemingly impossible leaps.
Then the terrain changed. The slope became true cliff face, vertical rock with a drop that would not merely injure but kill. The goats navigated it like it was a pleasant meadow stroll. Weiknos froze.
His hands gripped the rock, knuckles white. Below him, the valley spread out in miniature—trees like moss, their family camps invisible. The drop was significant enough that his brain refused to process it, kept trying to recalibrate, kept insisting this couldn't be real because nothing should be this high up.
The herd was leaving him behind, disappearing over the ridge. If he didn't move, he'd lose them. Weeks of patient observation would be wasted because he couldn't handle his own fear.
His first instinct was flight—climb back down, return to safe ground, admit defeat. He started to descend, hands shaking so badly he nearly lost his grip twice.
But then he heard it: a goat sound from above. The old billy with the notched ear, the one who usually led the herd, was looking back at him. Was it beckoning? Or was Weiknos projecting human meaning onto animal behavior?
Didn't matter. Something in him refused to quit.
He looked at the cliff face. Not down at the drop, but up at the path the goats had taken. Focused on hand-holds, foot-holds. Thought about how the goats would move—testing each hold, trusting their balance, focusing on the next step rather than the ultimate destination.
His hands moved. Found purchase. His feet found ledges. He climbed.
Each breath was a conscious act. Each movement deliberate, chosen. The fear didn't disappear—it simply became something he moved through rather than something that stopped him.
When he crested the ridge, the world transformed.
A high meadow spread before him, carpeted in alpine flowers that grew nowhere else. The air was thinner here, cleaner, with a quality of light that made everything seem more real somehow. The goat herd grazed peacefully, and from this vantage point, the world below looked vast and small simultaneously.
Teenage Weiknos collapsed onto the meadow grass, gasping and laughing and nearly weeping from relief and exhilaration. The old billy approached, regarded him with what might have been approval or might have been simple curiosity. Either way, the animal accepted his presence at this height, in this sacred place.
He sat with the herd for the rest of the afternoon, breathing the thin air, watching the sun move across the sky. From up here, the human world looked different. The camps where his people lived were tiny. Temporary. The goats' world was vast. Eternal. Mountains that had existed long before humans learned to stand upright.
A voice broke his reverie: "You understand about the goats."
Weiknos startled. Across the meadow sat another person—definitely not from his tribe. Different markings, different tool styles. The stranger was perhaps thirty winters in, weathered and lean, and sat among his own small group of goats with the easy comfort of long familiarity.
The stranger tossed Weiknos a waterskin. They drank in companionable silence.
"Your people think you're odd?" the stranger asked.
"Very," Weiknos admitted.
The stranger grinned. "Mine too." He gestured at the goats, the mountains, the whole impossible situation. "But the goats know better."
They sat together for hours, two outcasts from different tribes, watching goats graze on a mountaintop few humans ever saw. They barely spoke the same language, but they didn't need to. The goats provided all the conversation necessary.
When Weiknos finally made his way back down the mountain—more confident now, understanding the path—he carried with him the first truly validating experience of his life. Not from family, who had to accept him. Not from tribe members who thought he was touched. But from a stranger who saw the same things he saw and recognized them as real and worthy.
In the cave, Weiknos's eyes glistened with tears. That memory was precious. Sacred.
"That was the first time," he said quietly, "another person understood. Not family. Not someone who had to accept me. Just... someone who saw the same pattern."
Mons shifted uncomfortably. The comment hit close. But his face showed something new—not just protective concern, but actual recognition of what his brother had been trying to tell him for winters.
Weiknos continued: "The mountain taught me: impossible climbs reveal perspective. If you're willing to go where they go... you see what they see."
The elder priest leaned forward. "And the third story?"
Weiknos's expression darkened. His hands tightened on his knees.
"The third was recent. This season."
THE CONFRONTATION
At twenty, Weiknos had achieved something remarkable: the local goat herd was comfortable enough with his presence that they no longer fled when he approached. He could sit among them for hours, and they would graze around him as if he were just another rock in the landscape. Occasionally, the bravest ones would come close enough to sniff his hands, his clothes, his hair.
He'd fashioned the goat-horn crown by this point—shed antlers bound together, worn to honor the animals who'd taught him so much. He wore it unselfconsciously when he was with them, and gradually stopped taking it off even when he returned to human camps. Let them think he was mad. The goats understood, and that was enough.
On this particular day, he sat with the herd in a rocky valley, so comfortable in their presence that he'd entered a meditative state—breathing with them, thinking with them, existing in the eternal present where prey animals lived because anything else was a luxury they couldn't afford.
Then: human voices. The particular tone that meant hunting party.
The herd's reaction was instant—heads up, bodies tense, preparing to bolt. And Weiknos felt it in his own body like an echo. His heart rate spiked. Muscles coiled. The overwhelming urge to flee wasn't observation anymore. It was pure experience. He WAS the prey animal in that moment, feeling what they felt.
Through the rocks, he glimpsed the hunting party. Young men from various tribes, led by Mons. But this wasn't serious hunting—this was sport. Practice. Entertainment. They were killing goats not for food but for fun, leaving the bodies where they fell, taking only trophy pieces.
The herd panicked and ran.
Weiknos ran with them.
Not as an observer. Not as a human studying animal behavior. But as part of the herd, experiencing their terror from the inside. The world reduced to pure sensation—FLEE FLEE FLEE. Legs pumping. Heart hammering. The certain knowledge that death chased behind.
They scrambled up into rocky terrain, squeezing into crevices and gaps where humans couldn't follow. Weiknos pressed in among warm goat bodies, all of them panting, terrified, hiding from the predators who killed for sport rather than need.
He heard the hunters below:
"Where'd they go?"
"Who cares? Just sport anyway."
Mons's voice, quiet but carrying: "Let's head back."
The hunters left, their laughter fading into distance. But Weiknos stayed in the rocks with the goats until sunset, trembling, understanding for the first time what it truly meant to be prey. Not as an intellectual exercise. As lived reality.
When he finally walked back to camp that night, the hunters sat around their fire, retelling the day's chase, laughing about the goats they'd killed, the ones they'd missed, the whole game of it.
Weiknos walked straight into their circle.
Still wearing the goat-horn crown.
The laughter died. They stared.
Mons stood, concern and embarrassment warring on his face. "Brother—"
"You were killing them for sport." Weiknos's voice was quiet but carried an edge none of them had heard before. Fury. Grief. Authority.
"It's just practice," one hunter said defensively.
"There's another tribe," Weiknos continued, each word deliberate and hard. "North ridge. They're killing the herds. Wastefully. For FUN." He paused, making eye contact with his brother. "The goats have nowhere safe. Not from them. Not from us."
The hunters exchanged glances. One laughed nervously. "So what? They're GOATS."
Weiknos faced his brother directly. This next part was hard. Revolutionary. The kind of idea that would mark him as either visionary or insane with nothing in between.
"What if," he said slowly, "they stayed near our camp?"
Silence. Total, confused silence.
"What?" Mons said.
"What if we DIDN'T hunt them? What if we... protected them? And they stayed close? Safe from other hunters?" The words came faster now, the vision he'd been building for fourteen winters finally taking shape in language. "Because then... we'd always know where they are. No long hunts. No tracking. They'd be... there. Near us. And we'd only take what we need, when we need it."
The hunters stared like he'd started speaking in gibberish. One turned to Mons: "Your brother's lost his mind."
But Mons looked at Weiknos differently now. Really looked. Saw past the oddness to the pattern underneath. "That's... you're talking about KEEPING prey animals. By choice."
"I'm talking about them choosing to stay. Because it's safer. For them AND us."
Another hunter shook his head. "This is crazy."
But Mons continued staring at his brother, and something was shifting in his expression. Recognition. Maybe not full understanding, but at least the beginning of it.
"How would this even work?" Mons asked carefully.
"I don't know," Weiknos admitted. "But the pattern is there. Fear, flight, courage. They fear hunters. They flee. But if we show courage enough to NOT hunt them... maybe they stay."
The hunters didn't get it. Couldn't get it. The concept was too alien, too removed from everything they'd been taught about the relationship between humans and prey animals.
But they stopped laughing.
Mons spoke slowly, thinking it through: "This would require the whole tribe to understand. To agree."
"I know."
"That's why you asked for cave game."
"Yes."
The hunters dispersed eventually, muttering about touched ones and strange ideas and the impracticality of it all. But Mons stayed, sitting with his brother in silence until the fire burned low.
Finally: "I meant it. About trying your idea."
Weiknos looked at him with something that wasn't quite hope but wasn't quite despair either. "You called me stupid. Touched. Odd."
"I know. I was..." Mons struggled for words. "Trying to protect you. Thought if you acted normal, they'd accept you."
"I don't want to be normal. I want to be understood."
"I'm starting to." Mons gripped his brother's shoulder. "The goats... you really do see through their eyes, don't you?"
"Yes."
They sat together, two brothers who'd walked very different paths but were trying, finally, to understand each other's journeys.
"So," Mons said eventually. "How do we start?"
For the first time in the conversation, Weiknos smiled. Tiny. Barely there. But real. "We let them come close. And we wait."
In the cave, Weiknos finished the third story and sat in silence. The tribe was utterly still. Even the drums had quieted to nothing.
Three stories. Three different times, places, circumstances. But the same pattern: fear that led to flight that somehow, impossibly, transformed into courage. The courage to face a charging animal again. The courage to climb impossible heights. The courage to propose an idea so revolutionary it might be insanity.
The elder priest rose slowly, studying Weiknos with ancient eyes. He looked to the tribe. His tone carried the weight of ritual, of decision: What say you? Has he lived the pattern? Do you witness it?
The response came not in words but in sound—a collective affirmation that rose and fell like breathing, like wind, like the sounds goats made to each other across distance. Recognition. Validation.
Mons stood. This was hard for him, Weiknos could see it. His brother didn't like being vulnerable in public, didn't like admitting he'd been wrong. But he did it anyway.
"I've watched my brother with goats for fourteen winters," Mons said, voice carrying across the gathering. "I've called him odd. Strange. Touched." Pause. "I've been wrong." He looked at Weiknos directly. "You understand them. Truly. And this idea... keeping them close... I think it's worth trying."
The shift in the crowd was palpable. If the great hunter Mons validated the odd one, maybe there was something to see after all.
The little girl who'd brought the shed horn stood with her mother. "He knew which goat it came from," she said clearly. "He knew its name."
Wenh stood, her voice certain: "Seven winters ago, I sat where he sits now. Told mushroom stories. You thought I was too young, too odd, too strange." She paused, touching her moldavite pendant. "But the pattern was real. The medicine works. Many of you use it now." She looked at Weiknos with that fierce grin. "I see his pattern. Do you?"
One by one, validators rose. The teenager who'd been in the meadow when the goat charged, now a young man with children of his own. Others who'd witnessed pieces of Weiknos's strange journey. They confirmed: these stories were true. This pattern was real. The odd one had lived what he claimed.
The elder priest nodded slowly. Stepped aside. Gestured to the wall.
Weiknos approached with trembling hands, sharp stone tool ready. Found a space near the glyphs that marked Fear → Flight → Courage. With careful, deliberate strokes, he carved his mark—a notch that would remain as long as the stone stood.
This pattern was enacted. This pattern was witnessed. This pattern is real.
But then he did something unexpected. Instead of finishing with the mark, he made goat sounds—the actual vocalizations the animals used. Fear-call. Flight-call. Courage-call. The same pattern, expressed in the language of the creatures who'd taught it to him.
Some people gasped. Mons closed his eyes, caught between embarrassment and strange pride. But Weiknos didn't stop. He made the sequence again, and this time Wenh joined him—not with goat sounds, but with the medicine woman's toning. Harmonic. Supportive.
Then others joined. Each in their own way. Human sounds. Goat sounds. Tones. Rhythms. The cave became a chorus of voices honoring the same pattern in different languages.
When it faded, Weiknos was crying.
The elder priest placed his weathered hand on Weiknos's shoulder. "The pattern is validated. The wall is marked. And now we must consider: does this innovation serve the people?"
A tribal elder stood—old woman, practical, skeptical. "You want us to... not hunt goats?"
"I want us to think differently," Weiknos said, finding his voice again. "To see that Fear → Flight → Courage isn't just MY pattern. It's theirs too. The goats'. And if we understand it... everything changes."
"But they're animals," someone protested. "Prey. It's the way of things."
Wenh's voice cut through: "I befriended a predator. That wasn't the way of things either." She touched her moldavite pendant. "Seven winters ago, I sat where he sits. You thought I was too young, too odd, too strange. But the pattern was real. The medicine works." She looked at Weiknos. "I see his pattern. Do you?"
Murmurs rippled through the gathering. Some resistant, some considering.
The elder priest was thoughtful. "The pattern is seen. Three stories, one arc. Fear → Flight → Courage. But this innovation... letting prey stay... requires testing."
"I'll test it," Weiknos said. "They already trust me. I just need... permission. For them to come near camp. For others not to hunt them."
A tribal elder—the practical old woman—spoke: "And if it fails? If they flee anyway?"
Weiknos met her eyes. "Then I was wrong. But... I don't think I am."
The tribe processed into the cave proper, following a path worn smooth by countless feet over countless generations. Torchlight flickered on walls covered in glyphs—the accumulated patterns of lifetimes. Fear symbols carved beside courage symbols. Conflict glyphs near reconciliation marks. The visual history of human experience, distilled to essential shapes.
Weiknos stood before the wall where his mark now lived. Fresh ochre still wet on his fingers from the notch he'd carved. Wenh approached, carrying more ochre in a small vessel.
"Do you know the sounds?" she asked quietly. "The words your people use for the pattern?"
"I... learned them. Watching last time."
The elder priest nodded permission. "Then speak them. In the sounds of your people."
Weiknos touched the first glyph—sharp downward strokes representing fear. He made the sound his tribe used, guttural and harsh, the word that meant terror, danger, the moment before flight.
The tribe echoed it. The cave amplified it, throwing it back from stone walls until one voice became many, many became thunder. Goosebumps rose on Weiknos's arms.
He touched the second glyph—lateral lines of flight. Made the quick, breathy sound his people used for running, escaping, the desperate need to survive.
Echo. Echo. The sound bouncing off cave walls, multiplying until the very stone seemed alive with the memory of all those who'd ever fled danger.
Third glyph—ascending loops of courage. Weiknos made the rising, strong sound. The word for facing fear, for standing ground, for choosing the hard path.
Echo. Echo. Echo. The cave participated, as if the patterns carved in its walls remembered being spoken and wanted to speak again.
Then Weiknos placed his palm flat against the stone. Traced the complete pattern with ochre-stained fingers, painting over the carved marks so they stood out bright and fresh. And he made the goat sounds again—not asking permission this time, but offering them as gift. Showing the tribe that patterns existed in languages beyond human speech.
The old billy with the notched ear—still watching from the cave entrance—responded with his own call. The sound carried into the cave, mingling with human voices. For a moment, the boundary between species seemed porous. Permeable. Two different kinds of creatures recognizing the same truth about fear and flight and the courage to trust.
Wenh added her voice—the medicine woman's toning. Then others joined. Human sounds. Goat sounds. Tones without words. Rhythms without melody. All of it braiding together into something that was more than the sum of its parts.
When the sound finally faded, Weiknos was crying openly. Not from sadness. From the overwhelming relief of being seen. Of having his strange gift validated by the only authority that mattered: the collective witness of the people.
The elder priest spoke the final words of the ritual: "The pattern is validated. Mark the wall."
But Weiknos had already marked it. The notch was there, permanent, carved into stone that would outlast him by millennia.
This pattern was enacted through story. Let all who come after know: Weiknos, keeper of goats, walker between species, walked the path of Fear → Flight → Courage. The goats taught him. We witnessed.
The tribe placed their hands on the wall around the mark. Blessing it. Sealing it. Making it sacred.
They emerged from the cave into early morning light. The ritual had lasted through the night—longer than anyone expected, but that was the nature of patterns. You couldn't rush revelation.
People drifted toward sleeping areas, quiet conversations continuing in low voices. Processing what they'd witnessed. Considering the implications of letting prey animals live near camp by choice rather than capture.
Weiknos stood apart, looking toward the distant ridge where the goat herd spent most of their time. Dawn light painted the rocks gold and amber. He could see them up there, dark shapes moving against bright stone. Going about their lives, unaware that down here in the human world, something had shifted.
Mons approached. For a long moment they stood side by side, not speaking.
"I meant it," Mons finally said. "About trying your idea."
Weiknos didn't look at him. Kept his eyes on the distant herd. "You called me stupid. Touched. Odd."
"I know." Mons's voice was heavy with things unsaid. "I was trying to protect you. Thought if you acted normal, they'd accept you."
"I don't want to be normal. I want to be understood."
"I'm starting to. The goats..." Mons paused, searching for words. "You really do see through their eyes, don't you?"
"Yes."
They stood together. Seventy winters of brotherhood stretched ahead of them—winters when Mons would gradually come to understand what his brother had always known, when the impossible dream of keeping goats would slowly become reality, when sport hunting would give way to careful husbandry. But those winters were still future. Now, they were just two brothers trying to bridge the gap between their different ways of seeing the world.
"So," Mons said. "How do we start?"
The question hung between them—practical, immediate, sincere. Mons wasn't mocking anymore. He genuinely wanted to know.
Weiknos almost smiled. "We let them come close. And we wait."
Later that morning, after sleep and food and the slow return to ordinary time, Weiknos found himself on the ridge overlooking the main camp. He'd climbed up here to think, to process, to be alone with the goats who understood him better than any human ever could.
But he wasn't alone.
Wenh picked her way up the rocky path, moving with the careful confidence of someone who'd spent winters foraging in difficult terrain. She settled onto a flat rock near where Weiknos sat, not too close, respecting the space people like them needed around them.
Below, The Great Rest sprawled in organized chaos—camps and cooking fires, children playing, adults working, the sacred pillars rising like prayers made stone. From up here, the human world looked both vast and small. Temporary. The mountains were forever. The goats' world was the older world. Humans were just visitors who'd recently learned to stay in one place long enough to build temples.
"You were brave," Wenh said. "In the cave."
"You were braver. Seven winters ago."
She made a sound that might have been laughter or disagreement. "Different kinds of brave. You wore goat horns in front of three hundred people and made animal sounds during the most sacred part of the ritual. That takes a particular type of courage."
"They're real," Weiknos said simply. "The patterns. The goats live them too. I just... showed the truth."
"I know." Wenh touched her moldavite pendant, green stone catching sunlight. "That's why you're dangerous. Truth-tellers always are."
They sat in companionable silence, watching the goats graze. Three of them had followed Weiknos up here—the old billy, the young female, and the yearling male. They grazed close enough that Weiknos could hear the sound of them tearing grass, the rhythmic chewing, the occasional snort or low call.
"How old will you be," Wenh asked suddenly, "when they finally eat from your hand?"
The question landed like prophecy. Weiknos turned to look at her, and she was grinning—that fierce, knowing grin that said she saw things others didn't.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I'll wait."
"Good." She stood, preparing to head back down. "The waiting is the work. The patience is the pattern. They'll come when they're ready. Probably when you're old and grey and have forgotten you were waiting."
"Seventy winters?" Weiknos said, half-joking.
Wenh's grin widened. "Maybe. Patterns don't rush. Neither should we."
She started down the path, then paused and looked back. "We're a pair of odd ones, aren't we?"
Weiknos almost smiled. "I suppose we are."
"Good. The world needs odd ones. How else would anything ever change?"
She descended, sure-footed, leaving Weiknos alone with the goats and the morning sun and the impossible dream that had just been validated by the only authority that mattered.
The old billy approached—not close enough to touch, not yet. But closer than he'd come before. Standing at the edge of the space where trust ended and fear began. Testing the boundary. Considering.
Weiknos sat very still. Didn't reach out. Didn't make a sound. Just breathed and waited and existed in the eternal present where goats lived because the future was too uncertain to inhabit and the past was too dangerous to remember.
The billy took one step closer.
Then another.
Not close enough to eat from his hand—that was still decades away, still generations away, still an achievement that would require patience beyond anything humans usually practiced. But close enough that Weiknos could smell the animal's warm-grass-and-sun scent. Close enough to see the details of his scarred hide, the notched ear, the wise old eyes that had seen sixteen summers and survived them all.
Close enough to hope.
Weeks passed. Then months. The seasons turned as seasons do, indifferent to human innovations or animal experiments. But something was changing at The Great Rest.
The goat herd began spending more time near the camps. Not close—they weren't tame, weren't captured, weren't penned. But closer than wild animals should choose to be. Grazing on the periphery where they could see the humans and the humans could see them.
Some tribes honored the agreement. They watched the goats but didn't hunt them. Let them pass without pursuit. Their children learned to move slowly around the herd, to lower their voices, to respect the boundary between species.
Other tribes thought it was foolishness. They hunted as they'd always hunted, and when they did, the goats fled as goats had always fled, and Weiknos had to start the patient work of building trust all over again.
But slowly—so slowly it was almost invisible, like the growth of trees or the wearing down of stone—something was shifting. The goats were staying. Not because they were forced to. Because on some level they'd calculated that proximity to Weiknos's people was safer than distance. That the predators who killed for sport lived elsewhere. That here, near the camps, they could graze in relative peace.
A child approached a young goat one afternoon, moving with the careful slowness Weiknos had taught. She held out grass. Extended her hand. Waited.
The goat watched her. Suspicious. Tempted.
It took one step toward her. Then another.
It didn't take the grass—not yet. Not quite yet. But it considered it. And in that consideration lived the seed of everything Weiknos had been working toward for fourteen winters.
He watched from a distance, and something in his chest tightened with emotion he couldn't name. Not quite hope. Not quite vindication. Something between them. The feeling of watching the impossible become slightly less impossible. Of seeing a dream take one small step toward reality.
Seven winters later, when the next cave game came, Weiknos would not be the one telling stories. Someone else would stand where he'd stood, would trace different glyphs, would enact different patterns. That was the nature of the ritual—you got one chance to mark the wall, and after that you became witness rather than protagonist.
But fourteen winters after that, when he was thirty-four and the goats had learned to tolerate human presence without panic, someone would tell a story about seeing Weiknos sitting in the meadow with the herd grazing around him like he was nothing more than an unusual rock.
And twenty-one winters after that, when he was forty-eight and the first goat kids were being born inside the camp itself, someone would mark the wall with glyphs representing a new pattern: Wild → Familiar → Belonging.
And forty-two winters after that, with ninety winters behind him and barely able to walk, Weiknos still spent his days with the goats because they were the only friends who'd never disappointed him. A great-grandchild of the old billy with the notched ear would finally, carefully, gently eat from his wrinkled hand.
Seventy winters from charge to communion. From fear to trust. From the impossible dream to the reality that would transform human civilization forever.
But all that was still future. Still pattern waiting to be enacted. Still the slow work of patience that Wenh had prophesied.
Now, Weiknos sat on the ridge overlooking The Great Rest and watched the goats graze and knew with certainty that the pattern he'd marked on the cave wall would outlive him by millennia. That others would come after him and see those glyphs and understand: Fear → Flight → Courage wasn't just human pattern. It was universal. Shared across species. True for prey and predator and the strange in-between people who learned to walk in both worlds.
The sun set behind the mountains, painting the sky in colors that had no names. The goats settled for the night, the old billy positioning himself upwind to catch predator scent while the others rested. And Weiknos sat among them, wearing his crown of shed horns, breathing in rhythm with their breathing, thinking their thoughts, living their lives alongside his own.
The work would take seventy winters. The validation would come in increments so small they were almost invisible. But the pattern was marked. The tribe had witnessed. And that was enough.
It had to be enough.
Because patterns didn't rush, and neither would he.