Avūmi sat by the crackling fire, with its light licking at her face. She had asked the village Mekhe a question that had troubled her for more than a year, and yet somehow it didn't seem to trouble anyone else. Nobody else was menaced, nor puzzled, nor even bothered by the same thought that she was - it was if there was an answer that everyone knew and it was so obvious that nobody bothered to teach her, because why wouldn't she already know?

What was she supposed to do with life?

Her mother had died during the birth of her sibling (who had died after but a year of life), and her father had died to a cougar when she was only five. As such, she'd been left as a ward of the Mekhe's retreat and with a fear of death and terrifying aimlessness. What was she to do with her life? Why was she here, if only seemingly to die?

She spent her life monitoring the fieldworks, caring for the llamas, weaving ponchos, learning the legends, embarking on the occasional hunt and tradition expedition, cooking for the Mekhe. But it all seemed purposeless. Nobody talked of her mother, or her father, or her dead sister anymore: she'd scarcely thought of them for years, as she'd been too younger to truly understand what death meant. She barely even remembered them, and that's what scared her. Did they live only to die?

And then, when she finally asked the Mekhe what it all meant, he'd informed her of the circumstances of her birth. As if that would mean anything.

On her way into the world, she tortured her mother. And that, for some reason, made her touched by Gods and Spirits and Stars and whatever. Mekhe Hocus Pocus, from an old man she didn't know the name of.

It made her sick.

She nodded and smiled when she thought she would, but the rest of the conversation was a blur. She wanted to be clean of it. She wanted something. Something in the pit of her wanted something.

That night she couldn't sleep. She went out into the fields, and found the Llama-post that belonged to the Milking llamas. She took the stockiest one that belonged to the Mekhe, and with a bow, a poncho, tools to weave and shear and cook, she was gone.