[pope]

This can’t be right…
shhh... watch... remember...

The rabbit was beneath the nestle of brambles at the foot of the big tree; even if he hadn’t seen the creature’s terrified shining eye through the brush, he could smell its fear as plain as he could feel the sun. But there was another smell floating through the trees, a new scent. The rabbit would have to wait.
         He leaped onto the tree and quickly reached the first ring of limbs. The forest opened up below him, but in the wrong direction. The massive trunk was between him and the breeze. He climbed around to the other side and scanned the floor.
         There, towards the clearing, was a creature standing upright. It’s skin was dark and furless, and around its legs it wore what appeared to be another animal’s skin, much as he himself sometimes wore the skins of animals when the forest turned cold.
         Had he seen this type of creature before? He felt that he had. But where? Surely he had never hunted one, or he would remember it instantly. The sight of the creature was familiar, somehow, but not the scent. How was that possible?
         Then he smiled. Of course he wouldn’t recognize the creature immediately. The only other place he’d ever seen anything like it had been in the water. Or, rather, on the water. The very surface. His reflection.
         This creature was just like him.
         And of course he didn’t know the scent. He didn’t even know his own scent, really; it was always with him, so he no longer noticed it or gave it any thought, except to realize that he did have a scent, and to therefore approach prey from upwind. So the smell of the newcomer was essentially a new one to his nose.
         It did not surprise him to suddenly come across one of his own species after being alone for as far as his memory would stretch. He had once tracked the river bear for weeks, learning its patterns and its territory to avoid any future confrontation, and during that time he had drawn certain parallels between the bear and himself. Both were good hunters. Both very rarely, if ever, were themselves hunted (except for occasional attacks by the hunting cats of the hills, but only when their prey was scarce). And both were apparently alone in the forest. But he did not suppose that they were each the only of their kind in the world.
         So the sight of the stranger near the clearing at first intrigued him, being his first clear glimpse of his own kind, undistorted by water’s reflection. But intrigue quickly gave way to suspicion. Why was this creature here? Was it here to hunt?
         He leaped lightly to the next tree, and to the next, nimbly and silently working his way towards the stranger. Meanwhile, the creature was picking its way through the trees, towards where he had let the rabbit escape.
         There were but a few trees between them now, but he paused. Could this creature use tools? It made sense that if he could, then any creature like him could as well. He looked again at the creature, searching for anything he might recognize. And there it was: a thin and very sharp-looking blade, hanging from a strap around the creature’s waist. It was very smooth and bright, made from some material that he had never seen before, but its purpose was obvious.
         There were other tools on the creature. On the other side of its waist, hanging from the same strap as the blade, was a longer object made of two pieces, one long and one short. The shorter piece, made of perhaps the same shiny rock as the creature’s cutting tool, was atop the longer piece, flat on one end and round and blunt on the other. The longer piece was merely a straight branch. The creature also had, hanging on one shoulder, a long curved stick, tied at both ends with a thin cord. And near this, on the creature’s back, was a sack, open at the top, which contained a number of feathered sticks. The two-piece object at the creature’s waist he assumed to be another cutting device of some sort, but he had no idea what the bowed stick or the bag of feathered branches could be for.
         He decided to wait in the tree. The creature was approaching him anyway. The less he moved, the less likely the creature below would be to hear him.
         But the creature had stopped too. And was looking at the trees.
         He froze.


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