The pair arrive back at camp around noon after several days of walking.

Tammy’s stomach has been rumbling, but he hasn’t noticed.

“Aaah!” Avi stretches her arms and back as they enter the perimeter of the tents. “Finally home! I feel pretty gross, haha.” She turns around to look at Tammy, her tail swishing. She knows Tammy is sad about something, so she keeps a sweet voice. “Let’s make our report to daddy, then go take a bath to get the travel-grime off us, okay?”

“Okay…” Tammy mumbles. The past two days of travel have seen all his conversations with Avi be some combination of,  ‘okay’, ‘no thank you’, or ‘mhm’. Nothing longer than that. He keeps staring into the middle distance, or keeping his eyes on the ground, and the lack of sleep has put deep, dark bags under his eyes.

They maneuver through the camp and see the usual bustle of activity in the tribe. Litters of young children being trained by their parents, a team returning to the camp with a lot of fresh game in tow, workouts, sunbathing high in the trees, cookware being cleaned in a large pot of soapy water since lunch just ended.

“Hey Sammy,” an older boy says as he runs past.

“Samuel,” a tall woman says as she’s folding clothes.

“Must have been a long walk, eyy, Sammy? Congrats on your first mission.” A man gives him a nod before disappearing in his tent.

Avi keeps a pleasant face and returns their greetings in place of her husband, but is internally scowling at the lack of recognition for her part in the success of the mission.

On their way to Avi’s father’s tent, they happen across the man, and Avi’s mother. Mr. Kashier and Mrs. Chaya walking side by side with their tails coiled.

“Mommy, daddy!” Avi screams, running up to the two.

“Oh, hello, daughter,” Chaya speaks in a dull voice, which is actually the kindest that Avi hears besides Tammy’s since her mother can at least hide her contempt for the runt. When Chaya turns to Tammy, she brightens a little in a way that isn’t obviously a double standard. “And hello, Samuel. It’s good to see you two are back.”

Kashier narrows his brow, “you’re back early. You weren’t spotted?”

“Nope!” Avi swishes her tail along the dirt. “Err, well, yes, but we killed the man who saw us.”

Tammy’s muscles tighten at the words; both of the adults notice his reaction.

Avi bows and puts a hand over her chest, “if it would please you, father, I would like to give you the report of our successful mission.”

Kashier stares down his nose at her for a moment. “…Very well. In my tent,” he gestures to its direction in camp.

“Understood! C’mon, Tammy.”

“Okay…” The poor boy follows behind.

Kashier turns to his wife, but she already knows what he’s about to ask. “I’ll ask Tormen to keep watch.” She leans in for a quick kiss, and the two part ways.

Tormen Kengrov Barabba is Kashier’s younger brother from a separate litter, Avi’s uncle. He has the tribal position of Ranger Supreme and is tasked with patrolling hundreds of square miles around the camp, ensuring the Gurant Empire hasn’t sent forces that could discover, or destroy, their tribe. He was already informed that the runt, Avi, was leaving camp and therefore should be on high alert for a few weeks in case she messed up. Tormen long-since noticed Avi and Tammy’s approach to camp and has already directed his rangers to watch for pursuers.

Kashier, his daughter, and his son-in-law quickly make their way to his tent. He sits behind the large wooden desk inside and Avi stands proudly, with her shoulders back as she waits for the go-ahead to give her report. Tammy stands behind her, eyes dull and hunched forward.

“What’s wrong with you, Samuel?” He says, delicately.

“Mhm,” he mumbles.

“It’s not like you to give such a half-hearted answer.”

“Mhm.”

Avi clears her throat, “I can kind of explain it, daddy.”

“Kind of?”

“Yes, sir! Y’see, we departed…” She thinks of how long it’s been, “s-several days ago with the goal of finding food for-“

“Just skip to the part where he started acting like that.”

Avi pouts at not being able to give the full report, which will include them rushing to the rest stop at a record pace, but doesn’t verbalize her frustration. “Yes, father. We were discovered by a guard in the rest stop; he saw my tail. Tammy distracted him long enough for me to attack and inject him with a sedative. Tammy determined that it would be a bad idea to kill the man there and leave his body, so we snuck out of the rest stop with the unconscious man. We brought him to the forest, Tammy went to sleep, and I was going to kill the witness. But I remembered that Tammy hadn’t killed anyone yet, and I didn’t want him to be mocked for a non-existent kill count, so instead, I tied the witness up, gagged him, and then in the morning, I had Tammy kill him.”

Kashier narrows his brow. “You didn’t.”

“I did!” Avi’s face brightens, her tail wagging. “Tammy now has a kill count of one. All credit belongs to him, sir.”

Kashier, leaning forward on the table, remains eerily still. His tail rests coiled on the table, neither swaying in delight, nor flicking in frustration. He looks past his daughter to eye Tammy. The boy’s shaking, he’s biting his bottom lip, he looks like he’s about to puke. “You…” Kashier’s voice stays at a steady, low rumble. “Forced a seven-year-old human boy to murder someone?”

Avi raises an eyebrow, “yes? I made sure to cover his ears when he pulled the trigger, so his hearing can’t possibly still be damaged.”

Kashier tightens his fist, then quickly rises from his seat. “Stay right there.” He circles around the table and heads for the tent flaps. “I’m going to get Emiri,” the Master Physician of the tribe.

Avi cocks her head at this, but nods just as her father leaves. Something’s clearly wrong with Tammy, so it makes sense for the Master Physician to be involved. Besides, she still has to report her success when it comes to Tammy’s nutrition; that’s what the whole mission was about in the first place.

Emiri rushes into the tent before long, rushing to Avi.

“Ah!” Avi says, “Cousin Emi-“

Emiri reels back her open hand and slaps Avi hard across the face. Avi’s head whips right with such force that, were she not a bone-tail, her neck would have been broken instantly. The whiplash brings Avi’s head forward again, but she’s in a daze and falls to her butt. The sharpness of the slap cuts Avi’s left cheek, from the corner of her mouth to her cheekbone.

“You had Sammy kill a person?!” She screams, making Avi flinch, though Tammy is unresponsive. “Are you retarded?!”

Kashier enters the tent and stands silently to the side, Avi stammers out a response. “I-I, I just, he hasn’t gotten a kill yet!” Avi brings a hand up to her throat, some of the muscles in her neck tore from the sudden twisting, and she’ll have deep bruises around her neck soon. “I wanted to help him!”

Emiri scoops Tammy up into her arms, “you little idiot,” she spits her words like a curse. “Sammy isn’t a bone-tail. He’s not like us.”

Avi’s face drops.

Emiri hugs Tammy tight and rubs his back. “It’s okay, Sammy,” her voice is soft. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was all Avi’s fault.”

Tammy sniffs. His body trembles, he grips Emiri’s shirt, and fights to hold back tears.

“It’s alright. Let it all out.”

The boy shuts his eyes tight, and tears start rolling down his cheeks. “H-he… he didn’t deserve to die… I shouldn’t have killed him!” He starts dry heaving, sucking down air between whimpers.

Avi tries to get up, but Emiri kicks her in the stomach, knocking her back to the floor.

Emiri turns to leave, “Kashier, deal with her.”

“Of course,” Kashier rolls up his sleeves and walks closer.

Emiri leaves the tent with the sobbing young boy, and Avi immediately gets on her hands and knees, bowing her head, with her tail submissively lying flat on the floor. “D-daddy,” she shakes her head. “Prime Emissary, sir,” she gulps. “I-I’m… not entirely sure what I did wrong, sir.”

“Yes,” Kashier says with a regretful sigh, “I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

Avi sees a small flicker of hope, “c-could you please fill me in? We’re assassins, I… what exactly is wrong with helping Tammy accomplish his first kill?” She tightens her brow while staring at the ground between her hands. “If the issue is that I shouldn’t have helped Tammy with his first… then I’m ready to accept punishment. I didn’t want Tammy to struggle with his first, as I did.”

Kashier shakes his head. “Did I send you on an assassination mission, or was it a simple quest to find food?”

“You ordered us to kill any witnesses so the tribe wouldn’t be discovered.”

“I ordered you to kill any witnesses so the tribe wouldn’t be discovered. Understand?”

“I… can’t say I do, no. That seems like a really small detail.”

Kashier gets down on one knee before his daughter, towering above her. Avi jolts at the sudden movement, expecting pain any second now. “Thinking that that’s a minor detail reveals your failure. Samuel is not a bone-tail. He’s a young human boy. Do you understand what that means?”

“He… doesn’t have a tail. And can’t make serums, and he’s weaker?”

“Use context clues. What relevance does any of that have to the situation at hand?”

“…” Avi thinks for a second. “S-sir, I… I don’t know what ‘context clues’ are.”

A wave of disgust washes over Kashier, and he gives up trying to educate his daughter. To be fair to him, most would have went straight to the beatings.

He grabs Avi roughly, bending her over his large left thigh, then grabbing the back collar of her shirt and poncho. In one clean motion, he yanks and tears her clothes, revealing her bare back and causing her to choke a little. His left hand grips her hair, while his right hand raises. With a great deal of strength, the Prime Emissary brings his calloused hand down hard above the base of her tail.

The pain is immediate and immense. The skin breaks from the slap, with the surrounding flesh turning red. Avi’s eyes lose focus as her brain is assaulted by pain, and she brings her hands to her mouth to suppress a scream.

“Bite your hand,” Kashier advises, and Avi complies. She bites down hard on the bottom segment of her thumb.

Kashier raises his hand again and brings it down onto her shoulder blade. The instant reflex causes her to bite through the skin and flesh of her thumb; her teeth are now connected to bone.

“Can you hear me?” Kashier’s voice lacks patience.

Avi desperately nods her head.

Kashier hits her again. “Do you know why you haven’t been sent on another mission these past several months? That’s a rhetorical question, not that you know what rhetorical means. It’s because Samuel is your partner,” like everyone else, he avoids saying husband, “purely because you’re the one who brought him to the tribe, and he was most comfortable around you.” Another hard slap, Avi’s back is bleeding and already beginning to bruise. “While he was being taught and assimilated into the tribe, you’ve been receiving instruction on how to handle a human. I don’t know why I expected you to retain any of that information; I suppose I’ll need to apologize to the boy later.”

When Kashier slaps the center of her lower back, he presses her skin against one of the sharp protrusions of her spine, ripping a line of skin open. Her body begins to spasm from the agony. When a bone-tail is sufficiently agitated in combat, they’ll hunch forward in a kind of ‘combat stance’, and those protrusions will naturally flair, ripping through their flesh. But when that happens, they’re full of a special type of adrenaline and won’t register any of the pain. Right now, none of Avi’s pain is suppressed, and gnawing on the indestructible bone in her thumb is the only thing keeping her from screaming.

“One of the things you should have learned,” Kashier continues, his lesson marked by continual slaps, “is the difference of mentality. Humans do not like eating human flesh. Humans often have difficulty when faced with grisly scenes of carnage and death. Humans can be taught to kill, but it’s a slow process of acclimatization… Which, of course, is another word you don’t understand. Samuel did not receive the proper adjustments. You threw him into his first kill, and there’s no telling how the boy is going to react. He might shut down completely, he might grow completely opposed to death. You might have broken him.”

Kashier stops speaking for a moment, but he doesn’t cease the punishment. Avi’s back is raw; a bloody mess of ripped skin and exposed muscle. If Avi were a normal eight-year-old girl, she would have already died from shock, and her father’s blows would have shattered her spine and ribcage.

He sighs, “I can’t rightly say I know what this punishment is supposed to accomplish. You’re incapable of learning, and I know you won’t start paying attention in lessons. Though it’s not like it’s necessary for you to become more responsible with Samuel. I’ve never seen him so deflated. Emiri will make sure he knows exactly who’s at fault for what he’s experiencing, and he’ll pick a different partner. Hopefully his real wife can help alleviate some of the trauma you’ve caused.”

Avi gnaws on her thumb bone, blood filling her mouth and dripping to the floor as she squirms from every blow. The thought of losing Tammy bothers her, but she’s mostly occupied on the mind-boggling agony of her father’s strikes. Her spasms cause her to bite down so hard that she cracks several teeth.

****

Tammy sits in a tall chair, made with his size in mind. His chest is level with a large donut-shaped table in Emiri’s tent, and he’s leaning forward, his forehead pressed against the wood. He’s stopped crying, and he’s just tired now. It takes a lot of energy to just speak.

To his left is the Matriarch of the village, Darama. The giant of a woman stands at 7’1 and is facing Tammy, with her left arm propped up on the table and her right hand rubbing his back. As Matriarch, it’s her job to deal with spiritual and interpersonal matters of the tribe, so Emiri called her to help. Despite currently being 86 years old, Matriarch Damara’s bone-tail genetics keeps her looking as if she’s in her early 30s. She has strong features, sharp ruby eyes, and dark brown hair that will soon begin fading to a mature grey.

To Tammy’s right is Emiri, the Master Physician. She towers over the boy yet is nevertheless dwarfed by her grandmother. She sits cross legged on a stool, her tail inside Tammy’s stomach and pumping a low-level sedative into his gut.

“-then when I realized it, Aslander’s soul just… vanished. I couldn’t sense it anymore.” His voice is hoarse.

“Wow,” Damara says. “That’s… quite the story.”

Emiri rubs her chin, “to think your psychic powers would activate and give you the details of the man’s whole life.”

“Mhm.”

Damara rests the side of her head on the table, looking at her grandson-in-law, “that’d be a pretty useful ability if you can figure out how to do that on command, picking out important bits of information.”

Emiri nods, “you’re gonna be a helpful little guy when you grow up!”

Tammy sighs, then drags his head up until his chin rests on the table. “I feel like you two are missing the key point.”

“We’re trying to help you look on the bright side, and distract you,” Damara says.

“Which,” Emiri shoots her grandmother a look, “doesn’t really work when we flat out tell you we’re distracting you.” The old woman shrugs.

Tammy thinks. “I killed him.” The minor sedatives are the only thing keeping him from feeling nauseous.

“You shouldn’t have,” Damara says. “That was Avi’s responsibility. She had no right to pass that on to you. With how you described it, you were clearly uncomfortable with what she was pressuring you to do, and yet she forced you to kill him.”

Tammy considers this, but the logic doesn’t make sense for some reason. “I…” His brow narrows, and he pouts.

“It’s perfectly in line with standard human biology for you to feel this way, Samuel.” Emiri says. “We don’t have that sort of,” she rocks her head back and forth as she tries to find the word, “compassion? Empathy? Sense of regret? Well, whatever it’s called, we can’t feel what you’re feeling. This is why it should have been left to your wife. Your role is support, that’s what you’re perfect for.” She puts her hands on the table and makes a lot of odd gestures that only makes sense to her. “You see, there’s a quirk of human psychology. You guys can accept a great deal of things, so long as you’re not the cause of it. It’s the activation which is the issue. If Avi killed him, you’d be fine. But because you killed him, you’re the active party, which is why you feel so ill.”

Damara taps the table, “to clarify, we do feel all that garbage like compassion and empathy, just not for our targets. If someone needs to die, they need to die and that’s just how it works, but if it’s a girl like Emi?” She shakes her head, “I could never do it; she’s one of mine. But your… ‘human biology’ makes it difficult for you to kill even strangers.”

“But…” Tammy sits up, with Emiri expertly adjusting the needle in his tummy to prevent issue. “That’s just a coward’s excuse.”

“What do you mean?” Emiri raises an eyebrow.

Tammy stares down at the table and starts making odd hand gestures of his own. “You’re… saying the issue is that I’m the one who killed him. Which makes sense, I think, since if Avi killed him, I probably wouldn’t have had such an in-depth look into his life; the life I ended. But that’s like burying my head in the sand and trying hard not to notice the consequences of my actions. If I’m support, if I’m just helping someone else commit the murder, I’m still partially responsible for the murder. Yet because I’m only responsible in part and not in whole, I get to abdicate all responsibility? If I knew that I was supposed to pay for another night in the motel, Aslander would still be alive. If I handled the receptionist’s irritated knocking rather than shooing him away, Aslander would still be alive. If I knew Aslander was coming and got Avi to hide her tail, Aslander would still be alive. If I could tell that Aslander genuinely had no interest in reporting us, we wouldn’t have needed to kill him, and Aslander would still be alive.”

Emiri interjects, “no, Kashier gave you direct orders to kill anyone who saw her. You couldn’t disobey the parameters of the mission.”

“Okay, then I’m only responsible for three points of failure, rather than four. It’s hardly a difference. The point is that I still hold a lot of culpability for his death, and it would be cowardly to try and say that Avi is fully at fault for making me kill him. I mean, all she really did is make me face the consequences of my failure. Which is to say… I’m sad because I saw the man’s life and everything I ruined. Aslander’s life, and his family… it’s ruined. Because of me. If Avi killed him, I wouldn’t be sad, but only because I wouldn’t understand the consequences of my failure. But those consequences exist whether I know it or not.”

Damara takes a slow, deep breath in. “Stars, I wish you were a bone-tail.” She grabs Tammy’s shoulders and kisses him on the forehead. Your brain is wasted in that human body, boy. It really is.”

Tammy blushes a little. “It’s just the sedatives that Cousin Emiri is giving me. I’ve never had such clarity of thought before.”

Emiri shakes her head, “be that as it may, most seven-year-olds wouldn’t be capable of talking like this.”

“Haaa,” Tammy sighs, then leans back in his small chair. He looks to the ceiling, through the small hole in the center of the tent from which he can see the orange sky. “But alright. Now we get to a… somewhat bigger issue.”

Damara sits up, “somewhat bigger issue?”

“I killed Aslander. I’ll probably feel sick about it for a while, and that’s my punishment for his unjust murder. But in the end, these feelings of regret will pass. I’ll just have to make sure I never mess up so badly again. We are assassins, killing is part of our lives, but I need to make sure the people we kill are the ones who deserve it, like the gurant. Aslander’s memories were further confirmation of something I already knew: the gurant are the ones who set up everything wrong with this world, and all the worlds of the empire.”

Emiri smiles and puts a hand on the boy’s back, “that’s very forward thinking of you.”

Damara beams with pride.

“I’m not done,” Tammy says, calmly.

The two older women purse their lips.

Tammy thinks for a moment, then lowers his head to the corner of the table. His lip starts trembling, tears well up in the corner of his eyes, and finally he begins frantically turning his head to the women. “Are both of you going to die too?! Am I going to die?”

Emiri takes just a second to think up an appropriate response, but Damara casually answers, “yeah. Everything that’s alive will one day die.”

Emiri reaches over and slaps her grandmother’s shoulder, prompting the matriarch to raise her eyebrow.

Tammy’s chest convulses, he begins breathing in slow, deliberate breaths. “E-everyone? So y-you’ll die, I’ll die, Avi will die, Kashier, Hedwin, Litherum… everyone?”

Damara is about to speak again, but Emiri shoots her a look and gets her to keep quiet. A young boy learning about his mortality for the first time requires a gentle touch. She rests her hand on his head and looks deep into his light blue eyes, keeping a soft tone. “Samuel, I know you’re a smart boy. You know we’re assassins, you know what killing is. The concept you have understood this entire time. I’m aware that what happened with Aslander was different, since you were the one pulling the trigger, but didn’t you know that everyone dies eventually?”

He shakes his head, “what I didn’t… understand…” He scrunches his cute face as he tries to organize his swirling thoughts. “I felt his soul. I recognized that it was his soul because it felt kind of old and familiar. It was the same when I talked to you all before I learned your language, and it was the same as when I talked to others. When my psychic powers translate words, it’s the same sort of sensation. So, everyone has a soul, and I kind of always knew that. It was a general feeling, you know? But then… when I killed him, I felt that sensation fade. I had never felt someone’s soul so directly before, I don’t think. It wasn’t through the act of understanding his words, it was just his raw soul, right there in front of me. Then it faded away.” Tammy quietly looks to Emiri, then Damara. “Will your souls fade when you die too? Is that what happens to all souls?” He starts choking up as he turns to Emiri and lunges forward to hug her tight, “I-I can handle it if that’s what happens to the gurant, but will that happen to all of us?”

Emiri glances to Damara. As Matriarch, she’s the spiritual head of the tribe, so this is her domain. “Well,” Damara starts, rubbing the back of her neck. “Religiously, um…”

Tammy composes himself long enough to stop hugging Emiri and turns to Damara. His eyes plead for a comforting answer.

The religion of the bone-tails is very small-scale and focuses on them as a people. There are very few mentions about wider-scope issues like the creation of the universe, or events outside their history. Eons ago, their creator god crafted them from hardened volcanic rock to fight wars in his name, for his glory, against the followers of other gods. There are some small references to souls, but almost nothing about an afterlife because bone-tails typically aren’t concerned with such things.

“When a person dies,” Damara says, her voice sounds like she’s reading off a memorized script. “Their names and deeds are passed on to inspire future generations, the greatness in their blood is inherited by their children, to further strengthen the tribe. This is why our lore keepers are so diligent in writing everything down. The essence of each person is subsumed into the grand tale of our people.” As Damara breaks from this speech, her tone becomes slightly more stilted, “so we live on forever through the actions of the tribe.” She playfully pokes Tammy on the nose, “even a girl like Avi is important, she’s part of our narrative. We live in the interim between being exiled from our homeland, and our eventual triumph over the Gurant Empire. So always do your best to help the tribe. In the same way our ancestors safeguarded the tribe so we may inherit it, we must safeguard the tribe for those who follow us.”

“…” Tammy looks at her for a second. “That’s just completely abstract!” He cries. “That has nothing to do with our souls! That’s just..! Just..! What’s the word?”

“Metaphysical?” Emiri answers.

“Metaphysical! It’s not real, so, our souls do fade? Death is just complete nothingness? Forever? I never really thought about it directly, but I figured our souls would live on even if our bodies die. But they don’t?!”

Damara purses her lips, then just reaches in to hug Tammy further. There’s no comforting answer she can provide.

The two women stay with him until he finally cries all his tears.