[Fic] "Baby Steps" -- original, Ekanu
Apr. 21st, 2009 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingThis is a snippet of Ekanu's life before she left the Ice; she's about twelve years old. The caribou hunting details are partly made up out of whole cloth, but partly drawn from my vague and muddled memories of a children's book about the life of a male caribou, which had a few sections on the Native Americans (or First Nations?) who hunted the caribou in Alaska or Canada. I think the book was called Caribou Traveler, and was written by Harold McCracken, but I cannot make Google or amazon.com cough up anything beyond the title and author's name, so I can't be sure I have the correct book. Bah. (Also, I have this feeling it may be problematic in its depiction of Native Americans -- it was written in 1949, after all -- but again, my memory is very fuzzy so I can't be sure of that either.)
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Baby Steps
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After her vision quest, Ekanu was considered old enough to join the annual caribou hunt. She'd followed along before, of course -- the whole camp was needed to butcher and preserve the meat -- but children were kept well back from the thundering hoofs.
You hardly had to aim, hunting caribou. The migrating herds were so thick the laziest spear cast would strike a belly or flank two times out of three, and that was more than enough to make an opening for the dogs to chivvy the wounded doe or stag away from its companions and pull it down.
The People hunted caribou at the close of summer, as the herds gathered and bellowed and shifted over the tundra like skin over the restless muscles of a great beast. Then the caribou turned south to the forests, and the People took their tithe of flesh and sinew and blood and bone, smoking and salting and boiling their riches down to last through the endless dark of winter.
The caribou returned to the Summerlands with the sun, of course, but that migration was slower, more scattered, and it was bad luck to kill a doe who might bear young. So spring hunts were small affairs, more excuses to get away from the camp than true necessities.
The spring after her vision quest, Ekanu took a spear and a packet of meat scraps for incentives, and led her new dogs out into the swampy riot of flowers and grass. They had learned to catch smaller prey on their own -- perhaps with some pointers from the older camp dogs -- but caribou hunts required coordination. One dog to go for the throat, others to worry the beast's legs, and all darting in and out and around to avoid the sharp hoofs and horns.
Her father said one way to start was to find a tall stone and train the dogs to leap toward it on command. Then he paused, cupped one hand as if holding an invisible stone, and said, "Also, it sometimes helps to first train the dogs to pull a sled or travois. That teaches teamwork." He smiled. "Walk before you run, Ekanu."
Ekanu looked at her five half-grown puppies, bounding enthusiastically and randomly after insects and occasional songbirds, and sighed. Perhaps a travois would be a better first trial of her training skills. She had some rope
Pursing her lips, she whistled long and shrill, and trudged southwest toward a stand of scrubby pines, five dogs swirling in her wake.
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Inspired by the 4/20/09![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic word #107: aimed
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Someday I want to get Ekanu's dogs properly into a story, because they're kind of fun. She adopted a litter born in the middle of winter, which is a bad time for young animals; they would normally have been killed partly as a mercy and partly to remove a potential resource drain. But Ekanu's father agreed to let her keep them, thinking that either it would teach her not to overreach herself (if the dogs died) or distract her from her desire to leave the camp and travel into the unknown southern lands (if the dogs lived and she was busy training them).
Their names are Shapach, Skare, Mika, Kume, and Kioshiya, which mean, respectively, 'sure-foot,' 'one-eye,' 'pleasure/laughter,' 'pain,' and 'little north death-wind.' Shapach and Kume are female; Skare, Mika, and Kioshiya are male. The first two names are normal; most Domaris name their dogs after obvious physical characteristics. The second two are a little more unusual, and Kioshiya's name is basically a joke.
Ekanu had her dogs for two and a half years, and then she left them with her friend Kadeotak when she went south to Estara. This was actually a generous present, because Ekanu's father, Eshamakone Vechoala, was known as a skilled dog-trainer, and he helped Ekanu get her dogs into shape as a skilled sled team and hunting team. So Kadeotak suddenly had a valuable resource -- which, granted, was also expensive to maintain -- that gave her extra mobility and a greater share of the profit from the annual hunt, because now she was responsible for bringing more of it in.
---------------------------------------------
Baby Steps
---------------------------------------------
After her vision quest, Ekanu was considered old enough to join the annual caribou hunt. She'd followed along before, of course -- the whole camp was needed to butcher and preserve the meat -- but children were kept well back from the thundering hoofs.
You hardly had to aim, hunting caribou. The migrating herds were so thick the laziest spear cast would strike a belly or flank two times out of three, and that was more than enough to make an opening for the dogs to chivvy the wounded doe or stag away from its companions and pull it down.
The People hunted caribou at the close of summer, as the herds gathered and bellowed and shifted over the tundra like skin over the restless muscles of a great beast. Then the caribou turned south to the forests, and the People took their tithe of flesh and sinew and blood and bone, smoking and salting and boiling their riches down to last through the endless dark of winter.
The caribou returned to the Summerlands with the sun, of course, but that migration was slower, more scattered, and it was bad luck to kill a doe who might bear young. So spring hunts were small affairs, more excuses to get away from the camp than true necessities.
The spring after her vision quest, Ekanu took a spear and a packet of meat scraps for incentives, and led her new dogs out into the swampy riot of flowers and grass. They had learned to catch smaller prey on their own -- perhaps with some pointers from the older camp dogs -- but caribou hunts required coordination. One dog to go for the throat, others to worry the beast's legs, and all darting in and out and around to avoid the sharp hoofs and horns.
Her father said one way to start was to find a tall stone and train the dogs to leap toward it on command. Then he paused, cupped one hand as if holding an invisible stone, and said, "Also, it sometimes helps to first train the dogs to pull a sled or travois. That teaches teamwork." He smiled. "Walk before you run, Ekanu."
Ekanu looked at her five half-grown puppies, bounding enthusiastically and randomly after insects and occasional songbirds, and sighed. Perhaps a travois would be a better first trial of her training skills. She had some rope
Pursing her lips, she whistled long and shrill, and trudged southwest toward a stand of scrubby pines, five dogs swirling in her wake.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 4/20/09
15_minute_fic word #107: aimed---------------------------------------------
Someday I want to get Ekanu's dogs properly into a story, because they're kind of fun. She adopted a litter born in the middle of winter, which is a bad time for young animals; they would normally have been killed partly as a mercy and partly to remove a potential resource drain. But Ekanu's father agreed to let her keep them, thinking that either it would teach her not to overreach herself (if the dogs died) or distract her from her desire to leave the camp and travel into the unknown southern lands (if the dogs lived and she was busy training them).
Their names are Shapach, Skare, Mika, Kume, and Kioshiya, which mean, respectively, 'sure-foot,' 'one-eye,' 'pleasure/laughter,' 'pain,' and 'little north death-wind.' Shapach and Kume are female; Skare, Mika, and Kioshiya are male. The first two names are normal; most Domaris name their dogs after obvious physical characteristics. The second two are a little more unusual, and Kioshiya's name is basically a joke.
Ekanu had her dogs for two and a half years, and then she left them with her friend Kadeotak when she went south to Estara. This was actually a generous present, because Ekanu's father, Eshamakone Vechoala, was known as a skilled dog-trainer, and he helped Ekanu get her dogs into shape as a skilled sled team and hunting team. So Kadeotak suddenly had a valuable resource -- which, granted, was also expensive to maintain -- that gave her extra mobility and a greater share of the profit from the annual hunt, because now she was responsible for bringing more of it in.
