Birth of a Warrior

I was digging through some old writing and found this short story. Enjoy it as a NaNoWriMo warm up.

Uudu was hunting when he saw the streak across the sky. Something large had fallen and then struck the ground not more than a day's walk away. His adventurous nature told him to try and find where the object had landed. Slinging his spear onto his back, he gave up the day's hunt and started towards where he hoped to find evidence of the crash.

As he approached, the usual sounds of the forest faded. The eerie silence made his pulse quicken and allowed him to hear his bare feet against the soft debris of decomposing leaves and grass. Something lay just ahead.

It looked harder than hard and had edges too perfect for having been devised by nature. In his experience, the stuff of the wilds obeyed a chaotic law that said grow every which way until you have what you need. This was sterile, like the head of his spear. It was designed for a purpose, or so it seemed, by intelligent hands.

A creature sat next to the object. It looked as much like himself as two dogs of different breeds look alike. While he had roamed the woods in the ceremonial loin cloth of hunters, this creature seemed to have wrapped itself from head to toe in some sort of green and brown cloth, leaving nothing more than hands and a face exposed.

Uudu approached in the cermonial manner of greeting, arms stretched wide and head tilted towards the sky. The creature next to the strange object reached into and opening in the cloth that wrapped his body and took out a silver tube. It's arm extended towards Uudu with one end of the silver tube pointing at the creature's face, and the other at Uudu.

Some small stick like feature on the tube was moved by the creature, and a loud noise issued forth from it. Then Uudu felt a pain in his chest. It felt like that time he had fallen from the cliffs by the sea and landed on some jagged rocks. Instinctively looking down to check his body, he noticed blood issuing forth from a whole in his left breast. The hunter went to his knees and tried to remember what Mala had taught him. Breathe deeply, visualize, the hole as closing, imagine yourself as whole and healthy.

The creature wrapped in green still gripped it's silver tube and started to approach. Uudu could now intuit the being's intentions. It wanted to kill him and cook him for a meal. There was plenty of food in the woods for an entire tribe. Why would he ask another individual to give up its life for a feast without even knowing them?

The reality of the situation opened a new pathway through his thoughts. This was a creature of fighting, it fought anything and everything and always to the death. Uudu's only chance of survival was to defeat it in a fight, and that meant killing this creature.

Diverting his focus from the wound on his chest. Uudu let his supporting knee go limp as one of his hands reached for his spear. The creature seemed slow to follow the smooth movements of the proficient hunter. A spear was racing towards his chest before he realized what actions had transpired. The spear sunk deep into it's chest.

A silver tube fell to the ground.

A creature wrapped in green screamed in pain.

Uudu felt the life flowing out of the wound in his chest, closed his eyes, and performed the rite of passing in his ethereal body.

Mala called for Ohmba. The young girl came to the great mother's side as quick as she could.

Mala spoke with a mixture of sadness and joy. "Ohmba, you are with child and shall give birth in six cycles."

"Yes, great mother, I know."

"You shall give birth to our tribe's first warrior."

"Great mother, what is a warrior?"

Mala looked towards the horizon as the sun was setting. She seemed lost in contemplation as the words came from her lips. "I don't know."