The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (IBF Part 6.5) Read Online Free Page A

the Lemurlikes primary food stuff. Looking to the sky, she sees none of the small pteranodon-like creatures that normally flit through the trees, either. The Lemurlikes are gatherers first, but they hunt as well—cooperatively in small bands with stones—especially when the red nuts have all been eaten. Since she sees no nuts, and no small animals, it is a lean season, and a lean season means …
    “The ceremony hasn’t begun yet,” the Fire Giant says. “It will soon. I’m excited to watch it.”
    One of the Light Elfs snorts. “Fire Giants.”
    Amy gulps, and a human says, “There are no other kiddie-inappropriate scenes today, either.”
    Amy scowls; it’s a reference to rape and murder — the Lemurlikes engage in both in normal times.
    The other human says, “It will be a few hours before the ceremony.” He nods toward Durga.
“She can stay for a moment.”
    “I want to stay, Mommy!” Durga cries.
    Amy peers through the strand of trees to where the Lemurlikes are stomping out a patch of bare black earth among the foliage. The Lemurlikes have hairless stomachs, limbs, and backs. The female breasts are slightly more prominent than the male Lemurlikes. Like other hominids, the females’ faces are mostly hairless—or rather furless—the men sport beards of soft fuzz. Aside from those differences, the sexes are nearly identical. Both sexes have triangular ears, covered with fur, close to the tops of their heads. Long sharp, black nails tip their hands and feet, and they have pronounced canines. Males and females alike have manes of longer fur on their heads that go halfway down their backs. They have similar manes of longer fur that cover their genitalia and buttocks. Over their tails the fur becomes short, fine and velvety looking.
    “They’re pretty,” says Durga, as other Lemurlikes begin pushing sticks into the ground around the packed earth. Purplish bark strips have been tied around the tops of the sticks. “They’re demarking the edge of the ceremonial area,” the Fire Giant woman says. “How interesting!”
    Amy’s jaw tightens. Using flagged sticks to demarcate their “ceremony” areas are about as far as Lemurlike tool use goes. They were already doing it when this realm was first discovered, about two hundred years ago. Amy had accidentally-on-purpose introduced a gene for opposable thumbs into their population shortly after their discovery—sometimes when she wishes for such things, they happen. The creatures did not go on to develop new tools. Nor did opposable thumbs give them any interest in leaving the several hundred square miles of their forest home.
    Amy shakes her head … she’d wanted them to be so much more. But it seems like the creatures are stuck in their evolution. Some of the scientists call it “perfect equilibrium with their habitat.” As far as the mages and paleontologists have been able to uncover, the Lemurlikes have spent the last half million years in this forest. Sometimes they’ll go to the edge of the savanna north of their habitat to harvest tubers—but perhaps because of the large carnivores there they seldom stray out of the forest long. Sometimes they go to the sea to harvest salt in the shallows. While they’re there they’ll collect mollusks they catch in the tide waters, but then they return to the forest. The Lemurlikes have brains the size of Homo Erectus—but Homo Erectus wandered all the way to Asia, used primitive weapons, and had fire. The Lemurlikes don’t need either. The forest is warm with only medium-sized predators, and they have salt to preserve their kills.
    When they’d first discovered the Tenth Realm, Amy was sure that famine in the forest would force the creatures to leave and spur them on to greater things. That was before she knew about the ceremony.
    Females begin filling the circle. They range in age from toddlers to elderly, some are visibly pregnant, others are carrying suckling infants of both genders. The Lemurlikes