Everkyun's star-patch blazed. Not the soft, sleepy glow of a content Kyun, but a searing, supernova white. He opened his tiny mouth and screamed —not a sound, but a pure, resonant note that shattered the fungal ferns around us into glittering dust. The "bad hum" became a "good roar."
It was ten feet away. Five. Everkyun leaped.
The Glimmer-Maw's head, a featureless shard of obsidian, turned toward us. It had no eyes, but I felt its attention like a weight. It tasted our futures. It saw me missing the shot. It saw Everkyun running away. It saw us both as nothing.
It had given me a legend.
It was a Glimmer-Maw. A serpentine thing made of fractured light and obsidian scales, coiled around the largest tusk-boar I'd ever seen. The boar was frozen, its crystalline tusks chattering in terror. The Glimmer-Maw was feeding—not on flesh, but on its potential . The future memories of the boar, its dreams of rooting for truffles, its plans for the winter. The air shimmered as ribbons of silver smoke drifted from the boar's ears into the Maw's gaping, toothless mouth.
I scooped him up. His star-patch was dim, barely a flicker. "You crazy, stupid, brave little fluffball," I whispered, pressing him to my chest.
But it didn't see what happened next.
I grabbed the discarded sparkle-boar tusk, shoved the Glimmer-Maw pearl into my pouch, and carried Everkyun all the way home through the now-quiet woods. The Sky-Sled engine could wait. Right now, my hunting adventure had given me something better than a trophy.