Timpoochee felt drops of refreshing rain pelt his face and body. He lay back down in the wet grass, still shivering from the excitement.
He looked over his shoulder but Cornstalk was nowhere to be found.
He sat in silence for a few minutes, listening.
The faintest crack of a small twig reached his ears. Then, another, closer.
“Asquanigohisdi,” Cornstalk said, delightedly from just past the clump of bushes. “Pretty funny, don’t you think, brother?”
“Usgaseti,” Timpoochee answered. “What are you thinking?”
“I saved you, didn’t I?” Cornstalk insisted.
“You did nothing of the sort,” Timpoochee shot back. “I think Uktena saved me...or whatever that was.”
The precise origins of Timpoochee’s people, the real people or Yunwiya, is not known. But they generally believed they originated in a land toward the rising sun where they were placed by command of the four councils sent from above when there was only darkness.
That land, it was said, was inhabited by huge snakes and great water monsters and, again on the command of the four councils, the Yunwiya had come into the glorious mountains of Shaconage at the beginning of time.
Older stories told of Timpoochee’s people coming from the south or west. But always the stories told of the animal people and the real people moving from the land of the dark to the land of the light.