Unlike most of the others of his tribe he'd had a hard time of the constant fighting preferring instead to listen and observe in order to exploit the weaknesses of his opponent. To his kind it was considered cowardly, and the truth was that was his intent. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to solve problems and never have to resort to violence. He was an anomaly to his kind.
So he had traveled down to the swamp to seek his name. Or, at the very least, find a quiet place he could die with no name. Instead he found his mother. Of all the creatures in the Swamp, it was she he came across first. She was watching clutches of kimeti sacs, acha eggs, and totoma lambs that had been abandoned or orphaned. Standing over them in constant vigilance as she had done once for him and his siblings. The kin that had hatched under her watch hadn't wandered far but needed more interaction than she could give them. So she put her son to work.
He played and told stories to the young ones. Most of them listened and then wandered off. Slowly less and less came back- The assumption being that they had found a way to fend for themselves and were living their own lives now. However there was one little filly, eyes wide and mouth loud, that would come careening back every night telling stories of a giant caiman that was eating young ones that wandered too far. Each tale getting more and more elaborate and detailed.
His mother would nod and ask, "If this caiman is so terrible and bloodthirsty how are you escaping him?" The filly always had some answer of how she hid or smelled him first and ran. To which his mother would always frown and tell her to go play pretend elsewhere. But her son, the totoma with no name, would listen. He payed close attention to each detail. For a full phase of the moon he listened to the terrified filly.
Until one night he went the way she said the caiman could be found. He found the patches of swamp lilies the young kimeti girl always said she stopped and smelled. He dug about the roots of the mangrove with the blue-green moss just as she said she did. He watched the dragonflies fly about the reeds and stood as still as he could in the hopes would land on his nose, just as the little filly did each day. Then he smelled it. The stench of decay on the breath, the stink of dried mud and marsh water on reptile skin. The caiman was hunting it's small prey, unaware that this time it wasn't foals. It was a full grown Totoma buck.
The caiman, thrown for a shock but still hungry, lunged at him. He stepped to the side and in one decisive move threw his front legs onto the neck of the creature and put all of his weight down. There was a moment where he feared nothing was happening and he was going to lose a limb, but then it happened. A crunch filled the silence of the night and the caiman went limp.
He lifted the dead animal with his horns and threw it over his back. He took it back to his mother and threw it down before her. "We lose no more young to this beast." It was all he said.
His mother eyed him. Then, with a nod, she smiled. "Learns by Listening," she called. "Go get some rest. I will watch."
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