Stepping out of her hastily dug den into the sunlight, Coryth yawned mightily and peered out with blinking eyes. The terrain she'd chosen to settle down in would have disappointed any other predator with its barren rocky emptiness, with nothing but a tiny stream offering sustenance amidst the dry, spare vegetation. There were no prey herds to be seen. But to Coryth, this was paradise.
Returning back inside, Coryth looked over her cubs in pondering. She'd had six in total, some months ago, but now there were three, the others gone with their father towards the coast. She missed them, and was sad that she was also relieved. Six had been far too much to handle. She was used to being a loner, not a mother. Sighing, she bent to nudge them awake. It was time to get to work.
Groaning at her mother's pushing, Lithophoro tucked her head under one paw and tried to shove her mother away with the other. She was having good dreams, where she was as tall as a tree and everyone was fleeing before her in terror. She didn't want to have to get up yet. "Mmngrn," he grumbled, and rolled over, trying to shove herself back into the darkness and dreamscape, where all her wishes came true.
But it was fading and gone now. It was no use trying to sleep, she was awake now. Grumpy, he slowly hauled herself to a wobbling standing position, ignoring her sisters and trotting with resignation towards the mouth of the den. She knew the routine by now; it was time to dig. And despite how lousy she felt, despite how she sulked along at every task required of her, secretly she loved the digging. It was her family's legacy.
Satisfied that her brown daughter was up and moving, Coryth tried to get the others moving, but they were far too tired, and kept slumbering. Shrugging, she let them sleep. It was early, afterall, and their den secluded. She could let them rest until later in the day. At least she had one child to instruct. "Come along Litho," she crooned, and led the way with quick steps down the slope towards their current dig site.
This was the reason she'd chosen this site for her temporary home. Aside from the stream, the area was dry, with a perfectly flaky rock crust. Not too sandy, not too rocky, perfect for digging for bone-stones, the rocks that had become her obsession and her life. Already she'd torn up a good chunk of the area, carefully lifting sections at a time to look for embedded rocks that looked unlike rocks at all.
Plodding along after her mother, Litho made her way dutifully to the dig site and her private section of it. Her scrapes were much smaller than her mothers, and she'd never found anything other than a few pretty stones, but never anything like her mother's private collection. Her scrapes were a bit more thorough than those of her sisters, though, because she actually cared more than she admitted.
The sun was bright and glaring, and she squinted with her eyes squeezed for a long time before she felt ready to deal with work. She lay down in front of her scrapes and waited for her vision to stop hurting. Mama only cared that she was available to be taught, afterall, not whether she was actually learning anything. That's why she'd let the other two cubs sleep in. She only needed one person to make up an audience.
Checking over her site, Coryth kept an eye on her daughter, and felt amused to see her laying back down. Litho always wanted to do things the hard way. It was a miracle she wasn't whining about being woken this morning, maybe because her sisters weren't awake to watch her complain. Well, it was early. All three of the cubs would be more active later in the day. Of course, then it would be hard to get them to focus.
Working out the kinks in her hardy, flexible toes, she set to work lifting chunks of the chalky dirt, separating them into thin sheets, and setting them aside in neat piles. She examined each before discarding it, eyes careful to pick out any odd shapes or stones. Any segments that had interest were set aside in a separate pile for perusal later. "Litho, pay attention now. How do we lift the dirt to get at the rocks?"
Litho sniffed sullenly, but answered the question through recitation, as it had been taught to her many times before. "Cut the clay into blocks by dragging a claw around the edges, then carefully separate the layer and lift upwards slowly, supporting with the other paw if needed." She didn't understand all the words, but she'd also been taught the associated movements that went with them.
Now that work was on her mind, she felt less like dragging her feet, and stood up, blinking to get used to the light. In previous months she hadn't been allowed to cut up rock segments, because she'd been too small to do it right. But now she was growing, and had enough leg strength. She carefully extended a single claw and dragged it down in a long line, scoring the dirt. "Like this, mama?"
Leaving her own work for the moment, Coryth walked over to examine her daughter's work. The line wasn't as thick as it should be, but her own claws were twice as big as her daughter's, so that was to be expected. "Good, sweetheart. Nice and smooth. It's important to follow the grain of the clay, if you want the chunks to come up smoothly. So look for lines in the ground, try to see how the sand moves, and trace it."
She returned to her own interesting pile and selected a promising subject, and brought it in her jaws and laid it down gently next to Litho. "See here," she said, and pointed to an embedded shape in the clay. It was darker than the rest of the material, and formed a sort of pattern, of circles stretching out from a center point. "Would you say this is a viable subject? What would you think it is?"
Litho peered at the big rock and the pretty formation inside it. This was the part she loved the most, when they actually found something. Most of the time the work was dull and boring, and often they had to travel for weeks between hunting grounds where they gorged on food, and the digging sites where they starved for their art. But it was all worth it for the times they actually had a find.
"It's not an animal," she stated slowly. That was the thing about bone-stones... they looked like living things. That was what made them so important, worth braving barren wastelands to find. "It looks like a plant, maybe? Kinda like a flower. Yah! It looks like... it looks like those puffballs that come when flowers make seeds." She studied the outline carefully. "Not a mistake, it's a real one. Right mama?"
Coryth studied the rock as well, and felt pleased with her daughter's assessment. It wasn't a great specimen; plant-stones tended to be barely more than shadows in the rock in the shape of plants, not solid objects that could be dug out and separated. She had a few prize plant-stones in her collection, the ones that were pretty enough to be worthwhile. The only option for them was to cut around and lift the entire rock.
"Good eye darling," she approved, and nuzzled Litho affectionately. She hadn't known at first what to do with the litter she'd been saddled with, back when she'd first given birth. But the opportunity to teach her craft to others, to raise up a whole family of bone-stone hunters, had been very tempting. Most of them hadn't shown much interest, and now she was down to only three, but at least one was paying attention.
Warm with parental approval, Litho touched the rock near the plant-stone tenderly, almost like rubbing a lucky talisman. She was careful not to actually touch the marking. They could sometimes be very fragile, even breaking apart if you merely brushed against them. She loved plant-stones though, they were always so pretty, much more so than bone stones, which just looked like bones, only made of rock.
Mama probably wouldn't keep this one, though. It was fainter in color than most, and not very complete. And the faint ones tended to be even more fragile, which meant it would be trouble to cut the rock around it, as it might just fall apart. She glanced up curiously. "Mama, can I have this one? Can I try to break it out, and keep it? You're not gonna keep it, right? I'm old enough to have my own stone now, right? Please, mama?"
Surprised at the sudden questions, Coryth considered carefully. Litho was right, she hadn't intended to keep it. Though it was one of the few finds of this site, it was a poor one overall, and she'd had no ideas of adding it to her already packed collection, the many rocks she dragged along with her in bags made by monkeys, and an animal skin and wooden pole tarp, all packed carefully in fuzz and grasses.
None of the cubs had ever asked for their own rock before. Truthfully, she was thrilled. "Now you realize you'll have to carry it yourself, right? I think I can lend you a small satchel, but you'll have to carry it with you. And if you get tired of the weight, you'll just have to abandon it wherever we are, because I am not carrying it for you. But..." she smiled sweetly, "yes, you can have it if you want."
Litho nodded eagerly, and growled happily as she circled her prey. She scrutinized the grains in the clay, trying to find the lines in it. Cutting out a stone was always the hardest part, and mama had never let her do it before. This was a real test, the first big one of her life. She lightly ran a claw in a wide loop around the stone, like she'd seen mama do, getting a feel for it, and marking where she wanted to go.
Ready, she punched holes into the line at short intervals, having to push hard to make even a dent. Mama said this made the clay more willing to break right. Once she'd done the entire circumference, she gripped the line of holes with one paw, and the edge of the clay with the other, and twisted. The clay broke right down the line, pulling away. But it was awfully heavy, and she had to drop it again.
Coryth watched her daughter and felt pride swelling up. The maneuver was flawed and clumsy, and her daughter clearly didn't have enough strength to do things right just yet. But it was clear she'd been paying attention, and was really trying, putting all her weight into it. Much different than her grumpiness only minutes before. Once you got her focused on work, her whiney nature fell away and her dedication came through.
She stepped in to help her daughter peel away the layers, letting her take the initiative, but dragging away the heavy chunks once they'd been removed, so the poor cub didn't get exhausted. Between the two of them they made short work of it, and soon the specimen was isolated in the rock, if a bit crudely. "Good job, my love. You're getting better at this all the time. Now come along, let's put this stone over by the others in the collection before we forget."
Toiling away on her work with intense concentration, Litho didn't even notice her mother helping out, until finally she had the puffball flower stone picked out. She admired it vainly, circling again to see how pretty it looked from different angles. And it was hers, all hers. Her very own plant-stone, to keep with her always, just like mama. Someday she'd have a whole collection to herself, and carry them around on a skin tarp like mama, too.
Gently picking the stone up in her mouth, trying not to gag at the taste of clay, Litho trotted back up the slope towards the den and the skin tarp beside it, her neck aching from the weight of the rock. That would take some getting used to. But she almost liked the ache, because of what it represented. She'd passed her test, and was growing a little older everyday. Some day she'd be an adult, and then she'd be the one choosing the dig sites, and collecting all the bone-stones she could ever want.
