Rainbow Snippets - Currently Untitled Ice Age Story

Wall painting of Megaloceros

My current WIP is set during the Ice Age approximately 11,000 years ago. Once again, I am creating a culture based on a few scattered facts and the cultures descended from them. I am filling in a lot of blanks.

I feel fairly comfortable stating that any individual "fact" was likely contemporaneous to the existing cultures of that vast time period. But did they all co-exist in one group of people? There's no way of knowing.

I am having nearly as much fun researching all the prehistoric techniques for fine starting, shelter building, stone knapping, basket weaving, hunting, fishing, preparing food and anything else like this wall painting I run across.

I hope to provide a colorful background on which to base my story of heartache, loss, and learning to live again.

So here is my snippet. I hope you enjoy it.

Kantu slipped his spare snowshoes on and slung his pack onto his back. Behind him, The People rested once more in their home with all their possessions. Black smoke boiled into the sky, alerting their enemies that one still lived.

Turning to stare up at the cave mouth, Kantu let the old words slip from his lips. Words as ancient as The People themselves, words that only the now-dead shaman had understood. His clan was gone. Once he died, no one would sing the sacred words to calm the spirits and guide him back to his lover's side. Without the clan to remember them, the ancestors' fires would go out one by one.

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