Wyatt peeked through the fire and attempted to guess how many of his fellow hunters frowned at him. Was he so old that only he remembered how plentiful it all seemed, how the idea that it could all empty felt impossible? He felt better for telling the story. The telling reminded him that he should feel fortunate for his bowl of mudder stew.
He didn’t turn to Cayden to ask if his son understood that his father knew such a different time; nor did he turn to ask for his boy’s forgiveness. No sentiment in Cayden’s heart could bring a single, deceased animal back to the wild. Let the other hunters in that expedition resent him for what he had done such a long time ago. Wyatt would eat his stew, and come the next hunt, he would again press the trigger when none of the other hunters could.
For that, Wyatt knew the mudders would forgive him, no matter if Wyatt ever learned to forgive himself. The silence that followed Wyatt’s last word to his tale didn't hover for very long over the fire. The mudders knew that the splicer-lynx prowled during both the day and the night, and that those felines would soon become curious of a silent camp that smelled of roasted genolope. So the mudders drew a collective breath and sang their loud, proud song.
Wyatt suspected that the other men and women in that expedition likely considered the song exotic and strange, but Wyatt couldn’t imagine a better kind of music with which to fill the coming world.