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leaned forward, one’s jaws coming into play to assist one’s claws and—and—the thing slipped again before one could sink a tooth into it. The pelt was flimsy stuff and tore out of the claws just as the other paw grabbed the morsel in a second place. The morsel let out a terrified squeal, rather like a rabbit. One was about to smack it to silence and lean forward for the fatal chomp.
    Then the cave shook, the ledge broke under one’s overbalanced weight, and one tumbled tail over nose into the pool, relinquishing the morsel, which yelped again. Inconvenient and embarrassing to be so indisposed in front of the food. One climbed out of the pool and shook the water from one’s coat and began to wash before one’s meal.
    The morsel began to flail frantically toward the den’s entrance. One padded nonchalantly after. The cave, the ground, the world, shook again. One knew when one was being addressed. One sat on one’s haunches and perceived.
    The morsel was also arrested in midflight. “Did you—d-do that?” it asked. “Are—are you the G-Great Monster?”
    One yawned.
    The world shook again and one realized that one had understood the speech of the morsel. One also understood that it was a youngling, and female.
    One waded forward while the youngling waded backward, outlined in the dusk outside the mouth of the cave. One’s paws dripped water, albeit warm water. One lapped a bit. The youngling stood still.
    “You’re not so terrible,” it said. “You’re nothing but a big cat.”
    One had one’s dignity to maintain. One lashed one’s beautifully and delicately marked tail and growled.
    And from beneath one’s sodden paws, the world growled back at one and bucked, sending a wave of water to swamp one, knocking one onto one’s back, causing one to drink more deeply of the spring than one cared to, paws over head, and be propelled backward, away from the youngling.
    When one got to one’s feet, one saw that the youngling—it no longer seemed safe to think of it, no,
her
as a morsel—had not used the opportunity to run away. Indeed, it, too, was just arising from the water, sputtering and snorting. Ah, good. It had not seen one’s discomfiture. Dignity was preserved.
    “I’m not afraid of you,” the youngling declared as one advanced—claws sheathed, teeth safely contained within one’s lips, growl little more than a polite, enquiring rumble in one’s throat. A mere purr, actually, one corrected, as the waters bubbled and sloshed ominously. “I used to know a cat. A little one. I was a baby then. Shepherd Howling made my mother kill my cat. He—he tried to, anyway. He—she wouldn’t and—and . . .” Something odd was happening to the youngling now. It began leaking again, saltiness into the fresh sulfurous water covering it. “My mother was not like Ascencion. She was brave. The Shepherd punished her for disobedience and both she and my cat went away. So—so I’m not afraid of you. You live where the Great Monster is supposed to dwell and lie in wait for the foolish superstitious minds of the flock to be warped and maddened into everlasting wickedness while our bodies are tormented by the
great fires from within. But you’re not the Great Monster—you couldn’t be. Are you—are you the Guardian of the Underworld?”
    One was so disgusted by her ignorance and silly misapprehension of one’s self and one’s relationship to one’s Home that one was startled into answering,
I am Coaxtl! That is enough.
    “I am Goat-dung, Coaxtl,” the youngling said with the cunning of her race. She knew, one saw, the power of names. She had one’s name, one had hers. She could not be food.
    But one’s Home had already decreed that she could not be food, which was what Home meant with the rumbling of the ground and the raising of the waters. One knew what was done and what was not done.
    Very well, Goat-dung,
one said.
Goat-dung is not food but undoubtedly she eats. Therefore we must leave the