My mother was dead, and my father had returned to the sky-lodge, having saved the world as he foretold. Great arms came from out my father's temple, and seized her body from where it lay. Her spirit was done with her faithless people. Yet The Wise Ones who serve my father had use for what lay within her. A broken hint of a child was made to come alive. When I was found, it was once-hateful Salish who fell to his knees and begged the forgiveness of my father, Kirok. He is a one of good medicine, and so I have asked that he not be banished or struck down. But to him I have also made it clear that no further blasphemy will be allowed, and he has kept true all his days since.

There are less doubters, now. Less was expected of me, since I am only made half a god. I bleed, as my father oddly chose to, and his gift of life restoration was one I had to bring out through practice. One child was killed when my breath exploded his lungs. But his mother is faithful to me, glad merely that she saw his eyes open one last time. I possess no huge strength, though many plagues have passed over and around me. Perhaps my father had some odd elixirs kept in his blood to keep such diseases back from such as us. To Old Goro and the others, the land was cruel and random. But I see its vagaries as the movements of the sun, and it has yielded more for all as a result.

Life is good. It is good because I guide it there, and because I also know when not to guide it. Many tribes have joined ours in brotherhood, as each time I best their proudest warriors handily. When they stare up at me, dizzy from my dodges and throws, they ask how it is I brought them low. For many moons I puzzled on this pattern. At last, I told them all what I came to realize. In my head and brains, and in my heart as well, I choose never to believe that that there is any struggle that may not be won.

I was at last greatly puzzled by why I was saved from death. I demanded that Salish help me to achieve a vision quest. As I traveled by foot and by dream, I saw all the stars that shine being eaten by a hungry worm with three heads. But those stars that lived grew together and walked as a man, and he batted that old worm back for a time.

But then that man became a boy, perhaps no older than me. He was taken by soulless warriors and given as a meal to stupid old men and women, served up in a black lodge where no light leaves or seeks to go. I wept when I saw this boy's face, for it was nearly mine, if I had been of another mother. Creation lost all its sense, for surely this too was a son of Kirok. But why had our father abandoned him? How great was his sin? Had he committed sin?

The visions left me, but I saw my brother rise up from that black lodge and smash it to powder before they were done. And so he waits out there hunting this ugly snake, and I know my place. I am kin of man, and my brother is kin of stars. I am Kirok, son of Kirok, and that is enough. But my brother is the Foretold Stone, and that hungry snake will find that upon him, his fangs will melt like they were ice, and no snake may endure long once fangless.

Brother Stone, come and see me one day. For together at last, we may put aside the burdens of tribal leader and cosmic champion, and merely be two brothers.

Just don't bring the other brother I saw in the visions, the one with that curly yellow hair. I find his sharp tongue tiresome.