Three Days of Stone

Prologue

I was only in my twelfth year when it happened.

My mother and father were so in love. Their loyalty and devotion to each other was practically palpable. Where one went, the other usually followed. They hunted together every time, before returning to the cave we lived in.

The cave itself was small, but just big enough for two adults and a fast growing boy. The walls had been decorated using yellow ochre from the earth, and charcoal from the fires we lit every day for warmth and to make any hunted meat palatable.

In the bitter Winter of my twelfth year, I broke into a fever. My mother was worried I would not make it to the next sunrise, so for the first time since I could remember at least, my father went to hunt alone. I could see the worry in my mother's eyes as she tended to me, soaking ibex skins in glacial water and dabbing them onto my burning forehead.

My father was a quick and nimble hunter, from what my mother had told me. They were never away from me for long, so through the fog of my fever I myself was beginning to worry when he had been gone far longer than usual.

The first warning sign was the lowest rumbling in the ground around the cave. The earth shook harder and harder, and I clung to my mother, both of us unable to locate the source of this disturbance.

Then we saw it.

My father, running, as if for his life. Not far behind him, a huge mammoth, clearly an adult male, charging with all his strength. My father's spear was not in his hand, and he had no other way to protect himself.

"No!" my mother cried out to him.

The mammoth was gaining on my father who was visibly tiring, the fatigue in his muscles clear as he started to stumble, though he was still running.

My mother grabbed her spear and ran, to about ten feet in front of the mammoth. She jumped around to get its attention, and had her spear grasped in her right hand, ready to protect my father. My mother was a good hunter, but on this day, perhaps clouded by fear and fatigue from caring for me, she misjudged the speed of the mammoth. The beast had its sights set on my mother now, my father collapsing with exhaustion in its wake.

She lunged at it, trying to stab it with her spear, but she was too late. The beast reared its mighty head, and speared her itself with one of its enormous tusks. All I heard was a whimpering cry of pain as my mother took her final breaths, slowly bleeding over the beast, as I sat in shock, petrified, in the back of our home.

The mammoth had clearly been startled by the attack, and turned to charge in the opposite direction, trampling my father to death as it did so. My mother's lifeless body flopped off the end of the creature's tusk, about six feet from where my father lay.

Just like that, I was orphaned. Due to my sickness, I could not help but feel like this was my fault. Father would not have been hunting alone otherwise.

I crawled from the cave, scanning the surroundings for danger, terrified of the mammoth turning back around and leaving me in the same way. I reached my mother's body first. She was so beautiful, even in death. Her blue eyes were still wide open in shock, and blood pooled over her leathers made from goat skins. Her dark hair was wet around the bottom, and I only realised it was wet with blood on closer inspection. I stared in shock, still trying to process what had happened. Still hoping this was a nightmare and I would open my eyes and see my mother alive again, smiling at me.

Tentatively, I crawled on to my father's body. His limbs and chest were covered in earth which had likely been kicked up as he ran from the mammoth. His beard had started to matte, and his leathers looked more worn than my mother's did. Closing my eyes, I pictured my father, teaching me how to hunt and gather to survive, knowing that I would have to sustain myself from now on.

I was too weak from illness and shock to move my parents' bodies, so I crawled back to the cave and screamed in anguish. My parents were really gone forever, and it had happened far too fast.

I was alone.