Today I was roused from slumber by a great she-bear named Kuruk. She measured me with knowing eyes before declaring me Lord of the Big Thicket and naming me first among men. We hunted the fields and meadows, slaking our thirst in the purest streams under the mid afternoon sun. Over night my beard had grown in full, reaching lengths before unknown to mortals and smelling of the most wholesome scents offered by the Earth Mother. In the evening Kuruk took an elk bull and we filled our bellies with the raw energy of its flesh. As the sun sank below the horizon I regarded Kuruk and saw within her eyes the depth of my own soul; we had both torn free of the bonds the hold lives back, and had claimed no thing to be our masters.