Unspeakable Horror!

Orok screams.

Orok hears the creature as it escapes through the undergrowth with Orok's child in its jaws.  Orok can hear it, but the darkness conceals its retreat.

The sound diminishes.  Orok is not fast enough.     

He stops to listen, clutching the spear.  Now the creature is too far ahead.  Orok loses the trail.

Orok was not fast enough.

The next morning, he examines the tracks.  Not a wolf -- not a bear -- so fast, and it descended from the trees.

Orok loses two days in despair -- now his stomach yearns.  

Orok tends the fire at the opening of the cave, obsessed with the anticipation of the creature's return.

Orok knows that something watches from the black veil of darkness.  The fire keeps the wolves away, but not the thing that took his daughter.  One moment Do played with pebbles by the fire.  The next moment, the thing was upon them -- it came from above and escaped with his only precious girl -- and the mother lost long ago during a mammoth kill.  Orok's grief was larger than any mammoth.

Orok knows the precious gift of creating fire, and his people give him meat in return for the fire.  When they ask about the little girl, he tells them "cave bear," but Orok knows it was something more than a bear.  The people do not question.

The next night, Orok's sleep is ruptured by the cries of Do.  His daughter stands before him in the firelight, and Orok weeps in disbelief.  She shows her daddy the terrible wounds from the razor claws.  She opens the cage of her chest and shows Orok how the creature ate her heart.  The little girl asks Orok if she can come home to her daddy, and Orok assures her she will soon sleep with her mother again, but first she must show Orok the lair of the creature.  She doesn't notice that she treads through the fire as she leads Orok down the trail toward the unspeakable lair.

Tragic little Do leads Orok to an outcropping of rock beneath the beautiful glowing mother of the moon.  Here she vanishes.  Orok must trust the spirits, and here Orok waits.  Below, Orok sees the opening to a cave, and Orok knows dread to see it.  Soon, the creature returns to its lair with another baby in its jaws.  It is something like a wolf.  It is something like a bear.  It is neither, and Orok clutches the spear with the certainty it must be destroyed.

The creature enters the cave, and soon a glow emanates from within.  Orok is amazed, and his fear for his own life scatters like a nest of rats -- he can see the death of the beast and no other outcome, even if it means following the creature to the land of his mother.

Orok follows the glow of the fire inside the lair.

In the smoke kneels a naked man, weeping over the mutilated body of another's daughter.  The naked man weeps into the razor sharp claws of his hands -- all that remain of the horrific beast.  Orok places his hand on the naked shoulder of his twin brother.

In the dawn, Orok walks out of the lair of the beast.  He leaves nothing behind him but the ashes of the fallen.