Long before I heard the word, I was used to being last.
I was the runt, the youngest and by-far-and-away smallest of my seven siblings, which meant I was the last to drink, the last to eat, the last to be protected.
As the lowest-ranking member of our dwindling pack, I accepted my place without resentment—much resentment, anyway.
It was, perhaps, only fair. My failings were many, or so I was often told.
I was too young to be clever, too small to be helpful.
My feet were large and clumsy. They tangled when I ran.
My coat was untidy, my manners dreadful. I once ate an entire leg of anteleer before my rightful turn.
I was curious to a fault. I wandered too far and wondered too often.
I was, in short, a disappointment at my only task in life, which was to do my best, like all dairnes, to stay quietly alive.
Those days, you’d have been as likely to pet a unicorn as you would to sight a dairne.
Our packelder, Dalyntor, white muzzled and frail, liked to speak of a time when our ancestors roamed in great bands, hundreds of dairnes at a time, across the Nedarran plains. At night they would form into family groups, gathering around to prepare wild grasses and berries, or perhaps cook the stray badger or cotchet.
But all that was long ago. Now there were just a few of us left in our part of the world, a single band of four families cowering together, meek as mouselings.
Hiding from humans, those most unpredictable of predators.
Hiding from the sun itself.
Some said there were more dairnes far away, living in mountain caves or on distant islands. Some said those sightings were the result of misguided hope. Dairnes were often mistaken for dogs. We share many physical similarities.
Dogs, however, lack opposable thumbs. They can’t walk upright. They aren’t able to glide from tree to tree. They can’t speak to humans.
And dogs aren’t—forgive me—the sharpest claws in the hunt, if you catch my meaning.
In any case, whether there were more of us or not, Dalyntor feared we would all be gone soon, slaughtered for our warm and silky fur.
Like the Carlisian seal, hunted by humans to extinction.
Or the red marlot, devastated by disease.
Or the blue-tufted ziguin, wiped out when its territory was destroyed in the Long-Ago War.
It seemed there were many ways to leave the world forever.
We didn’t want to believe our days were numbered. But here is what we did know: once we’d been many, and now we were few.
My parents feared I would be the first among us to die when trouble came, and trouble, they knew, was fast approaching.
I was small. And sometimes disappointing.
But I knew I could be brave as well. I was not afraid to be the first to die.
I just did not want to be the last to live.
I did not want to be the endling.