Thus, two distinct ways of being came to emerge among mortals burdened with consciousness.
The followers of Amalasuntha had made the wilderness their home. They lived deep in the forests and the caves, burrowing where they may, as close to the earth as they could settle.
They had learned to hunt as they had once been hunted, and they continued to gather other forms of sustenance from what the land had to provide.
Being communal in nature, they shared most things among each other: their joys and their sorrows, the decisions that needed to be made for the greater good of the whole, the raising of their children, and the caring for the sick and the elderly.
They had no fear of death, because what came after it had long ago ceased to be a mystery. And though there remained regret for the l
