"The starving man asks not the name of the owner of the cache, but his heart is filled with gratitude."
"That may be, but no cache of Yaeethl's is in this stream."
"The ignorant deny all they cannot see."
"Wise sayings feed neither fire nor belly," I retorted, provoked by the criticism of my companion, thinly veiled behind his customary proverbs, and attempting to pay him in his own coin from my slender store of Klingat adages. "'Only a beggar gives thanks.'
Is it not your teaching that he who gives in this world receives the benefit, since in Tskekowani[1] his possessions shall be as his gifts here? If Yaeethl wants my thanks, if they are the due of the Raven, he has them, but why or for what I know not. Your words are like the ice of a windy day, rough and cloudy."
[1] The next world.
"You are right, Cousin. I forget at times that you are only a white man. Let me touch thy ear with my tongue."
"Cha-auk.[2] In the Time before Time, there was no water upon the earth or in the bowl of the sea, and Shanagoose the Sky gave neither rain nor snow.
[2] Ages ago.
"In one place only was Heen, the water. In a deep well it was, the father of wells, hidden among the mountains that lie between here and Tskekowani.