The Toolmaker

There were three of them; sisters.  One, the oldest, the heaviest... perhaps the least mature, had light and wavy golden hair; this was Archan, and the others were darker, from another father.
Scarborough came from the east.  They heard her coming for hours and hours, for clamped about her two ankles were massive, corroded chains that jingled and chanked behind her, catching on bushes that were torn out by the roots from her undeterred strength.

Archan and her sisters were under their ridge, and they were trying, with words and shakes of simple sticks, to drive Jason from their home.

"You're not invited!  Now go!  Outsider!"

"You have my spear," he insisted, mock indignant, reaching again towards the shaft in Arlo's hands.  Arachne crouched under the ridge, picking at a slab of meat with a cooking tool; unconcerned by the violent pettiness over the hunting weapons.  Arachne was the best hunter; the warrior princess, Jason had called her.

"Alright, enough, Jason," Archan had growled bitterly. "I don't like it when you boast about Arachne."

"I bet Arachne likes it," I had said.

"Do you want me to stop, Arachne?"

"No," said Arachne.  While, at the same time, "Yes," said Arlo.

"Is your name Arachne?" Jason teased.  Archan crossed her arms, most irritated.

"And anyhow, Arachne is the cook.  We do the hunting," Archan had decided.  And so it was.
Mala, mother, sat by, saying nothing.to the quarrelers.  Jason continued to craft his greenwood spear; the same that he had returned and taunted them with.  The same Arlo now had in her own hands.

Still there was the jangle of chains.  Perhaps attracted by their unhappy cries, perhaps by Jason's mock howls of pain as he was swatted and stabbed at.  He leaped up, at last and as Archan sat by, crafting her stick for the hunt to come, and Arachne continued to pick at the meat, he wrested the spear from her hands, and set off down the dry riverbed.

Arlo snatched up her stick and gave chase, crying out to reclaim what was rightfully hers.
"It's not yours; you stole it from him," Archan snickered.
"Yeah..."

Borrin, young brother, ran after her, his own fine stick in hand.  His was carved, but blunt... harmless enough not to trouble Mala.

Archan was left, fastidiously fixing her sleeping space, making it smooth, pushing Arlo's away.
And Scarborough came down the ridge.  She stood, even hunched, twice at Archan's hieght.  Her skin was baked a blackened roan, and her lips were as black as one who sipped ink.  her mouth was closed and her eyes were hooded against the bright sky; she entered the shade under the ridge and sat herself upon the great log they had pulled into place to sit on.  It twisted under her weight.  She paid no heed to the ones who owned the cavity, the ones who claimed authority over this shade.  She shrugged the silky white fur from her shoulders to bunch around her waist, and placed her feet neatly before her, each still fettered by a number of chain links larger than two fists.  Her hands found the pockets in the front of her thin, silky shirt, and drew out a tool like none of them had seen.
Its blade folded out and locked into place, and the whole of it was a metal unknown to them; gloriously shiny and stained pink and teal and blue, iridescent as dragonfly carapace.  She held the marvelous knife in one hand, and selected from the pile of sticks at her feet a short, fat one, which she began to cut.

Arlo returned, with Jason's stick in her hand, its tip somewhat bloody.

"I made his hand bleed.  I don't know how it happened," she said dismissively.

"Dinner is ready," Arachne called, and now all three sisters did look up, and acknowledge the great, strange hominid who had come into their camp.

She did not look at them with her large, red eyes.  She held the short, fat stick and continued to carve with her strange, folding knife.