'And-' Knucklebones blushed. 'And I'll be busy tending our first child.'
'Our first…' Suddenly awake, Sunbright hugged her till she squeaked. 'Oh, Knuckle'! The first of many, we hope. Some to ride the plains, and some to walk the woods. Others to work the mountains, or follow trade routes.'
'And one child to become shaman,' Knucklebones added.
'Shaman?' Sunbright slumped again. 'Oh, no. It's such a burden, I wouldn't wish it on any child. But I suppose…'
'It will be so,' Knucklebones smiled. 'It's tradition.'
Epilogue
The tundra never did heal, for the empire lands, drained of life by the alien Phaerimm and exhausted by the greed of the archwizards, declined slowly like a forest of dying redwoods. After the End of the End, the last vestiges of the Netherese Empire were swallowed by sand to become Anauroch, the Great Desert. The Narrow Sea dried year by year, eventually disappearing, so the High Ice and Sunbright's tundra receded into a rocky wasteland.
With the tundra died the Rengarth Barbarians' way of life, but under the guidance of Sunbright and Knucklebones, and their descendants, the Rengarth lived on, though they eventually changed into But that's another story…
