“I am glad you asked,” said the mammoth. “Since we last spoke, I have been having a very difficult time.”
“Oh?” Ilara said, intrigued. “Difficult how?”
“Well, as you may know, mammoths have wonderful memories. So one of our favorite things to do is to tell the old tales. Tales of great migrations and of narrow escapes, of loyalty and courage, of triumph and despair. We are quite the tellers of tales.”
Ilara found herself just staring, amazed.
“I’m sorry,” the mammoth said, “I realize such concepts would make no sense at all to a human.”
“It all makes perfect sense,” Ilara said, too interested in what she was hearing to act insulted. “Tell me more.”
“Well,” the mammoth continued, “suddenly the stories seem wrong. They’re all about making fun of humans, or killing humans, or killing humans and then making fun of them. Everybody around me seemed to be having such a good time, but I had to leave. It was awful.”
“Wait until I tell you,” Ilara said laughing, “about my day.”