This fragment has been sitting in my stories folder for well over a year and I'll probably never finish it. It's about one of the first instances of funerary ritual.

Sunlight winked through gaps in the canopy as a pup, not yet old enough to forage with her dams, picked through the leaf litter near their steadtree for edible seeds. She was too busy sifting through the blanket of dead leaves and twigs to feel the first gentle tug on her tail.

The tugs got more and more insistent until she finally looked up from her chore. It was another pup, a boy from one of the older litters in the shire. She knew what he wanted already. She had seen him do this to other pups. He would beckon them to the riverbank, look down at the surface of the water, and then watch for them to do the same. The other pup would look at the water, then back at their odd playmate, confused. Once they determined he was not looking at a potential meal, or at something that sought to make a meal of them, the other pup would wander away.

Now it was her turn to play this strange game. She hesitated. She had never been to the river before. Her sires and dams always shepherded her and her litter mates away from the water if they got anywhere near it. One of her sires was lounging in the tree above, his paws and tail dangling lazily from either side of the branch he was straddling. She made a few tentative steps toward the river, then looked up at her sire. There was a glint in his eyes as he blinked his bandpass membranes, but he didn't move to stop her.

She scampered after the other pup. Just as he had done with the others, he looked down at the surface of the water, then back at her. She looked down, then jumped back in surprise. Looking back at them were two other pups. One of them looked just like her playmate. He had dusty gray fur with a patch of white on his chest. The other one stared right into her own eyes. She had a bright white coat with a black smudge on her muzzle, right where she had a spot on her own snout. She reached up and touched the spot, and the onlooker did the same. She flicked her ear, and so did the other. Slowly, realization dawned on her. She reached up, her paw shaking, and tugged at her right ear. The other pup did the same. It wasn't another pup at all, she was looking at her own reflection.

Anyway, the boy is the only sapient yinrih in the shire, and he's been trying to find others like himself by seeing if other pups recognize their reflection in the water. He rejoices when he finds that this girl is also one who asks. the two pups become friends and a simple language begins to blossom between them as they name things around them. You see the first germs of animism start to grow as they treat the trees and the river and the sun as people like them. Naturally those things move just like they do, so of course they're people. They also stare up at the stars and get the sense that something or someone lies beyond them. The two also name each other, the boy names the girl after the smudge on her muzzle and the girl names the boy for his bad teeth. Two of his canines are chipped after having bitten down on a rock thinking it was a nut.

The two know they're different from the other yinrih around them but can't quite put their paw on what it is. The others don't name things, and they don't seem to wonder about the world around them the way they do.

The river floods and recedes as the years come and go. The girl is now old enough to go foraging with the other women. The boy has been accompanying the older men on hunts for a few years. One morning the boy does not return. The girl waits for him in vein. She begins grieving his absence and notices that nobody else feels the same. The men who were with him smelled a bit anxious the morning they returned without him but otherwise get over it quickly, and the boys dams don't notice anything at all.

One day, about a year after the boy goes missing, the girl is foraging for nuts along with some of the boys sisters and dams. One of them finds a strange looking rock and decides it will make an excellent tool for cracking nuts. She lifts it over her head, but the girl notices something. It's not a rock, it's a skull, and not just any skull. It's canines are chipped exactly as her friend's were. She knows the skull belonged to him, but his dam is about to smash it. She snatches it away from her. The older woman takes offense at this insubordination and snaps at the girl, but she is able to escape with the skull.

She sets the skull in a tree that hangs over the water because it was where the boy could often be found gazing at the stars at night.

And that's the story of the first bonekeeper. Part of the reason I didn't continue is that I figured out the mirror test isn't a good litmus test for intelligence. Two reasons, first not all animals are as visually oriented as humans, so a visual test like that might not work. Second, some animals that you'd think would pass actually fail, like some species of crow. And some you're sure would fail pass, like at least one species of fish that's like the size of my finger. Self recognition also isn't all of what makes humans human. To my mind, a creature would have to demonstrate productive language as well as some sort of spirituality, showing they're asking existential questions that go beyond the need to survive and reproduce.