The Fire
Athena loved the Crazy Horns. She loved life among them. It wasn't just that they deferred to her judgement in all matters. She really did care for them, as though they were her own people. She taught children how to paint, she counseled young couples, she taught them how to braid and dread their hair. Her proudest moment was by far the time she saved a life.
Longhorn was not the strongest, or the fastest, but he was the bravest hunter among the Crazy Horns. He wasn't stupid brave, he knew how to pick his targets. He wasn't stupid enough to target anything more dangerous than a hunter gecko. On a hunting party trip by the Great Salt Lake he overexerted himself, though, thinking he could take on three geckos at once. He was nearly torn limb from limb, saved at the last second by the other hunters using poison and spoiling the meat. He couldn't be moved, they were going to leave him in the wasteland to die. They even talked about killing him themselves, as a mercy. He convinced them not to, that he didn't want to be killed by his tribesmen. So they left him, amid poison gecko meat and with only a single granite club.
They returned to the tribe and told everyone the story when they asked what happened to Longhorn. Athena had never had much connection to him, she couldn't even recall what he looked like amid the faces of all the other hunters in the tribe, but something welled up inside her. A fire that compelled her to ask the hunters where they left him. They begged her not to go, told her it was too late, way too late to do anything to help him. They even physically tried to stop her, before she reminded them of her power. They withdrew in fear, but begged her to take a few of them with her, for protection. She agreed and they went straight back to Longhorn.
They found him mostly dead and half-crazed. In desperation he had eaten some of the poisoned gecko meat, and drank a little sea-water. It would take a miracle to keep him alive for even an hour after they arrived. And yet, Athena saved him. She hadn't even come with adequate medical supplies, but she was able to use the local flora to save him. He lost a leg and a hand, but in a week he was strong enough to be carried back to the village on a stretcher made of gecko leather and carried by the other hunters. They returned to the Crazy Horns triumphant, and from that point on Athena was the matriarch of the tribe.