You are in the grasslands of North America, 15,000 years ago.

The air in the valley was thick and damp, smelling of rich mud and crushed reeds. You stood perfectly still behind the heavy foliage of a willow thicket, your heart beating against your ribs like a trapped bird. A low, vibrating rumble that sounded less like a roar and more like distant thunder was heard.

Before you, not fifty paces away, a massive mammoth emerged from the mist-covered riverbank. It was immense—easily fourteen feet at the shoulder—its back sloping down toward a thick, powerful tail. Unlike the shaggy, woolly giants you have seen in the tundra landscapes, this one was nearly naked, its skin a dark, leathery grey that hung in loose folds, revealing the vast muscle shifting underneath.

Its tusks were the most terrifying and beautiful thing you had ever seen. They were not straight, but twisted, curving outward in massive, yellow-stained arcs that looked like polished, ancient wood. They were still long and pretty lethal enough to send a saber-toothed cat flying.

It seemed oblivious to your presence, focused entirely on tearing up a patch of sedge grass with its trunk. Each step it took shook the soft earth, a heavy thud that you felt in the soles of my feet. A cloud of small insects buzzed around its ears, which were small, perhaps to prevent heat loss, though the mammoth seemed better suited for this warmer, temperate climate than the frozen tundra.