Of Mud and Men

I couldn't believe I slept all night. For I knew it was morning when I felt the sting of a switch at my thigh, and I quickly moved to dodge the next swing. Would have worked if she didn't know I would do that and aimed high this time. I stubbed my toe. It hurt.

Ouch! Ouch! What did I do?

Oh Grandmother was on a rampage. Very rarely did she ever get to yelling, if not over more, it was at me when I did something to question her sanity. Which I did often enough. Usually just little things. When I was mad cause she sent me to bed early cause I just happened to trade her expensive bag of roots for a newly dyed leather for boots, and since I was in the furs before it was dark I was awake before all, getting Grandmother up only if my brother had over night patrol saying its morning, and Eesamer went to the stream to wash up, and wants breakfast, the special one she only makes. Of course, Grandmother would make it, giving it all to me when it was clear Eesamer got tied up with something instead of coming to eat. I would have a full belly and be happy. It would work until I had woken up again from my full slumber, ready to ask for lunch and Eesamer walked in asking for Breakfast. I learned to run fast from that.

This time, it was the basket. Its my job to do the laundry. The slaves have been out helping my other brother and his mate with new born twins, as if their other four kids weren't enough. Both slaves gone, leaving me to have to do most the cleaning, and laundry with no help. So I let it pile up, so Grandmother wouldn't feel an over flowing basket, I would just keep getting bigger baskets until after a hand she couldn't find a tunic and Eesamer was complaining about no clean verr wool socks. Not my fault he changed them like four times a day. I guess she found out, as she was yelling at me the whole time I dressed, I didn't even know Eesamer was there until I heard him laughing walking out. Grandmother roughly oiled my hair pulling it back in a braid, just telling me she should beat a hort off my height for making her think her back was bending cause the basket seemed bigger every other day. She thought she was shrinking, and was seeing the healer about her back. Cost her two dozen eggs for him to say...Elders shrink. He was next for that. For now it was me. I couldn't get my boots on fast enough lugging that huge basket out towards the stream with the Sky Warrior walking over my fingers as if to laugh at me too. I knew he was. There were only a few there at first, giving my Tal's. I liked the young Warrior. We had a secret. I told him that we shared blood. One day we will have to get Eesamer to explain it better to both me and him. Something about Fathers, Fathers and Brothers...or something. Easamer was in a hurry when I asked him about the marks on the wagons, so it was quick run down, which drove me crazy cause I liked names and history!

More started to come, many new faces, a few I had seen before. I couldn't wait to get my boots off and start soaking my throbbing toe in the cool water. I spoke to a few, I saw some I have sought before, and some who seemed to be a new from the past as the girls gossip well via the first wagons or the last. Old Ubars were a hot topic all the time. I couldn't wait to go back and tell Kayla he looked nothing like she said! I felt a bit bad people were giving him a corpse comparison, but yes, he did have that...needs a few bosk steaks...look. I was curious, but not enough to get near the gathering of people that were talking. I was a little shocked over two coming to speak to me, though the quiet one still had that mean discontent look even holding young children. Now that was a bit amazing. The other was giving me and anatomy drill, from the head to toe connection and I think he wanted to drown me. Interesting.

Then Old Lady Boots tried to make a point that didn't quite amuse me, but I know older women tend to be a bit threatened by us younger ones. So what if I'm a prospect, I'm still Tuchuk, her blood was no better then mine. Her wagon was just in a different location. She probably got there by mating anyway. So I didn't fall into it. I try never to let anything bother me for to long. A boot in the face today, and I will be standing tall tomorrow. Again, I didn't let words of ill tempered whims bother me. I found it amusing. To each their own. I savored the thought of a future of testing the will of some in a more intelligent way then silly threats. I am Tuchuk, a young one, but strong. The girl beside me puzzled me but it was nice to see a young face. She might call her family strict I found them a bit mean. I wasn't a stranger to a lashing but it was in lesson not demand. I enjoyed helping her out a bit, and I have never seen leathers so big!

When most had left, I enjoyed walking closer to the Warrior I was curious about with the other prospect. He amazed me. It wasn't just the familiar of the Sky Warriors, but it was just the way he spoke. His tone, his demeanor. He spoke of lost things, and I of not really seeing the importance of worrying over what is now gone, for things still here are what mattered. I could see the anguish, even in the very dark of his eyes. The other woman came, and I liked her thrill over him. I really didn't need a seal of deal to assume he was truly special but her thrill was enough to do just that. I told him a bit about me, I felt selfish but he asked, and even offered more then he asked. I like to talk. I think it could be a lift time debate, of water and ground, but the mud in my fingers showed me it really didn't matter. For life is what does. He gave me life in my palm. Beautiful shimmer of rich green that fluttered even when the beetle tumbled from my palm. His mood changed as did life. Dusted beetle all across my skirt. I gathered it up and asked him to fix it. No he didn't. He left.

Oh well, I took care of it, and sent it right back to him, as I watched old lady boots color the water in some incident that left her in a sticky moment.

Yes, laundry, had to take it home.

Three hands.

Goodness.Now, I had to find Kayla. Tell her, she was so wrong....this man wasn't what she said, he was so much more, for to me that slender outline of flesh was just a mere silhouette of what he really was. I found it beautiful.

Designs of life

So the day started, how would I? I was faithful polishing the shell. I listened to the drums, but though I didn't walk up and fight fully to get to the first wagons, I was listening. Learning, offering my little wares of amusement right now. Listening mostly to my Grandmother as my brother would finally show me a few things. He showed me how to start to gain some control of my thoughts. I had a semi idea from Grandmother. Eyes were sometimes more blind when open. I would close my eyes to find what I was looking for. He was trying to show me how to expand my mind to sort the many things in there. The feelings that would try to flash all at once. Don't think...feel. It was hard, for my thoughts would linger to the far blue sky, and the cloud I saw earlier that day. I would hear a faint sigh knowing he knew my concentration was gone. He knew he couldn't teach me. Age had been a hinder as much as being left to my own vices for so long.

One of things I enjoy the most, is watching when my Grandmother paints. Its a painful thing, but worth it. Since age has gotten so wrapped on her poor flesh, the gift of watching tends to be at my own palm. To create from your own essence. Pictures stained into leather. They hung around our wagon, without a thought one might thing it red dye, but we knew better. Hers were so detailed, every blade of grass was a stroke from the single end of the thorn stem or by her own finger tips. Sometimes when I was younger I would be so engrossed and her pictures so elaborate, I would feel light headed and need to rest. To see the result while I ate after I awoke was worth each prick. I lay here now, working on my own picture. It was just the sky, each cloud had its own delicate lines within lines, within lines. There was a distant hill, with someone riding over it, there was the stream and each circled rock. A sweet solitude found as I continued watching every crimson line soak into the leather. It was for a saddle blanket for my kaiila. Ulita was growing restless and I wasn't in the mood to ride. I really had been a slug. As much as a slug as Tuchuks can be. I still cleaned about the wagon, cooked with Grandmother. We had a couple verr, as Grandmother loved verr milk, so I milked and brushed them everyday. People were always in and out the wagon asking my Grandmother for things, looking for my brother. My brother had this gift, or just a really good skill of reading futures form the bottom of a baby's feet. He only did male babies. He was good at it. I doubt there wasn't a back wagon baby around that hadn't had his feet touched by my brother. When I was about ten, a mother , her mate and a newborn came to see my brother. He simply told the mother to kiss her son, and the mate to kiss them both, and said, to the Warrior, memories last forever. Confused the couple and the baby walked out and I swear on my own feet...if a bolt of lightening didn't strike down right on that mother and son. Right on our steps! It still has the burn marks on the railing. Since that day, people came twice and much now, bring even kids who were already walking. Don't know why he won't do those after they take their first step, just his thing I guess. Something about the lines, the thickness of the heel, the mold of the ball of the foot. The body knows, what their path will be like. When I asked about the bolted baby, he said...he never saw feet to smooth and soft. Not a line, not a single line. And that is all he said about that.

I finished the surface of my blanket, tired, I ate a piece of bosk strip so I wouldn't wake up with a headache, leaving the stem back on Grandmothers chest, I slept well, and dreamed of very tired feet.

Gone again

I saw her just melt away the same way she came. This meant so much to me in an array of feelings that might fly high into the clouds or linger in a gasp of air within the warm yet suffocating mud. She gave me a light. That glow of learning. Made me stronger, gave me a shell like the one I polished faithfully every day. She gave me so many books, with pictures that told stories that now swarmed in my mind. Her touch had been cool like the feel of ice across my lips. The chill wasn't one of ache, it was one of being alive! So when I watched her form melt away with a single drop of water suckled by the grass and ground, I did weep, not of pain, but of thankfulness.

Her wagon would be kept warm for her return one day.

This left me in a fit of question on what to do? I was weary, yes, my first step had been one that slipped on the grass like fresh dung under a blind fools foot. I could do it again. I had to. For that is what the grass showed me. Forward Noelani forward.

I walked home, and saw my brother sitting on the lower wagon steps. Which was odd, cause he never was home this time of day. I smelled the sage, and rich strong herbal smell of combinations I didn't know from him. That told me he had spent some time at the Haruspex wagons. The older I got the more time he spent there. I remember ahns in the afternoon we would be out in the plains, I chasing bugs as a little girl, and him telling me to settle down and just watch the clouds while he was looking for, something. Even then I knew every Haruspex was different. I didn't get the gift of growing up with my parents. A wagon of warmth and learning. Eesamer kept me sheltered. Ignorant. I didn't feel remorse for it, but I felt bad he struggled now I was old enough to go find myself. It was a fight him and Grandmother had ever now and then. Mostly when the buzzing was too much and I couldn't make the confusion go away.

That is when I discovered the Sky Warrior. Or so, he captured me. The fair Tuchuk Maiden every Warrior fought for and captured in the battle by some Lone Rider to take me as his mate. Of course he wasn't some speckled red bug at first, he was a brave strong Warrior, who came and right before he took my hand his heart burst into flames cause he couldn't contain his love for me, and the sky opened up taking what was left of the ash and flames in a cradle of the breeze lifting him away. All but one smoldering red and black ash..that flew down to my finger tips, and has stayed with me forever.

When I woke up from the surrounding of grass on the hill with him on my hand, I knew it had to be true. Not just a dream. It was enough to help me stop the tears when the buzzing came, and she would whisper in my ear, how it was the sound of wings. The Sky Warrior's off to battle. Watch them with pride, fly to battle and come up in honor of our souls. They were saving me.

So I would I would sit on the steps, like Eesamer was doing now, hearing the raised voices trying to muffle emotion argue about me. "They are saying she is a curse, we should have given the water back what was taken" "Eesamer, you know better then that. No child is a curse, you let old vulo hens gossip get to you cause people fear what they don't understand" "She keeps telling people her parents died before she was born, does that not give off an eerie sense enough?" "Why would she lie..they did" "That is not the point, the point is, they say she is the reason they died, that it was the seeking that found death when it came to her" "Then the only fool there is..is you Eesamer, and you of all know, we need not question the sky" Yes, I remember those fights, to let me learn, or not to let me learn. Grandmother taught me to listen when he tried to teach me to mute.

I walked up to him, smiling, a kiss against his cheek, before finding a seat beside him. A hand against his side, embraced, my sweet brother who only did his best for me cause I knew he cared. He would place a hand around my shoulder, kissing my forehead.

I'm sorry Noelani.

He said, and all I could in return was...that it was okay. I understood, I did. I took away from him also. No mate who couldn't get past gossip to enough for her parents to take a bride price to help raise a cursed child and care for a blind old woman. I understood, everything and I loved him more for taking care of us, without a thought, other then, what I should become. Now I had seen sixteen years of my life, and was still reckless as child first learning to make fire. The gift was there, I just didn't know how to control it. For now, it was just me and him. I forgot the pain of seeing my teacher melt away before me. I was, content.