The Night has a Thousand Eyes

I threw myself into work. Nothing took away frustration like sweat and dust and just being with the bosk and doing things I knew how to do. No time to worry about anything but what was right in front of you. A wandering mind out here during the day would get a man killed and I relished in the muscle demanding tasks.

It was some time later when I sought out T'zuri. I had not forgotten that I had asked her thoughts and she has in turn told me she would give them to me. I also had told Tarra I would speak for her and I needed to tell T'zuri that I would be her guardian at least until a male relative came forward or until someone paid her dowry. I was guardian of many of the single women but .. this particular one was a little more difficult for me. For several reasons .. first she was without her nose ring and that was enough to just twist me around and upside down. I was all out of my element here. The other was that her family was so freshly taken away from her and the hurt and pain were living breathing beasts at her heels. I did not have any answers for her. I did not have the wisdom that would give her relief in this time. I myself rode with them at my side and had for many years without knowing the secret to peace. All I had to offer her was that I knew .. that I understood. I hated myself for the inadequacy of that.

I was walking along the stream bank when it gave way and I rode the wave of dirt to the edge of the water with a few explicit and obscene phrases .. she spoke and I felt a little guilty for peppering her ears with such but at least I had not buried her in the avalanche. We spoke of the plains and grass and the beasts that lurk there and take lives. Hard to talk of anything else .. when you go through something like that with someone you get all wound up in talking about it like nothing else exists for a while. Or so it seems to me anyway. I helped her a little to listen to what was around her so she could soon learn to live with the night and the sounds instead of feeling as if she were a stranger .. a foreign thing among them. The girl has guts I will say that. I scared her on purpose and with a bit of Haruspex trickery I made her think there was a larl in the grass across the stream and damn if she did not show some spunk I had not anticipated. I have learned not to underestimate unringed girls that have nearly seen seventeen passings of Turia. But I am not sorry that I did it .. she is less afraid of the plains and the night. For that I am pleased.

There are people that will always close off the wild and loneliness of the limitless plains. The sounds and scents and sensations that buffet take your breath away spreading it further than you can ever see in a lifetime. They can not stand the openness .. the limitlessness .. the endlessness of it all and they implode into themselves and close themselves off to feel safe and warm inside. And then there are those that embrace the loneliness and let it wash over them and move through them. They expand into the horizon and grow and grow until they must fill the very breeze that walks through the grass. T'zuri did not run away from the sensation of nothing holding her down .. she broke open and flew.

I walked her back to the Harigga watching the lights of the scattered fires and I told her not to wander off alone until the larl were killed. I told her some of what I had seen and I think she understood that I was serious. I also told her she should not be walking out with men at this time of night. And that if I caught her doing so I would skin her hide and beat the rest of what was left of her. She asked if that meant me also .. and I replied ...

especially me.