Part Two ... Evening Comes too Soon

The day grew warmer and I stripped to the waist. The heat felt good on my back and shoulders. The cooler nights inspired me to savor this warmth for I knew it was short lived and in the future days to come there would be cold.

I rode east and south coming to a place where the earth had shoved away from the rest and created a ridge. The grass was long and I rode along the ridge reining in to pause and gaze down and out occasionally. Watching the plains. Despite the appearance that there was nothing out there I knew that within the tall grass there were many things living and moving and doing the tasks that ensured their survival .. foraging .. hunting ..procreating. It was about that time that a wild sleen cub came face to face with Rocca. He must have been cruising along the ridge as I was and certainly was not paying much attention. The cub stared at Rocca and I thinking I am sure we were one beast .. then opened his jaw and let out a MAW and launched himself over the ridge to scramble .. roll .. and tumble down through the tall grass. Throw in the occasional MAW and you have a rather good picture with sound included. I chuckled and continued on though I kept my eye out for the mother sleen. It would be rare for a wild sleen to attack one of my kaiila but .. with a cub involved I had no desire to cut my trip short simply because one of my beast got ravaged by a fire breathing she sleen.

Now instead of taking a hint that I was all over moving along this ridge the cub began to circle away from me down in the tall grass and make his way back up. Intent it seemed .. on following the ridge. The only problem was that I was working my way along the top so all he did by moving away and up was come right back to a meeting point with me. Once more he stood staring at us and then let out another MAW and dashed over the edge again to tumble .. roll and scramble with gravity giving him a boost in the ass. Now my chuckling began to get deeper and the glint returned to my black eyes. Even Rocca did not seem put out by the cubs misguided stubborn attempts to avoid us but still gain the ridge.

And sure enough he did it again. Circling around and returning with the hope of avoiding yet making connection in our parallel trails. I began to feel sorry for the little thing and I wondered where the mother had gotten to for he was putting up a terrible fuss all over this ridge. What with all the noise of his decent and continued cussing me for the giant two headed freak that I was. In what was now becoming habitual he once more threw himself over the edge and scrambled to keep ahead of gravity down through the grass. But his cries were getting quieter and less intense. He had to be getting tired. I reined in Rocca and hooked my knee over the pommel. Taking a deep breath of the air I savored it before letting it go in a slow exhale. As far as the eye could see in every direction there was nothing but grass. Grass that stretched out to meet the horizon of blue. The vast empty space soothed and fed my spirit and I felt my soul grow and expand in attempts to reach out and touch the horizon. I felt like I had been here before .. that all that was happening had happened before. That I was caught up in some kind of circle and things just kept repeating themselves with a few different colors and a few different words and a few different feelings.

Suddenly I realized that it was too quiet. The cub had disappeared .. no sound no movement in the grass. Had his mother found him? I eased my boot back into the stirrup and the hair at the nape of my neck stood on end and that electricity continued along my shoulders and down my arms. Color blazed across the horizon and like I was in some kind of trance I realized that evening had come ... too soon. How long had I been sitting here? Nothing about this felt right. It was beautiful .. it was surreal .. it was soothing .. it was ... all wrong.