A Little Closer

I thought Cana was going to burst at the fires. She was leaking at the seams with something she wanted to say and it was obvious. So when I left I leaned over and spoke quietly in her ear that if she wanted to talk .. to find me.

She did .. as I was carrying my saddle to the pens and I had just tripped in a hole with those new boots on and I was swearing the paint off a wagon. I did have the decency to look embarrassed and I apologized for my language. She told me she had five brothers and she had heard it all before .. I said ... but not from me. Until now ..

There are some women I will swear around .. they use the same language and speak a lot in the same way as I do. Cana is not one of them.

Anyway .. I hefted my saddle up on the wagon wheel and held it there with my palm as I spoke to her. She told me she was raised to never speak to strange men .. especially unscarred ones .. she asked me if that was wrong. I told her no .. it was not. That I had spoken at the Fires and told Polunu that Sakmeta's decision was a poor one. That he could and should speak to Sakmeta about her choices but that I was not going to back down for an instant and say that Sakmeta was at any time in danger while she was surrounded by warriors. Cana told me that the outriders had left the man to speak to Kam and that Sakmeta was alone with him for a few minutes away from the others. I told Cana that had not been made clear to me and I would have a few words with the outriders ... but that stranger was not just watched by those two men but many others.

Cana said that the man could have reached out and snapped Sakmeta's neck. And I told Cana that if Sakmeta put herself in a position where a strange man could simply snap her neck ... then the Tuchuk gene pool was better off without her. That I hoped Polunu would rein her in a little .. as I had expressed at the Fires .... but if Sakmeta happened to be bent on suicidal tendencies there was not much anyone could do about it and she would find her situation sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. If .. and I say if ... that was what she was truly after.

I do not believe that is what Sakmeta is after. But my point is that I will not save someone from themselves. I will provide a safe environment but I will not step between someone's self destructive tendencies and the culmination of that destruction. We are Tuchuk .. we do not coddle and swaddle and we do not have time to harbor that kind of intent. I will put myself in the way of a woman running out in front of a stampeding bosk .. but if she dodges around me to do it anyway I will watch and chew on a piece of jerky and let my kaiila feed on what is left. This is life .. live it or get out of the way so the rest of us can.

She said she was not sure what to do with Sakmeta. I told her in a case like this it was up to Polunu .. not Cana to deal with it. She said it was hard to care because she wanted Sakmeta to be all right despite some of her decisions. That is when I reminded Cana that she chose to care.

Caring was something she made a decision to do .. to give. That she should treat it as a gift and let it go when it was given. To not attach strings to it. To not take it personally if the gift was set aside or not valued. The acceptance of the gift did not reflect on her identity as the giver. She knew she gave a gift. Others knew she gave a gift and that was all that counted. It all wove together to be who Cana was. But there was no such connection to whether or not the gift was noticed .. accepted or valued.

She said she felt like she let Polunu and I down. Now that got her a rise of brow. Nothing could be further from the truth in my case at least. I told her she was a success at being Cana. And the Tribe was blessed to have her as one of them. She said she was nothing special.

I then told her that I would be fortunate to someday have the blessing of having a mate as beautiful .. caring and kind hearted .. as giving as she is. That if I had to pick something that she could improve on it was only that she sometimes saw her own value in the success of her gifts .. instead of realizing that the giving itself was where the importance lay. That people saw Cana for what she gave .. every day of her life to those around her and they did not concentrate on whether or not her gifts were accepted. She was the only one judging herself so unfairly and harshly.

She said she just wished for people to be happy .. to lighten their load a bit when she could. She asked me if this was a bad thing... I said no. It was a rare and fine jewel of a raindrop ... so tiny and yet full of a universe of life. Or a perfect green blade of grass. There was no price that could be set on it .. it was indeed priceless.

I left her with these words. To offer her time and energy and let it be a gift .. let it lift upon the winds and if it returned to her .. to be blessed. But if it did not? To know it was doing it's work quietly and her blessing would come from another direction.

But my talk with Cana left me with something eating along the edge of my thoughts .. suckling from the marrow. Something I needed to speak to someone about .. something I was unsure of. And I would be out of peace until I had the chance to do so.