Scattered Pieces

I have been providing meat and other essentials to T'zuri's family. This time it was a kailiauk doe I had stalked. I had seen her the day before and I noticed the nearly perfect pattern of bars. The red and black perfectly spaced on the tawny hide. It was rare and I knew it would make a nice piece so I also knew I did not want the hide to be marred by lance or arrow. I used a bola.

When I got the animal back to the Harigga I butchered it and I wrapped the meat in the hide and hefted it up on my shoulder and took it over to their fires. This time I did not walk quietly but let my step be heard before I got there ... though when I did arrive I found T'zuri in a million pieces and not one of them was anywhere in the same reality I was. I think if I could have painted a picture of my dismals it would have looked a lot like T'zuri did that night. But my first thought was that it was something specific that had caused this and I went to sit with her on the steps of her wagon.

She asked me if I had ever missed someone like a hole next to me that I kept falling into. Well I knew that feeling well. Too well. Seems I do not have a lot of important people in my life but the few I have I care rather deeply for. So when they go I do not have a lot to fill in the space with. And I miss them like a piece of my lung and it is harder to breathe without them.

She was sad. Missing her father. I told her being sad was a good thing. It meant that there was someone left that could remember and keep the spirit alive. How was anyone to know a man if there was no one left behind to remember and miss them. To sing the songs of their deeds and say things they used to say and make them real to people that had never met them.

You know .. every man needs that. Someone to miss them when they are gone. I just can not believe for a moment that kind of sadness is a bad thing. It got me to thinking about Dubois and Ani and how much I miss them. I decided right then to go visit a few Elder Haruspex and sit down and talk of Dubois with them. Kind of bring her memory back alive a little.

I can not do that for Ani yet. I do not know if I ever will. But if I do I know it will be after Aunt is dead and I have won the war of the Clan. Until then it is not a thing in me to do.