All these things
I don't understand
lost, alone and frightened
in a promised land
won't you ...
please ....
rescue me
Worlds away
from my home
despite the wonders
I feel this fury
like the weight of
the sentence
from the hangman's jury
It feels like
I'm standing in a desert
filled with shifting sand
wishing there were someone
offering a saving hand
Worlds away
from my home
Can't shake this feeling
I'm undone
Find me here
I'm begging you
Won't you
won't you
please
rescue me
~ hers From Lost in a Promised Land
Drums ... they seemed to pound in echoes for days and days afterward. They carried messages that filled my heart with joy and rent it into pieces, all in serpentine waves. I had begun to be grateful for the numbness that the passing of Saccha had brought. Once, a part of those messages could have driven me to my knees ... could have thrown my face into the dirt trying to drag in the grass over me. It still ached a little finding out that he had taken the slave to be his mate. No matter how many times I walked across the harigga it would not change that he would not be there with welcoming arms. I knew it somewhere inside and slowly had given up any hope for it to be any different. I'd spent almost a season lathering balms to the aches in my soul and knew it was at last beginning to heal. I wanted to be happy for them. I wanted to be happy for them as I was for Aiyana and Polunu.
I began to hold on to the things that brought a smile. The aroma of blackwine and roast meat that blue had left at my wagon. Would she realize that it would be part of the grace that kept me going? The swirl of Vao's arm about my waist pulling me off my feet just to say Tal. In the same breath he was telling me that he and Ebet were taking First Son and Me Too hunting within the next few days. A bittersweet feel to the news. I would worry as I am so good at doing but it would fill the stores with meat and the men would return with pride of their prowess. The births of new kaiila, so healthy and vital and the sight of them as they took their first bits of sustenance stoked that nurturing I kept hidden much of the time.
Still the drums continued.
There was so much happening around me. Nothing seemed to focus. Not even when I looked up into the shadows past Cana, feeling as if more than one pair of eyes peered back. It was one of those moments that I could play what if all day long with later. It would not change what was to happen. Hadn't I learned this? I made believe the odd sensations were just part of the flux I was going through. Instead I shoved it aside along with the worry of Zestra ... the full bellied mare that had been one of Holo's conquests. I still held my breath for her. Her time was not going to be an easy one, but I was pleased that other births had gone so well for three of the other mares.
When the drums began to sound once more, I felt an ache that was not my own. The message was of the man who had taken me in among his wagons much like a brother ... the news of Lochlan's passing stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt the instantaneous clutch at my heart for each of them .. For Cana and Falon, for Papa Kur, for Tarra. I tried running toward the harigga and found I simply couldn't.
A part of me wanted to cover my ears with the flat of my forearms unable to listen any more to what they spoke of.
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