Do they speak to you?

I ran my hand across the top of the water barrel I had just closed. It was one of many being gathered to together among those of the whole Tribe. It would be far longer than expected before we reached another source of water so now it was precious. It would be rationed evenly with priority offered the bosk, the elderly and the young. It is different being first to hear at the Ubar’s fires rather to hear the drums. To know before.

While we sealed the rims on the lids, Mother asked me what it was like at the first wagons now. I told her of the many people I had met. So many faces, so many names to remember. She asked if they spoke to me. For a moment I stood there with my hand on the lid. Yes. I heard them as they spoke in and among themselves as if they were far away and I heard their inner voices too, like hushed whispers that often said something else.

Except one.

Perhaps she caught the bit of smile that made her ask of him. I began to tell her of the warrior that I had met. It is said he is not known for his laughter yet the eve had been spent filled with jesting and light hearted merriment. The voice within in spoke the same as the one that fell on my ears. He had asked just what she had though in altered context. It came as no surprise to my Mother that when a crowd began to gather around the fires, that I had grown quiet, staring into the flames. Unlike everyone else there, he had asked, “Do they speak to you?”

Everyone else had faded like a mist around us while we talked. He had meant the flames so I explained that this night they were only mirrors. He had wanted to know if I had meant thoughts or emotions and had no trouble understanding I saw a difference. The flames dancing, swaying back and forth were like the images of thoughts, purposed in their reach for unknowns like the stretch toward the sky. The emotions were like the cinders and coals, fluctuating in intensity, ranging in heat and hue from the dark red to the brightest of whites. I asked if he could see how they shimmer red to black and back to red again. He turned to study them as well as if he had done so many times before just as I had and said yes. He said that he guessed emotions were necessary but that did not mean he had to like them. It was what set him apart from all the others. The voices spoke the same, inside and out.

I’m not sure why I confided to him that there were so many new names and faces that it was hard to remember them all. He said to give it time, they would all make sense after a while. He made me laugh when he said when he could not remember, he would just grunt. He had a nice laugh, a kind of rumble like the thunder of a summer’s heat storm.

When everyone started picking on him merely because he smiled, I told him that laughter was healthy. It made the heart beat stronger and the lungs fill. He said then would try to laugh more ... for health reasons.

He had been the one that spoke of the days we would spend on the trail before we found water. I realized he had been the one out scouting ahead in search of it for us, for all of us. I patted the top of the water barrel before Pacu hoisted it up on the flat wagon. When he drove it to the inner fires, Mother and I began gathering small pebbles to place inside our cheeks then we spread coated swatches of silk across empty jars to catch condensation. Mother asked nothing else of the inner fires while we worked. She left me instead to my thoughts.