Greater than I

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha

Damn Tao for dragging me to the Ubars fires with his best of the best of the best dung. Aunt could take her mysterious, mystical ... ways and shove them right up ...

Fonce.

There he was walking up on the fires at just the right moment for me to unleash every bit of the fury I had all bottled up inside. It was one well aimed thrust that drove the dagger straight through the heart and a turn of the wrist to make sure it wrenched every bit of artery from the organ.

I have
no wish
to leave
the plains.

I want to be a Good Tuchuk, to be a good Haruspex and perhaps one day I may consider leaving the Tribe to see what is beyond our lands but not anytime soon and if that means returning to the verr herds ...

then so be it.

Whoa, Nelly, hold on, wait a moment, back up, start at the beginning and let him figure out what the &/@#! He asked enough pointed questions to begin to catch up. Just spilling all of the poison out seemed to take a good bit of the fire away from my veins and lessened the stricture wrapped around my lungs.

Boskshit.

Somehow his saying that one word helped make everything right itself once more. 'Tell me what you believe, Mezoo.' How could he know that was all I had needed from the very start, was just to be able to speak about what I believe and simply be heard. Not chastised for my ideals, not ground under someone elses but to give air to something that was as important to me as the air I breathed? My blood was born of generations before me, far more than I can count that have never placed a single boot from our lands. He soothed the bristle more when he said that made me pure of heart and sight. He truly wanted to hear what I had to say and there I confessed that his thoughts were just as much sought after.

How many times have I heard one of the Tribe say that, yes, they had traveled to the cities but wished they hadn't? It is part of why I have no wish to go. I do not want to regret my life or the parts that make up the whole of it. If I am to have a regret, let it be that I never stood inside the walls. His advice was to set these opinions that made me so intense inside, frustrated and angry aside. Not to feel as if I had to take them up or even understand them. The fact that I had given them thought was enough.

This bit of time we had connection within gave way to other things I had hopes of talking with him about. This fifth element Tarra had spoken of, brought up now. Heart, spirit, love. Could he teach me? He could show me how to learn but ony I would know how it manifest itself for me. For him it was different. Every word he spoke then was consumed with an eagerness, a hunger. His abilities, talents, skills ... tag a name here that suits your need to be able to understand ... he shared with me though it would take time for me to fully comprehend. My own pursuit was aimed at finding a way to take what I could do and be a benefit for the Tribe. In time he would show me how to use them for people.

It was time to show him where the darkness that still clung to me. My first experience. The whisper of my voice said how badly I felt that I had failed. How frightened I was that it had happened. It was too much ... too soon. I thought he would be angry. I thought he would have chastized me or even berated me but he didn't. He just asked why. All that I knew to tell him was because the need was greater than I. Rather than finding righteous indignation or atonement, he merely told me that I had learned a great lesson, that breaking the rules will always come with a price. I began to understand this was to be a part of me now.

Fonce is not a man that takes a compliment for the words that are offered so when I told him I was glad he was my mentor he had to question. I don't feel there is something deeper in him that longs to turn and twist until it finds control. It wrestles with him, not with me. When I am with Aunt I feel her laughter and her will to bend me from the inside as if it is my own thoughts. Tarra is like standing in the wind of a storm that makes you plant your feet and still you move a step. Enosh tries hard not to but that just makes it worse sometimes being caught in the pull of his tides. Fonce does not feel as if he takes over or works against what I am inside, if anything he feels as if he walks next to me. That was his way ... to walk with and not against what is out there.

I was ravenous to know more. Such a treasure, this precious linking of time, place, connection with a great mind, with wisdoms, with offered guidance; but already there was a gathering of things that were greater than I. A warrior came up nervous about being among the Haruspex fires but in need of speaking to Fonce bad enough to brave it. He said Kaeli was out among the plains and needed assistance. It would never matter how heated the debates between she and I could be, she was sister, she was friend, she was Tribe ... I told Fonce I would come with him.