Hope

Heres to us one more toast and then well pay the bill
Deep inside both of us can feel the autumn chill
Birds of passage, you and me
We fly instinctively
When the summers over and the dark clouds hide the sun
Neither you nor Im to blame when all is said and done
In our lives we have walked some strange and lonely treks
Slightly worn but dignified and not too old for sex
Were still striving for the sky
No taste for humble pie
Thanks for all your generous love and thanks for all the fun
Neither you nor Im to blame when all is said and done
Its so strange when youre down and lying on the floor
How you rise, shake your head, get up and ask for more
Clear-headed and open-eyed
With nothing left untried
Standing calmly at the crossroads, no desire to run
Theres no hurry any more when all is said and done
~Abba

It was one of those lanquid days that naturally drew one to the stream. I'd been walking the banks letting my palm skim across the top of giani-tail willows simply to set them to motion. Apparently I was not the only one to take advantage of such a lure, I found Silken there perched on the bank fishing.

About the same time I started to speak she hooked an unusually large one that came sailing through the air to land smack dab in the middle of my chest. It made me all wriggly too, trying to get a good hold on the creature. Since the woman doesn't eat the watery beasts, we made a trade. Wily would clean and fillet the fish and bring them to exchange for vulo. My pens had become quite prolific. More than once I muttered in passing the feathered things telling them it was not fair they got more errrr 'excitement' than I did and they had multitudes of little feathered things to prove it.

I was pointing at her line where she got another bite while we talked and yes pointing is rude unless you're fishing, then it is mandatory if someone's line goes under. It surprised me that it was Shi that had to bring meat for Silk's wagons since she hadn't had time to hunt. I was glad he was looking after her though. I was glad to see the smiles nd the laughter from the healer as well. It had been far too long since I saw that beautiful face light up. Somewhere deep insde it seemed criminal that it was not always shining with happiness and the joys of life. Iffn ya don't laugh, ya cry. Those words hung in the air and I wanted so much to be able to pluck them out and crush them between my fingers so they would not hold any truth.

A shadow fell across the stream and when we looked up it was Seth riding in. His approach came with ten other men. Just one look said something was terribly amiss. Come .. Jort has fallen in battle. Word was sent to the camp of where we were going and Silk drew me up on the back of her mount. Enu hurried to gather medical packs and off into the horizon we rode as fast as we could.

The outpost was a scene of chaos that our arrival seemed apart and distant from. Fifty dead, one hundred wounded. I slid from the mount and began tending what wounds I could. The drawn look of grief I saw on faces everywhere was haunting to me though none of it seemed to touch my own soul. I knew none of these people except that some were of Tuchuk blood and that one among them had pulled Silk through many dangers. For that he had gained respect in having saved the friend I now stood beside .. a sister.

Flames from the pyres rose diminishing to plumes of smoke and I watched for a while. The fallen warrior's woman stood close to Seth and Silk and I couldn't help noticing .. how frail she seemed against the backdrop of the plains. Then .. Seth was gone. I think it was anger that he left as he did that kept my tongue silent on the ride back to camp. Right or wrong, it will be a long time before I forgive him. I knew Silk's silence came from the grief she herself would let no one see.

It was the quiet conversation on the steps of her wagon when we returned that I mulled over for a long while afterward. It takes a special kind of woman to survive here among the plains. Before I returned to my own wagon to wash up, I drew the woman into an embrace, perhaps because she needed it, perhaps because I did.

She is one of those special kind of women and knowing her gave me strength to be one as well.

When I rounded the end of the Midnight row ... Sage was standing there with Orachu. I lit up at first with excitement then screamed and sank to my knees with the weight of dispair. I was still whispering a mantra when he carried me into the wagon. Please dear skies let their be hope ... hope .... hope.

Full Circle

The world keeps on getting smaller and smaller
And everything comes back full circle, full circle
Six degrees of separation
We all know someone else
It all comes full circle
~No Doubt

It was simply one of those treks through the wagon rows from one point to another that I passed one of the year keepers. They are an amusing lot to me, so serious much of the time. Time. It is their pasion as kaiilas are mine. As if drawn from some deeply profound enlightenment he stopped long enough to study me, study my face, the lines that form along my mouth and the corners of my eyes as if he put the moment to memory. It caught me so off guard that I simply stood there for a few ehn before finally he spoke.

"It has been four full seasons" At first I was wondering what had been four full seasons and was still staring at the back of his head when he continued on where ever he had been going in the first place.

Then the whole notion caught up with me.

Enough OOC!

There was a time when playing Gor was something that was enjoyable and the plains forum was one of the best, but lately people have begun to drift away. I can understand full well why. Regardless of how good friends you are, it gets to be a pain in the ass to try and put some kind of life into a char when you get ripped to shreds constantly ooc for how or how you do not play your character. I am not Fonce mun or Kam mun or any body elses mun or char ... just Nette's. So don't tell me how they would have done a scene .. I don't care. I will not react as other's do nor will she. More than once I've started to take the char out of the Tuchuk group because of how difficult a story line it is to play a freed barbarian among them and I'm told .. don't, she is liked and even loved by some. If that is so then why the F!!!! does anyone have so much trouble with how she is played. Get over it or LMTFA.

I have a great idea .. try something new .. just play.
~Red 6.13.8

Close Your eyes

Are you goin to scarborough fair? parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine

Life had begun to feel like that comfortable feeling of settling into the saddle. The reins fit my hands as easily as those of my mounts and I felt as if I could point it in any direction I wished and simply take it where ever I wanted and truth is I did.

When I wasn't among those of the clan or the Midnight wagons, there wasn't that overwhelming feeling of being lonely even when I was by myself. I found I made pretty good company for me and of course for Sinewy too.

While Cana was away with the confinement of the new babe, she entrusted me with seeing to the herds. She'd made sure there were enough hands to help should any trouble arise so that I could relax in the task and take each day as it came. There were new births, training and breaking to tend to and something more as well .. a sense of confidence that lifted my shoulders tall and my head held proudly high.

Barhk, Duran, Sage and I were riding the outer perimeter of the herd late one eve, talking now and then but more just relishing the splendor of the sunset when we noticed a camp fire ahead of us. Barhk rode on, and of course Duran, who could smell paga in a sealed bota several pasangs away, reined in. I had to laugh watching as he made himself at home, eating whatever was sizzling in the flames and plucking a slave from her chores to warm his lap.

It was good to see Ramza though for a while I stayed in the saddle. I asked if he following me even though we were the ones that crashed his party. He just asked if I was going to remain up there on my mount or actually get down and enjoy the fire. I have to admit the warmth did beckon and I gave in to it. Although it had been a while since we'd seen each other, it was as if it had only been a day when we fell into the humorous banter and teasing. He spoke what was on my mind ... it was good to see an old friend.

While he tossed me a fur to wrap in, I promised to bring him a chest from the caravan to put his paints in. It was our thing I guess, trading baskets and chests. He did surprise me when he said he had been to my wagon to retouch the murial. For a long time I just looked at him, studying him and putting his features, his scars, his expressions by the light of the fire to memory. He had touched me by doing this for me.

We talked as we usually do, for ahns, until I grew sleepy. There didn't seem any threatening need to rise and ride back to the harigga and within the comforting safety I drifted off to dream. I think in a way all women, no matter how strong, or strong willed, find peace in knowing that there is someone that can and will protect her. That was how it felt at that moment. It was a different kind of contentment when I felt his touch brush the wisps off my forehead with a gentleness that spoke of caring. I knew somehow that all through the night .. he was right there, watching over me.

Insurmountable odds

To triumph over darkness, you must first stand against it. ~ unknown

Strange, the view from here
Words we spoke, forgotten at the time
Now replay in my mind
What went wrong, what was right
Looking back, I never was there for you
You didn't say, but I know it's true
I can't find the real world alone
Every time I think I've won
I hear your voice inside, questioning
Where have you gone
Can't you remember feeling so alone
You always had the anwer that I could not see
I can't find the real world alone
~Queensryche

Me too had become the constant shadow of his hero Rusty, so it was no surprise when he decided he would go with the drover scouting for wild stock. There was both amusement and bit of heartache when I offered a farewell embrace that he shrugged away from. My little boy was growing more and more into a man. The merriment was that I knew one day, the wrap of feminine arms wouldn't hold the same shun. I checked the packs over and went back to check them again and again. I didn't want them to go and this odd obsessive behaviour kept wanting to make sure they had everything they would need or find reason perhaps for them not to. I didn't watch them ride off along the lanes and out onto the plains. I couldn't, instead I busied myself among the pens.

The two foals that Holo had sired were coming along well. It would be up to Fonce to name them but the ebon male that had been born the night of the sleens, I tended to call Tsk. It would at least give a sound to training the creature to come when summoned. The coppery red sorrel somehow always answered to pssst ... of all things. I knew they could one day be mounts for the Ubar so they were never spoiled but their survival of insurmountable odds during their births and the travels along the trail gave them priviledge. I whispered across the grasses, a silent prayer that he be like those two young colts .. able to endure, live and thrive.

My own small herd was growing well. There was a dark roan male I had named Vareem and a blue gray female that was named Alta though she was affectionately called None, both given to me by Rusty. Alta .. aka None, just had an attitude about her that said .. don't start none and there won't be none. Later that nickname would be more apropo in trying to breed her. Key word there was .. trying. Legends say that the kaiila conceived of the high winds capture its speed. When I look at these two, I can imagine them racing across the prairie as sleek and as swift as the breeze itself.

I don't know if it was a gift gone wrong, a cruel jest or simply one of those "you ain't gonna believe this" circumstances but the beast that Vao had given me was one like I'd never encountered before. Talk about having a mind of one's own! I would look up expecting to see the blue gray male pawing at the ground, snuffing out something from a tuft of grass somewhere but the beast would just be gone. The first excursions of trying to find the missing animal would be searching out over the plains before I finally figured out, he thought he belonged among the Tribe. Wonder where he got those kinds of ideas? For the next hand or so, I would wander through the lines of wagons, looking down this row and peeping under that row yelling ... hey Yabbott!!!, only to find him at the main fires ... sitting on the gray furs as if he were the Ubar or having actually half climbed someone's wagon platform to munch dried herbs they had hanging. Good skies, I'd yank at his mane and try to drag him back down to the pens simply to look up and find him gone again. Oh just wait until Vao returns again. I've stacked a whole pile of copper pots up next to my wagon flap with his name on them.

Each day I watched for the return of our prodigal sons, with hope, with faith though dusk would eventually settle around my shoulders without them. Perhaps it was all merely dominoes stacked in lines and patience needed until they toppled back where they began.

Boreas and his brother winds were often imagined as horse-shaped gods. An old Greek folk belief was that the winds Boreas and Zephyros would sweep down upon the mares in early spring and fertilize them in the shape of wind-formed stallions. The horses born from these couplings were the swiftest and finest of their kind
~snagged without permission from Lubricious Cerebration. You want it back girl? Come get it muahhaha er I mean Thank You ravenmun

Surrendering

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces

Days became hands and hands became months. Time was passing us by. If there were any real need of evidence that this was true, one had only to look at the world around us. The warmth of the central fire and the gentle fall of rains had created green as far as the eye could see. It was hard to keep a firm grasp on anything but the beauty as the plains surrendered to the new season without effort.

I finally decided to plunder through a chest or two from the dwellers wagons. Strange how the materialistic nature of my father no longer touched me in any way. Nothing within the stores held much interest to me now until I came across a wooden salt mill. That was when Aiyana and Polunu came to mind. I missed her. I missed our moments of whimsy and my tangling pillage of her yarn baskets. Leaving the clutter without another thought I grasped the mill and a basket of eggs. I'd decided to go for a visit.

I'll admit I was somewhat disappointed not to catch a glimpse of the weaver but it was good to see the salt hunter and the girl blue with him. We spent a few ehn talking of how they had been and of course new promises to keep in touch. The warrior insisted that they were happy together and that was all that mattered.

I left with an odd contentment, beginning to sing one of those airy tunes that I'd long ago forgotten. Like the grasses of the plains, I think I was surrendering to simply enjoying the life I lived.

It makes you just smile

You are my sunshine,
my only sunshine
You make me happy
when skies are gray
You'll never know dear,
how much I love you
Please don't take
my sunshine away
~Soggy Bottom Boys

Ahns turned into days and days turned into hands. There was a quiet that had fallen over the harigga. There was evidence that others were about by the smoke that curled from the fires, the scent of sage the Haruspex burned or the full water barrels the slaves kept vigil over ... we just rarely ran into each other. Maybe it was a time of healing for all of us. The journey south had been hard on the Tribe in many ways, it had been toughest on our souls. Each would have to come to terms with the events that had unfolded as we each were touched in different and unique ways.

I had to chuckle hearing the year keepers arguing over what the year might be called this time ... The great Silence, The Season of the lost bosk or the Year of the Winds. There was passion there in their clan that was good to see. I found myself eagerly awaiting the final verdict but then like most things not in immediate sight, I forgot there was even a debate going on.

I was rounding the end of one of the wagons coming back from the kaiila pens when I heard her long before I ever saw the girl. sleen was singing at the top of her lungs about the central fire and some lover who was the center of her universe at that moment. It just made me smile .. one of those ear to ear sappy ones that you can't wash off even if you scrub,

I had a suggestion for the year keepers .. maybe they could remember this time as the Song of the Sleen.

There was a prophecy in the making there.

Timbre Winds

On timbre winds I take flight
High above the clouds I go
Soaring high into the sky
No fear of what's below
Higher now with wind I fly
Not looking back from whence I came
The gentle drafts do lift me high
And I fly higher yet again
Into the stars to heavens; gate
With timbre winds I gently glide
On thermal drafts this flight I take
Will lead me to your side
I perch on top of heavens gate
As timbre winds blow by
So patiently I do wait
I let out a mournful cry
He hears my call and turns around
A hand to me he lends
I then take flight without a sound
On silent wing with timbre winds

Snowy Owl Spirit

Just Ride Part Three

There was excitement threading among the Midnight Wagons at the rise of the central fire. The packs were filled for the journey with portions of jerky to chew on and botas of water or in Duran's case ... paga. If that man ever took a sip of water he would probably get drunk and pass out. We had enough small items to make some good trades. It was going to be an interesting trip, little did we know at the time just how interesting.

Once we could see the line of dweller wagons in front of us, Duran and Sage gave signal for the women to remain back a little. Never know what silly outsiders will do and they had no intentions of any of us getting hurt. We had merely come for some trade, I swear that was all we had in mind ... honestly. Petra and I watched as the men approached to meet the first of the wagons. From the distance it all seemed to go well, those nods and pointings that men do when posturing for each other. Then it seemed everything went into slow motion. It wasn't our tunnel vision that created the scene but the dwellers themselves moving slowly. Hands began to reach in the air and each of them slipped off the buckboards. Sage gave the signal for the rest of us to approach. I would never have believed it if I hadn't witnessed it with my own two eyes. The caravan was surrendering everything they had as long as the women could go free and they could all leave safely. They were literally begging for the Tuchuk men to please .. please take all that they had. I think we all blinked a few times and decided to give the dwellers what they asked. We took what they had and watched as they scurried into the openness of the plains, unarmed, without supplies and on foot. I almost laughed remembering a story I had told Fonce once about the Celts and how they won battles much the same way.

Duran shrugged and Sage finally fell off his kaiila laughing when they were all well out of sight. Petra, Marnus and I took reins on the bosk and turned the wagons back toward the harigga and I finally leaned out to ask Duran what the &^%$ had just happened. He lifted a brow without ever looking at me to answer ... just ride woman ...shut up and just ride.

During the journey back I pondered the many things that had swirled in my head, Tarra's neglected advise, the strain in the friendship with Cana, Ba'atar, the talks with Ramza, the talks with Kam, that urgent feel of wanting to be somewhere I wasn't, that feeling of anxiety that didn't go away. I'd watched how fear had made a simple situation become a nightmare for those that gave into it. The dwellers had reacted to their fears not the unassuming arrival of the Tuchuk. Hadn't I been doing the same thing in different ways.

It all came into wonderfully crystal clear focus when I looked up to see the myriad of multi-colored wagons stretched out in front of us once more. I relaxed and realized that right now, here was where I belonged and no, I would not fear that it wasn't.

Just Ride Part Two

The next day I went to find the commander. There were too many things running through my head to leave swirling in elliptical spirals. So many of these things I would speak to my guardian about but no one had seen him for some time. Who would have thought I would be willing and actually eager to talk with Fonce? I was or would be but it would have to be Kam that bore the brunt of a young woman's confusion. I figured it would be a good excuse to start with the plans for the ride to the meadow. Now I know better than to mess with Kam and try to hash words with him and got a good reminder of not to. Yes, he thought it would be fine for Ramza and I to go for a ride and yes, he saw no harm in going with Duran and Sage to the caravan. I could bring back whatever we found.

I was the one that exposed the jugular and the predator pounced in thirstily. I worry. Those that know me know I am compulsive at it but it was the elder that slit that wide open to find what was inside of it ... I was worried ... about ... it all came flooding out as if he had hit an artery ... whether my coming to the tribe had not been a good thing. Adapting to the superstitions of the Tribe perhaps I was the reason for all of the hardships that had been experienced in the past few seasons. Did I feel that way as a free person or all together and how did I come to this way of thinking? Now that caught me off guard as it often does when you expose light into the shadowy recesses of darkness You could almost hear the screeching, scritching of creepy crawlies run scattering back to where they came from.

I tripped all over my female logic trying to explain about sleepless nights and having a .. feeling then launched right into how Tribe was important to me and that I wanted only what was best for my people even if that meant I wasn't good for them, then maybe I should ... It had sounded good in my head but saying it all out loud it made no sense whatsoever. Told you that self pity does not look good on me, didn't I? As if he were untangling threads of an impossible knot, he began to draw out each point away from the others. My eyes were open now to a whole new world and still I couldn't digest it. Well true but I would not return to a collar. I did not have it within me, I am quiet spoken much too often for my own good but I was not a slave at heart. There was that mask without visible emotion when he simply said .. and still you are unsure of yourself. Could I argue that? Probably not but ... I did.

I had learned a great deal in the past seasons and knew I had much more to learn. Whatever courage I was managing to screw upward from the depths was left deflated when he lay a half question, half statement out ... that now I knew the difference between being a slave and a free woman. I wanted to scream at him .. dammit I was betrayed, I was lied to, the guidelines of the tribe had been violated just as I had been when a warrior grabbed me .. me ... a prospect at the time ... and raped a kiss from me, illiciting emotions that I had not wanted to give in the beginning. I wanted to cry out of the injustices of not having known it wasn't proper and my actions covered and given absolution but now .. now dammit .. I was the one having to face all that had transpired and be held for my actions ... mine and no one else. Instead it was more a quiet confession than a volatile confidence .. yes .. I knew the differences.

Well that had not gone as I wanted it, to be sure. Did I want him to be wrong? Did I want to manipulate him into saying all the things I wanted to hear? No, but I wanted to be right. I just wasn't.

I'm female without a doubt. When I left him, I was angry. I was hurt. I was frustrated to no end but I was grateful that he had given me many things to think about. Revelation of what he had meant would come with time but for now he dismissed me to go and prepare.

At the time I had thought he was talking about the ride.