Bridges

He leaned into kiss her, a final gesture of tenderness, holding her brown weathered face in his two hands. Her face was etched with deep furrows; a trail for her tears to follow that had been formed by the recent years of struggle that marked her passage. The astonishment at her circumstances had, over time, dissolved into anger, then into fear, and ultimately taken their toll on her tired, worn body and soul. Now hunched down near the open fire, her dim eyes beheld ghostly images of loved ones, ancestors who had gone on before, rising in the curls of smoke and sparks that circled in a high column above her head then disappearing into the dusk. First, there had been the assault on her people and then the decimation of their traditions and very culture. They were driven from their homelands and forced- marched out into the desolate prairie in the late fall of the year, with few of their own possessions and scant food provisions. He was now dead, her dear mate, Nahan. They had left him strapped to a litter in the dry ravine of an ancient riverbed just two days past where, at sunrise, they had torched his pyre and then moved on. The memory of his last kiss would linger in her mind, brushing her cheeks in the soft whisper of the rushing wind never seen, only felt. The old woman, Awkeen, now sat alone, separated from the other migrants making their beds among the sage brush and wild cedar. As she peered into the setting sun, she clutched dried prairie grass in her bent, gnarled hand and began to rock and sing in low, haunting murmurs as she fanned the flames of her fire and called on the great spirit of creation to swoop down on majestic eagle wings and carry her away to the place of rest, beyond the moon and stars, to the land of no sorrows. From Legends and Legacy