Verdigris Ravine This one Waits

S'ari laughed. Yes, yes, she said. Learn motherhood from S'ari--S'ari, who has never been a mother herself. Well. We will see, yes? Nerves made dust devils in her stomach, twisting and turning. S'ari... only hopes that her children like her. That they grow up well. It was not in her nature to be nervous, to be afraid, least of all for herself. But this fear was tied to little sunlings--to beings that she could hurt if she messed it all up.

She looked away from her cousin, out towards the heart of the desert. Desert winds, guide me, she murmured. Sun and moon and stars, light my path. She used me and my, to show how serious was her prayer, for the Tribe rarely, if ever, used first-person pronouns. It differentiated themselves from the rest of the Tribe, which was a very big deal--to become individual among the rest.