Duck Lake blue heron

He clung to it.  She could see that he refused to comprehend a world that might change.  Nothing was forever.  Perhaps he had never been tested, but she knew better than to trust in forces outside of her own control.  The world was only ever change.

She had a choice.  If Redd pushed, she might see how he cracked, but she did not think he held a deeper answer.  The parallel, however, lay too close to ignore.  Even if nothing was gained, she would speak as she felt was needed.

In the rise, we built our home around Wealda.  She was forever.  Then she was gone.  Redd stood, stepping away from the kill, but no closer to him.  He had no obligation to hear this advice.  It fell with her.  We should have been enough, more than that, but we weren’t.  I could not claim what would always be hers.  

Saatsine drives the caribou.  It’s strength should be it’s own.  There it was.  The feeling of a line, one she perhaps crossed now, or perhaps crossed a few statements ago.  She could not tell.

She had no place to come here and tell him how to guide his pack, yet if she could not learn from the past, then there was little meaning in having suffered it.  What would he do when questioned?  And how easily threatened was his claim?

She held no ambition.  But the strength of a pack was its leader, and she had learned intimately the insecurity that destroyed her own from within.  She did not sense this insecurity in him.  It was the reason she trusted him from the start, but also the reason she watched carefully now.  He was a man who she could not read.