[Fiction] The defiance of Black Coyote

[Wakinyan]

Dec, 28 2016

In the days since he had been home he had not slept that much. Though he had spent much time wrapped around his wife watching her sleep. Keeping her warm inside their cozy home. So placated he was in the feeling that the small chipmunk that crawled over him in the night did not annoy him like it once would have.

He had been home with her for over a week and had not told anyone else he had returned. No Opnet posts, phone calls to tina or anyone else. Though he was sure the Wind City Knights knew he was back the chip in his jaw probably showed up on their systems the moment he had came home. Endeavor likely knew as well, it was not that she was nosy but he knew she tried to keep track of her friends and using the Opnet device she crafted for him was also accepting that she would keep tabs on him.

Still things had been very calm and quiet the snow piled up outside but that did not matter inside the warmth of the cave. Wakinyan drifted through the dreams of his wife as she slept. Soaring together upon the currents of her mind. He kept the slight worry of their bond. He couldn't blame her for feeling the way she did. Since becoming husband and wife over a year ago he had spent more time away from her than with her. Her developing a reaction to that did not come as a suprise to him but it was something he would have to learn to overcome.

Three days later the couple went for their first flight together in months. Soaring on thermals he conjured, drifting above the snow covered landscape below them. He might thought it selfish to be so consumed with her but he knew that these days would not last forever and so he cherished them all the more. Soon enough the world would know he was back. By flying overthe Pine Ridge he was telling his people he had returned and that meant his duties would soon call on him again.

Sure enough almost as soon as he turned on his Opnet device that evening a tsunami of messages awaited him. Some from friends asking after him. Reporters with various invasive questions and then their were the prayers and thank yous. His people thanking him for returning offering their prayers. He took the time to answer as many as he could but their were more than he could answer. As he browsed the mail one caught his eye one like he had received before.

Wounded Knee 127th anniversary ceremony

Wounded Knee Creek, A place he had been to when he was young. Granddad took him to the ceremony when he was nine. His mind dwelled on the sadness of the place and how it permiated his memory. He had recieved invitations to it since his new life begain but he avoided it for a reason. He saw the dead, the past was something for him to see. He had always been scared to look at what he would see when he would go to that place so he avoided it like a child would a graveyard.

Wakinyan shut off the Opnet device and looked across the main room of his home. Ptesan-Wi was carefully working on her beautiful white ceremonial skins. With a sentence that could only be born from two people aprivy to one anothers thoughts he stated. "I've put this off long enough."

[Ptesan-Wi]

The Lakota woman paused her work - rebeading an edge that had torn slightly in cleaning - to smile up at her mate. "Yes, yes you have. Both of us have, really."

Ptesan-Wi's change of demeanour from a week before had proven to be something more than a flash in the pan. No, the woman who had once been Melinda Harris, who had changed her name first to hide, then her body and name again to better fit her new life, had now changed her mind as well. Whoever this had been been before, it was now the White Buffalo Calf Woman that lived beside Wakinyan... and she was intent on keeping the promise of the new age she had given to the elder chiefs of the People the previous summer.

She stood, and the aura of the young goddess gently crept into life, her eyes going to a glowing blue amid her soft light as she stepped over to to face her husband. "It is time for you and I to make the new shape of things clear by remembering this old loss... and by promising that it can never happen again."

[Wakinyan]

Dec, 29 2016

The morning of the memorial was warmer causing the gray sky to rain instead of snow. It did not feel right to him so with a thought Wakinyan told the sky to snow and it did so. He preened himself casually as he awaited for his wife to join him outside for their flight to the ceremony. When she did come out in her ceremonial white dress and furred cloak he stopped prying loose the errant feather and could not help but stare. Wrapped within her fur with a serene face she watched him with her beautiful radiant eyes. The tone of her face and the long black braids spilling down her back contrasted the pure white of her ceremonial skins and furs.

Leaning down to aid her atop his large back Wakinyan could not help but nuzzle her slightly as she climbed aboard. "Day ghee lah eed ah Tawicu." The air around the griffin rumbled in a content pitch as she settled into the familiar crook between his shoulder blades.

In a moment they were in the sky, where he tended toward a violent lifting into the sky today the wind seemed to gather beneath his wings and carry him off the mountain that was his home like a leaf on a gentle autumn breeze. Warm air drifted over them as the giant Nova headed south east back toward the Pine Ridge reservation and toward the Wounded Knee.

[Ptesan-Wi]

The two had been in the air for some time before Wakinyan noticed something.

"Tawicu," he asked, "shouldn't you conserve your anti-quantum?"

It was only then that Ptesan-Wi really noticed that the soft glow that she wore had not diminished from when she had first donned it after waking that morning... and yet, neither had her reserves of whatever strange energy powered her not-quantum abilities.

"I'm not using any power, mihinga ki. Perhaps..." she considered, then came to a conclusion. "...perhaps it is simply a part of me now; my due, as the White Buffalo Calf Woman." A broad smile beamed across her face. "It would seem that this truly is the time and place for my return to the world, Wakinyan. Let us hurry; the People await their gods, and we should not keep them waiting."

[Wakinyan]

Wakinyan turned his large head back to the sky before them. Inside his mind worked over the implication of her display. Her newfound comfort in her divinity, the continuos display of her power, her be forced to do something she might not have ever done before. He held the thought from her mind but he considered for the briefest of moments. Taint.. Could she even develop it? Her mind seemed different and there were the eyes beautiful and haunting. Wakinyan roughly put it from his mind. She had accepted every one of his quantum quirks. Every feather and failing. She forgave the dalliances of his appetite; he would not dwell on her simply becoming more comfortable and accepting of her roll with the people. Still as they neared wounded knee creek Wakinyan felt something in his chest and realized he would miss the kind meek girl she had once been that had asked him to carry her away so long ago.

Wakinyan mind flowed from thoughts of his lover to that of the scene below him. A few hundred people gathered around the small wooden church whose cross rose high in the air and he could not help but to be offended by it. Thankfully no press had arrived, if he had let people know sooner he would have been here that would have no doubt changed. His eyes took in the faces of his people as he descended from high in the sky and realized not all that watched him were alive. He shuddered slightly as the eyes of the past and present both watched him descend to the earth. Taking strength from the presence on his back the griffin dipped his hid legs letting them touchdown then support the rest of his body as he came to rest a short distance from the gathering. The faces of sadness and hope mixed into the crowd. The expectation of a people fell upon him and the woman in white who slide easily down his shoulder. The crunch of snow under his wide paws was the only real sound in the air.

[Wakinyan]

Murmurs were as loud and clear to him as if they spoke through bullhorns. They are here the messengers of Wakan Tanka had arrived Ptesan Wi made her way through the crowd toward the front of the cemetary, no, the mass grave that was the final resting place of the ghost dancers who did nothing more than wanted to live their lives by their own terms.

Wakinyan's beast stirred at this. It was so easy to get angry because of the injustice of the event. The ghosts that looked upon him however quelled the bloodlust from whipping into the whirlwind that so often got him into trouble. He was here to lead the people into a new age not a path to a new war that they could not win. Wisdom seemed to find a purchase inside the furious lightning of the eyes of the thunderbird.

The crowd parted and came together behind them until they reached the gate to the grave. They turned to face their people and Wakinyan looked down at his wife seeing if she wished to speak first but finding her willing to say what he needed to the great griffin mantled his wings and raised his large majestic head to look upon those gathered around both the living and the dead (which only he could see).

"We come to remember. Remember those who were lost and pay honor to them." Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the large white cross that loomed down from the top of the small church near the graveyard. "This was the end of our world, the final act of dying culture that had to be brushed aside because another culture had to manifest their destiny to own this land."

Wakinyan's wings slowly returned to his sides tucking in place. "But it was not the end. For over a century since our families have survived. Despite the poverty, the alcohol and a country that cared little about what happened inside the land they had so generously given us. Our people carried on, we gave our sons to their wars because they became our wars, because this country is our country."

He went silent for a moment letting his words process, unconsciously the great Nova brushed against his wife's back her presence supporting him as he pressed on. "Some would believe or hope that I am the answer to the Ghost Dance. That I will sweep the White Man back to where they came." His eyes grew somber and soft as he continued. "That is not what I am here to do. What we are here to do." He says gesturing to his wife. "Is bring back our great culture and way of life. Not just for Pine Ridge or the Sioux but all tribes. A way to the future while.." The griffin looks at the beautiful woman in white next to him. "..Bringing our past strength back to us so those who died here know that their people will live on."

[Ptesan-Wi]

"When I returned to you," Ptesan-Wi said as she stepped forward, "I told you that this is the dawn of the Fifth World, the Age of Illumination, the age when the People walk upright and once again remember their true relationship with Wakan Tanka. I told you that it is time for the People to awaken, and for the Earth to be reborn."

She rose up into the air, standing upon the bent-wood and leather disk upon which she had stepped only a moment before. "But these things I do not give to you. You must earn them! You, the People, must awaken and remember that you are the People! Those who died on this sacred ground knew who they were... but for over a hundred years, the People have lived in their shadow. Unless you step out from that shadow and stand under the blue sky with your own two legs, you cannot walk into the Fifth World.

"Far too many have been lost to things other than wasicu bullets. Lost to the bottom of poisoned bottles, lost to hunger in the midst of a healthy land, lost to ways not their own, lost to despair within their hearts. It is time for you to all find yourselves, to find each other, and once more know the warmth of the sun as you stand upon the earth, tall and proud once again!"

[Ptesan-Wi]

As Ptesan-Wi spoke, her mind reached outward, seeking those of the People. Not just here, not just at Pine Ridge, not even just in the ancient Sioux lands. No, she sought to spread her message throughout the People, regardless of tribe, to touch their hearts wherever they dwelt beneath the open sky. She pushed her thoughts outward, reaching a young Eskimo boy in Alaska, warming the heart of an old Peruvian woman in Lima.

Sweat dripped from her glowing brow, and Wakinyan could see that she was locked in a struggle of some sort. And then, the struggle ended, and he could see clarity and peace wash across her features. Ptesan-Wi realized, even as her mind blossomed, that she had reached a new plateau, one that even her mate, in all of his might, had not yet achieved. She was as Timeslip in all of her cosmic glory, as Procyon in his shining perfection; she had taken that elusive "step above", albeit in the way of her own vanishingly small race. Teras had shown her the path, and Ptesan-Wi was now truly a Marvel of the People.

[Wakinyan]

He remained silent in majestic glory behind his wife as she spoke. The words that were spoken a pact, one that both were giving their lives to. The conflict it would generate was such a small price to pay to grasp a future in which their people could thrive and stand proudly once more.

As the link between them seemed to strengthen the Thunderbird watched his wife as her mind seemed to open like a flower on a spring day, washing out over the crowd and beyond. He chuckled slightly to himself as he realized that while he was the messenger of Wakan Tanka she was the one spreading the message. He brought her to them and he was sure his job was not yet done.

The mood became energized, people smiled and elders nodded. The ghosts mingled in the crowd seemed to change as well. Their sad countance changed to a more approving expression in his spirit eyes. As the crowd began to mingle in the wake of the rousing speeches Wakinyan nudged his wife lovingly letting the link tell her of his love and approval without the need for words.

A minute later he was in the graveyard as alone as he could be considering the crowds nearby. He had wandered in this direction because of the lone figure. A ghost of a younger man with a robe wrapped around him to keep him warm. "Hau." Wakinyan rumbled quietly as he came up to the man the long dark hair whipped around the man as he considered the gigantic creature in front of him. "Hau Wakinyan." He responded. Wakinyan knew who this was, his name was Black Coyote, he was not even sure how he knew that but his granddad had told him he was the first to fall on that day.

"Ancestor, why had you not given up your gun to the Long Knives? " He needed to hear him speak it. He needed to be sure that the path he was going to walk with his wife and people was worth it no matter the cost.

"It was mine. I had bought it, they had no right to take it from me."

And that was enough. Wakinyan nodded, it was the defiance that would help them. Returning the pride and power they were bringing to his people was worth everything. It was something worth fighting for, worth dying for. Wakinyan nodded to the spirit respectfully and turned back to the living.