I go to the Wellspring. I am full of splinters. Shrapnel. “Why do I always get so full of splinters?”

She applies leaches to suck the splinters out. I sink down limp and baggy.

“I would like to be a story teller.” A whispered confession. “I would like to meet a story teller, here, to guide me.”

There is the grandmother, rocking and laughing. Of course she is a story teller. Of course she is.

“Grandmother, I’m having trouble keeping my skin on my bones.”

“Why bother?”

“You mean I should just–”

“Yes. Just let it go. Why not? See what happens.”

I let it go, all of it, skin and bones. I dissolve away. All that remains is the ache of my heart. There is a magnetism to the ache, a coal black lump; draws weight to itself.

Night Hawk comes. He picks up the lump and holds it tender between his hands. Then he takes off running. He runs and runs through the bright desert to the cool of Lily’s spring. Lily isn’t there, she’s gone exploring. The spring bubbles on without her. Night Hawk holds the black lump of me in the waterflow. He climbs into the creak bed himself. He lies down and lets the water flow over him, holding the lump of me on his chest, the both of us submerged. The black dissolves away leaving a small golden flame.

I whisper to NH, “I’m such a tiny thing.”

“Enough,” he says, “to light the world.”

I lift him out of the stream bed. I am full length again, embodied in white, pale and flowing. We lie down together beside the stream. He wraps me in his dark cloak of expansion. We breathe together.

In a bit, I begin to fret. “Shouldn’t I be gearing up to do something?”

“No. Rest now.”

“How long before I can make things happen again?”

“We will rest until we are rested.”

And so I abide there with him. Resting still. And will so remain until the work of rest is done.

OOO