A New Place, A New Way

My time in Zuni is almost up. Two more weeks and I'll be going back to stay with my brother for a bit until I ride a train Northwest. This desert I'll miss sorely.

The beautiful swallows have built a nest at the corner of the house, which the cat, Luna, watches with predatory constance on the window sill, her tail swishing in violent bursts.

Rains come in huge, quenching drops from heavy thunderclouds riding the blue like dark chariots.

Bulwarks of red striped sandstone, millions of years old, rise on either side of the valley. Sky riders have passage on rainbows that arc into the valley at nearly every rain.

Dawn turns the plains at the feet of the mesas into molten gold, the near-white grasses shimmering with a brightness that nears pain, like the true form of a god.

The warbles of great elder ravens can be heard amongst the pine and juniper, whose language is more ancient than the trees and stature is as tall as a human child. They fly as strong as kestrels and hawks, their wings nearly as wide as a human is tall.

Lizards and snakes scurry across the pink sand, through gnarled shrubs, scraggly grasses and spiked cacti.

And finally, after dusk is the blackness, the jet of galactic dust clouds even blacker than the sky itself, and the stars that sparkle on the night waters. Stars that cannot be seen under the electric web of the city. Stars which I will return to, first to see again with these eyes, then to greet me when the Valkyries take me to their halls...

Until then, I will walk through the streets of a city on the edge of the Empire, to gather my strength and will, gather my knowledge and skill, gather my allies and return to the hills with a band of heathen queers to live the way we choose, to live with the hills instead of off of them, despite the calls and comforts of the Imperial Cities...