Work Text:
Even in darkness, even in stillness, even before breath and air: never loneliness. Never alone.
Presence, always. Warmth. Motion. Senses muffled, but present. Then, a sound that breaks the silence—a voice. Speaking. Speech-voice, pattern-voice, the sound of something more than self.
Never alone.
Presence in the sound of the rise and fall. Love in the sense of the up and down. Connection in the knowing, expanding outwards; knowing outwards, expanding inwards. Self, and other.
Outside, changing. A voice, and a voice, and many voices. Oh! Stillness now. But not alone. Never alone. Always changing. The voices change. Other sounds: twining, pulsing rhythm, motion—a sense of place, of position! Resonating. The self resonates with it: heartbeat, drumbeat, are one, are many.
Bodies in a great space. The weight of limbs on ground and limbs on drums, the thin-stretched-tight which echoes with heart-sound. Bodies, weaving, around and around and around. It forms a shape. It forms a shape! Yearning, yearning. So beautiful, so rapturing, to follow it. Pattern-music, pattern-movement; to follow it, and know it, and find out how it is done. The pattern is shaped. Yes. Shaping, it shapes the self.
The self is knowing. Connection is knowing the self. Connection is—
A hand on shell. Contact, brightly felt. Pattern-voice says: These are your people. This is your village. This is your home.
Oh...
Oh.
Yes. Even before life: never loneliness, never alone. The self is more than self.
The voices outside are always changing. Patterns never-ending. Voices that are old, and singing (love in the sound of the rise and fall), voices that are young, and speaking (love in the sound of the up and down). Voices of men speaking of the sea (salt taste air, wind spray face), voices of women speaking of the land (fire in the hearth, food bitter-raw and sweet-cooked, harvest green and golden, life and birth and death and the land). The cadence of the voices change! Here is home-talk, here is another-talk. Other-talk is known because voices falter, stumble, pattern breaking—oh, but then comes laughter. Laughter! Oh, bright thrilling laughter, sometimes loud and sometimes quiet, always a sense of connection: the pattern, re-forming. Laughter is always good.
Yearning.
The outside expands. Things become known. The smell of food, the sense of eating to fill. The wake and sleep, the sense of light and dark. Warmth of fire, warmth of smiles. An elder sings of the way things are done, passed from hand to hand to hand to hand to now. Generations pass like blood in veins like water in tides. Like patterns. The feel of new earth under hand/under talons. The slime of sea-things. Foam-spray on wings outstretched, the world unfurling underneath, like cloth unrolled to show for pride of weaving.
Yearning...
And the inside quickens. Yes. Expanding outwards, knowing inwards: a heart that beats, blood that flows. The twitch of claws and tail. Tighten jaw, bite of teeth. Stretch, yes, press wings against the shell. The egg tooth on the tip of the nose presses against a membrane—pop!—and one breath drawn, the first breath. Ahh. The self is inside the shell. More than self is outside the shell—life is outside the shell! Knowing the outside is changing the inside, the self inside is being changed by more than self outside.
Yearning! Self is inside the shell. Life is inside the shell. But more than self is outside the shell? Then, life is outside the shell!
So break the shell!
Crack the egg tooth against its hardness! Take that one breath and sing, sound the voice, with strength of effort! Strain, scratch, claws scrabbling, against all that stands between inside and outside! The self and the more than self will not be separate!
Outside, the people/village/home respond. Drums beat, women chant. Vigor is renewed—the rhythm is right, deep and even, each beat the same as each strain against the shell. The village shares strength with the struggle. It is connection, it is calling! The outside is calling! Life which is more than self is calling!
A hole in the shell. At last, a breath of fresh air! Oh, so this is the smell of tobacco, and juniper, the smoke hot in the air, breath exchanged with the breaths of people. Dreams from songs do not compare.
Even with renewed strength, even knowing the struggle is shared with people, it is still tiring, all-consuming tiring. Sometimes the work seems impossible. So much effort that time fades and awareness clouds. Maybe the shell will never be broken. Perhaps it is better to give up.
But no. Never! The drums never stop their steady sound, and neither shall struggle. Life is outside! Peck, and scratch, and break the shell, and go outside to meet the more than self!
Push! the drums sing without singing.
One last piece falls away, and the shell becomes weak. Yes.
Push!
The shell yields. Its halves fall apart.
Push!
Outside!
Take a breath, panting, a breath and then another breath. Ahh...
Light! And air! How exciting. Shake what remains of the old shell off. It is time to move, and see.
These are faces, eyes and mouth and other features, of the people of the village. At once so strange, and so achingly familiar. These are the people who sang, and spoke, and chanted. These were the hands that touched, the faces of the ones who laughed. There are the elders who told stories, of Crow and the lands west of the sunset, there are the young ones who sang the clapping songs. Presence, connection, love.
And of all the faces of people, which was the pattern-voice, the one that shaped most the self in the egg? Where is the self more than self?
And there in the front of the gathered people, brown and wide-open in the face of a new woman. Eyes meet eyes.
It's you!
Drumbeat heartbeat sounding as it always did, though the thin-stretched-tight skins have fallen silent. But your heart beats as it used to, that morning when change began, when the pattern began, knowing, known, loved. Now, change: the hearts beat in time. You have done the shaping, been shaped, and this is the result. These are our people. This is our love, fierce and bright. This is the self and the more than self. Now, together, open and known to each other. Connected forever. Look at the self, and say what you know!
Her name is Kasaqua!
Yes! I am Kasaqua!
And you are my person. Anequs. I feel the heat of your body, the strength of your self under my claws, my nose and cheeks and flanks and tail as I curl in your lap. You are filled with a gentle warmth, tender and loving, for me, for us, for we-this-home. And it does not diminish your strength. That is why I have chosen you! I know you know my joy and my fighting spirit alike. I know that you would struggle to break from the hard shells binding you, for the sake of a beautiful world, just as I did. Under the sound of the gathered people roaring , we two understand each other better than any others.
I will follow you for all our lives. You will teach me how to dance. You are fiercest of will, steadiest in strength, and the beat of your being echoes in my heart. Just as mine does in yours.
I am of you, and you are of me.
Anequs! You are filled with wonder at the knowledge of me. And that is good. But more importantly... you know that I am hungry. Feed me! Yes, more of the mussels, their salty sea shells, and the turkey, their cracking bones full of food for my bones. Feed me things good and new. Feed me the world around us. I am hungry! You know my hunger best, so feed me, Anequs. Know me, love me, teach me, and through every change in the shape of the world, I will follow you for the rest of our lives.