by Sandra Beckmeier

A group of tribe members were sitting leg-locked around a small fire, with nothing between them but flames. There were unspoken things in the fire, myths, truths, treadmills and stories of mischief. It was time for rest. Stories were never a challenge, but tonight they were a bit challenged by the stories one boy would tell.

He challenged them by the smart stories, the ones which were supposed to lead them, and when they didn't it was pretty clear what was happening, for a time.

Even at nine years old he felt a sense of responsibility for what no one ever really knew, but at least he knew that people would listen and he knew they would listen intently. I mean, he was walking for clouds? They would followed him because he seemed friendly, near, silent, confused.

That day was the death and the birth of something I suppose. There was a lost sense of meaning, the ingrained beginning of true learning, and the setting a perfect place for wonder and perfection. It is in particular regions where you are kind of lost that you actually see things and hear things of truth. Truth is loud.

There was no calm, no food, no water, nothing but the failure of a boy pretending to be a hunter and the victory of a forest, a place not exactly wise to venture by your lonesome. Still, the one who led was the one who lost and everyone else followed beside just to see how one might fail.

He appreciated these things and shared them with the world around him, and nothing else mattered much to him. Literally, nothing. He liked to sit still and listen to his father?s voice, a storyteller who often told other people what was told to him, and in that world, he knew one day a certain amount of respect would come before him and he wouldn't have to be confrontational, far-reaching or grown-up. He could be a boy. It made sense.

The tribe sat in exhaustion, tired that the boy wanted so much to be the guide and not wanting to give him honor that he didn't deserve, watching him laughing as his sister dropped to the ground picking up pieces of dry earth. He was for a time silent without an explanation or even a word. "The trees are lost!" he said from nowhere of nothing, "the wind doesn't speak in volumes to me because too many people had their words and their say!" What meant something to Tiko that day meant nothing to his sister who sat with silence.

As the forest seemed to crowd around him at that very moment a spirit appeared. He was relieved to be sound when he saw for himself, and said, "How great the righteousness you have demonstrated along with demonstrating principles of a lofty sort!" In the moment with the spirit, a right-minded hero, Tiko, stood. He immediately uttered a few small words as honorings, acknowledging a matter in his heart. His sister began to immitate him, curling her hands under her skirt, as another curled into a cocoon under a hand-woven blanket denying his own passion for spirits who spoke so kindly to Tiko, reminding him of his own high-mindedness. The spirit was of human form, with long whiskers, full arms and legs and bright yellow eyes glowing like a jewel in the darkness. The boy could only share at the sky in shock, praising, and said, "Yes, I am a man with much poetry with little in mind." He pissed on himself, cried and walked away.

"Yes," Tiko said. The soft slow smoke of cinder kept the fire low enough that it could rekindle itself.