Field Notes: RhyDin December 27, 2006

Zeke. I wish you were here with me. I think RhyDin would capture your fancy. I also think you would be able to make more sense out of it than I can.

If you are reading this from your place besides the Mother and Father while you await their assignment of a new task for you, do not take these next few words as written in anger. They stem from my confusion, for lack of a better expression. You did not prepare me for this.

I know you warned me over and over again that the ease with which I feel the world in Myobi would be gone once I crossed the Phoenix Point but I never imagined it would be this difficult. I did not know I could take the simple task of differentiating between animal and human for granted.

In the jungles surrounding The Edge, I never questioned whether I saw a panther or a person. And yet tonight, standing in one of their caf's, or inns as they call it, I could feel and see the presence of both in a creature-person. Maybe that isn't the most scientific of terms but I don't know what else to call it.

It overwhelms me, all these unfamiliar breeds and races running rampant all over the place. It makes it hard to know who to trust.

I have high hopes that the Refuge will be embraced by the people, creature-people, and other creatures of this city though. Jislaaik! Tonight I saw several dragons and not a single protest from the townspeople. One benefit of being in the center of so many races is that people aren't fazed by much. Icer, the dragon I spoke with, did not need to mask what she was saying. It's very freeing to not have to explain that I am in fact conversing with an animal (is it right to call dragons animals" You never said). She let me hold one of her hatchlings and I even made out a bit of what he was chirping which surprised me.

I met her 'sister". But her sister looked human enough to me. They seemed to get along so I suppose it's all right even if I don't understand.

As for the people...well, I see now why you wanted me to spend more time out amongst the villagers at home, meeting people outside the Tribe. It's hang of a difficult for me to know how to act around them. They too are complicated, beyond what I can sense. They are not honest and they can deceive more than the wolf ever did in those old tales my grade school teacher read us.

The ones I've met so far, I guess they're nice" I don't know, maybe that's how you do it here. I don't think I'd be nice to me if I met me without knowing me (does that even make sense" You get it I'm sure, you always did). Tomas says it's important for me to try and be good with people, especially once we get the Refuge open because that's how we'll get funding. For the good of our animals, I will make an effort. Or try to make an effort.

Speaking of...I'm working on having Wally locate several Atlas Bears in the mountains outside of The Edge. We got a lead and hopefully we will find them before...they...do. So far I don't think they know where we're bringing everyone to " I plan on keeping it that way.

Haven't made any headway yet about where to get weapons in mass supplies but you always did advocate patience. If you feel the need to point me in the right direction like a good umoya, or just to come and say "hey?, I will keep my eyes open for you and sing your name across the plattelands.

Forever your indodakazi and inkosana, Maeve.

Field Notes: RhyDin January 2, 2007

Things went surprisingly well and though I should be elated at making progress, I am filled with uvalo and worry.

I found a potential contact to help mount our largest attack on the Burning Shadows yet. It will take time to gather all we need, but it's a start. But I am still not at ease with the task at hand.

In my heart I feel that we will never stop all of them from wrecking the lush Myobian wilds in their pursuit of the coin. True, there are those who have blatantly pooled their resources together to corner various sectors of the black market where killing the animals are concerned. Poachers are the scum of the world.

But do they deserve to die at our hands"

At best, we will pick off the biggest organizations of ithunzibasa, maybe deter others from taking up the "trade". But we will never purge the homeland of all of them. And who are we to decide"

Oh ubaba, my dear Zeke. You've always told me my need to question and evaluate in an endless cycle is why you had faith in the decisions I would make. If only I had understood you meant to leave me to make them on my own.

The logic is faulty. Here we are, angered at those who cause death because of their illegal dealings and how do we retaliate" We pursue our own illegal dealings to bring about their deaths.

I wonder if I wear two faces without the right. Then I remember how it felt when we came across the herd of elephants with their heads blown off, murdered to sell their meat en masse to foreign markets. It is not wrong for people to eat meat, but to take it so viciously, and in such large numbers with that type of brutality towards an animal not meant for consumption....I still wake with night sweats now and again when I remember the sight, let alone the feeling. My soul has never felt so cold.

I want revenge. More importantly, I want restoration. The Myobi the Mother and Father created is no longer in balance. Hopefully one day it will be safe to bring the animals we are nurturing here home. It may not happen in my lifetime.

I want these things and though it is on my shoulders to oversee the plans and protect our animals, it is not my role to fight in the fields. I am sending out my brus to kill and be killed from the safety of these walls. I will never shoot any of the guns we will order and smuggle.

Tomas reassures me it is not my place, that the loss of the Tribe's only eng"iti chimm would be a greater blow to the cause. In truth, I do not want to learn more about the weapons than I already do. That may change the harder it gets to cleanse the blood of my brothers from my hands.

I am not good at these plans. Stele essentially said I was bringing suspicion to myself by asking so openly for my supplies. I have to be more careful. Everything I think I know I find out I don't " why wouldn't he take the money' I can make sense of transactions motivated by money, but dinner" Eish. I am in way over my head.

Maybe though he will have an idea of how I can sneak these items through the Point so that they do not draw attention once they reach the other side of the portal. I met one man who said he might know a shipper. Of course, I didn't tell him what I wanted to ship ? it's not an easy topic to broach. The woman with him, Lydia I think her name was, got along with Kaz and Kita so she must be all right. One foot in front of another, as they say. I will worry about shipping more when I need to.

They also say when you want peace, prepare for war. The words ring loud and true. They give me a headache.

January 13, 2007

Zeke used to teach that we learn about ourselves by looking at the world outside. I find that I am learning more and more by simply observing people here in RhyDin.

Pretty befok, hey' I never thought I'd learn from my own kind outside of the Tribe.

Last night I came across a man who looked (and sounded) rather ill. Not confined to a deathbed ill, but just not right. Too skinny. Coughing. For some reason I felt possessed to talk to him, maybe it was the cat's curiosity getting the better of me. He said he had can-ser. I didn't know the word but I asked Gabe and he told me that was the same as what we call umhlaza.

This man, he said he was dying. Zeke died of umhlaza. He never told us he had it but I think he knew all along. Why else would he have taken such care to plan for the rest of us to come here?

Tears shed for the dead, Zeke said those were a waste. Disease is a natural progression of life, to keep the scales even. Only when death is forced upon us in numbers too large to be ordained, then is it right to mourn, to avenge. So he says. For the most part I believe him, though I did not want to part with my ubaba anymore than the rest of my brus.

There must be such freedom in knowing when death will meet you. A real deadline to work towards.

It is the not knowing that frightens me.

April 20, 2007

I was not charfing when I said this writing was not my strength.

The Refuge is coming along, though the work is as slow as sifting through silt to find water. We ran out of building supplies but Thank the Father I sold some photographs and Tomas got part time work driving around some wealthy kugel.

The animals are adjusting as best they can. The coming of spring is more dramatic here than at home and it cheers most of them to sense it. Sheltered as they are, they know the difference. Soon we will be able to ease up on these artificial devices of heat and water for a few months.

I think some of them have adapted better than me. The language here is not fluid for me, more a series of spurts and dams. It gives me a greater appreciation for more universal methods of communicating ? art, music, even the mathematics.

It is not in me to reach out to people. I continue to watch the natives here in their natural habitats but there are social clues and contexts that sail over my head. Courtship rituals are drawn out and too complicated, not that I plan to partake in that aspect of RhyDinian life anytime soon.

Oh, Zeke. I do not know that things would be so different if we were still back in the Edge. Maybe it is the Mother and Father's plan for me to always be a spectator in my own life and not a player.

Perhaps it isn't them, perhaps it's me.

"I miss the plattelands too, biscuit, but you cannot let it stop you from thriving." Maeve sat at the edge of the Refuge's swamp, her shins stuck deep in the mud. She had pushed up the bottoms of her pants but it was more for her own comfort than anything else. The seat of her khakis was covered in dirt. The front of her pants was dirty as well but the large alligator resting his head on her thighs covered those spots from sight.

She stroked the dark head, her fingers trailing along the top of his wide snout without fear. The alligator looked more like a forlorn puppy than a vicious predator. A puppy with scales and large pointed teeth sure, but his sadness was palpable. Maeve did not need her eng"iti chimm senses to feel it sitting this close " they only served to magnify what she knew. They also allowed her to be so close to him without losing a limb.

"We bring you the fishies, the gazelle, and still you do not eat. We need for you to thrive or else it iz all for naught what we do." The silvery irises stared back at her, piercing straight to her spirit. She would never be able to articulate exactly how deeply she shared the pains and sorrows of her animal kin.

"It iz a wise man who heeds his own advice, iz it not?" Tomas made his way through the thick overgrowth surrounding the swamps, staying far enough away to not threaten the alligator. The creatures that entered the Refuge's safe haven were all sworn to do no harm to those the eng"iti chimm marked as friends. But Tomas had grown up in the dangerous wilds of Myobi and knew better than to press his luck needlessly.

Maeve did not move, staying still for the alligator's sake. "Your eyes find a wise man here" I do not skeem these murky waters will offer up a reflection. You will only find him with the aiding of a mirror, bru."

Tomas" graced both the girl and the gator with his blinding smile. "Bonga, Cougs. I hear Zeke in your words and in those fleeting seconds they hearten me." He carefully set down a paper plate covered with a napkin close enough so that she could reach out and touch it. Stretching her arm out behind her, Maeve flicked the corner of the napkin aside with the tips of her fingers to reveal the gridle cakes underneath. The alligator had mourned the loss of his old life so strongly it had woken Maeve up, beckoning her from her bed. She had not thought of breakfast.

"How can you teach him when you refuse to take care of yourself," Tomas chided.

"That iz what I mean. There iz little wisdom here, bru. I do not do our ubaba justice. Zeke would be mal at all the sands of time I waste. I did not plan it would take so many moons to finish our building." She could not resist the food despite her comment. She broke off a piece and shoved the warm dough in her mouth.

"Do not hold yourself so harshly, usisi. Of all the men that walked the earth, Zeke understood the need for patience. The injustice would be if we failed to stay steadfast and attentive to the details, minute as each may be. I have to go drive the fancy cars now-now. I will find you later." Tomas passed back the way he came, the brush filling in the path he had momentarily cleared.

"So you see, biscuit, you are not the only one sick for home." She held the sides of the gator's snout in both hands, his upper teeth jutting out. She bent forward, her nose touching the top of it. "I would not lead you astray." Sitting back up, she tapped a tooth playfully. "The Mother and Father gave you these for a purpose, ja" You should use them."

The alligator responded in kind, opening wide and then snapping his jaw shut. An unknowing onlooker might have shrieked, afraid for the girl. Maeve did not flinch. She laughed, the sound free and light hearted, the way it would only be when she was surrounded by animals and not people. "Ja, I skeem that iz the way to do it. Now, tiga!" The gator turned and slipped back into the deeper parts of the swamp. She gave him a parting pat on his side, watching him go.

If only she could be cheered as easily.

Maeve sat on the slope of one of the Refuge's many man-made lakes ignoring the moisture creeping its way along the fabric of her work pants. She split her attention between the natural sky above and the small jacana birds wading through the shallow water in front of her picking their way through the floating vegetation in search of insects for breakfast. One bird took a break from her hunt to brush her long feathered tail against Maeve's scarred hand.

"M're, biscuit." Maeve ran a finger fondly along the bird's honey-colored hind neck. "You must be soaking in the sun nowtimes while you can."

"Izit I should share the same advice with you, usisi?" Tomas" boots sloshed their way closer to Maeve and caught up with his question. The tall man moved as fluidly as ever even with one less eye after the Tribe's last run in with the ithunzibasa. He always adapted without dwelling on the past. Maeve envied that about him. He was a student their adoptive father Zeke would have pride in unlike Maeve who continued to struggle with his teachings on living and letting go of each moment as it came.

"Ja. The summer wanes, bru. We will be needing to close the globe soontimes. You are knowing how that tunes grief for our charges." The Myobian animals protected within the Refuge's gates were not made for RhyDin winters. The technological advances the city afforded had allowed the Tribe to circumvent that with the sphere covering its wide expanse and creating an artificial sky while retaining the right temperature for their survival. But Maeve could always sense the thin layer of despair that lingered in those long months until the sun could be trusted to provide its own warmth for the animals again.

"I skeem it iz worth it more than being poached for pieces. They strive for surviving most, you dig?" Tomas took up a familiar refrain and sat down next to Maeve on the slope. They went through this debate every time the seasons changed. Maeve knew he was right but her eng"iti chimm senses made it hard to ignore the animals" disappointment to face another winter away from the plattelands.

"Ja, your words ring truth in my kop?" Maeve touched a finger to her head.

"But round hollow in your hart." Tomas finished the thought for her. Maeve shrugged and twisted her fingers around a reed in the ground.

"Usisi, you are not only for mooning about the weather. It comes and goes as iz expected. But it does us all mal when you are moped."

Maeve gave the jacana bird one more comforting stroke before nudging her on her way back into the water. She gave Tomas a sheepish smile. "You see me clear as ice, bru."

"I only am needing one kif eye for that." Tomas did not begrudge his loss. He understood it was the cost of preserving the Balance by keeping whole species from being wiped out by the poachers" greed.

"I cannot shake free of a haunted thought, bru."

Tomas stayed quiet and waited Maeve out. She could feel with the animals so deeply but her own emotions often confounded her and proved difficult to explain. Eventually, she tried to find the words.

"When I am seeing Ethan, I am telling him how I hoped not to have ghosted his hart, ja" And he iz saying we will each be having a place within but are not wanting the same things. I am knowing he iz in the right. I could not be giving him all of me when he once asked because I am beholden to caring for so much here," she waved a hand around at the Refuge's vast lands. "Izit then I will never be enough, alltimes split and not giving my Tribe or my someday ziyo enough for a joyful living?"

Tomas shook his head and wrapped a strong arm around Maeve. "You are blinded to your own special hart, Cougs. Iznot for you to wind round all of us but reversed. You are not frigid as you skeem it. You are the sun who iz keeping us all thrumming and warmed through and through. And if it iz an oke chooses to love a sun, can he be so jislaiked if it burns him when he wants to hold it to himself?"

"It iz sounding lonesome for the sun," Maeve replied glumly.

"Iz both a sacrifice and a test, usisi. Soontimes you will find one who can love a sun for all it must be being. Burn bright, Cougs, it iz how you were crafted."

"Each fitted to his purpose." Maeve repeated the common teaching of Zeke and his ancestors before him. The universe had gifted and charged her with a responsibility to retaining the Balance in this one way, a task so large to her personally but so small in the grand scheme of the work others did in their own parts of the wide world.

"Each fitted to his purpose,? Tomas agreed and squeezed her tight.