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15. THE WHITE ROAD: Into The Pines.

Suddenly, it's morning!

The heavy feel of not having slept, fully, weighs in my head. Yet, I'm not aware of having been awake in the night.

I roll on my left side, just enough to to twist and look to the east. The Sunstar isn't up but it is lighting the sky over that way, back toward the... house. I sit up. The girls are still asleep. This rock is not my favorite place. The air is still, misty, damp. The Abalnnh are dark, still. The girls are huddled together, spooned on and under their blankets. I stand and stretch. I pick up my sleeping bag, unzip it fully, and lay it over them, up over their exposed heads. Eenunh stirs a bit beneath it. The desert is silent, no insects. I need to pee, step over the rocks and down onto the sand. I decide to spread a little around, move around the outcrop. Sprinkling here, there.

Suddenly I get a chill, less physical than psychological! I want my corn-knife! I put things away as I move back and reach up on the rock for it. I don't know what or why, but it... was like a vibe. I'm eyeing everything. It's still dark on the slope down what I can see of the hill. Most of it is out of sight where the hilltop levels off and the slope past the thorny trees begins. I look at the foliage of the thorn trees. There is no movement. No wind. I step back up on the rock. We are literally at the peak. I can see under the trees, over them too. The light improves by the second. Nothing. I sheathe the corn-knife and strap it on, unsheathe it and stand, turn, look, and look. Nothing. I look at the loose stones piled all around the edge of our bed and wonder. I guess I should have asked what they were for.

Eenunh stirs under the sleeping bag, stays under. I breathe the morning air. It's too cool, too damp, but so fresh. It's good to be out of the hive, out of the caves and passages. It's a good way to live in a land where lightning becomes a constant for a couple months of the year, where cooler air stays trapped, an island in the heat of day. But out here, even hunting wrigglies, is better. I step quietly around the edge of our rock, eye the landscape, nudge rocks with my toe closer to the others. The Sunstar keeps coming. Eenunh's voice draws my attention. She is peeping from under the sleeping bag. I don't know what she said. She smiles, grins, eyes flicker. She goes back under. I go back to looking, looking. Everything... is beautiful in red morning light. The desert to the east is rimmed with red light, dark shadows, white mist, every shape, every hill, every curvature of sand, the saguaros, the barrel cacti, the beaver-tail cacti. The thorn trees light up. A slight breeze rustles the leaves. It is a good day!

It's a long while before the girls stir. Tinunh pokes her head out, murmurs something, covers up again. Shortly Eenunh flips the sleeping bag off, tucks her blanket around Tinunh, brings the bag up with her. She comes to me, wraps it around us, drops her right arm around my waist, reaches across my belly with her left hand to close the bag around us. I reach across the nape of her neck, hold the bag in front of her, wrapped back across her throat. We stand that way a long time. I have no urge... am in no hurry... to change anything. The Sunstar rises. Finally Tinunh is up, wrapped in her blanket. She's sleepy-eyed, slithers in under the sleeping bag, leans into her mother, buries her face in Eenunh's bosom. I open the bag to more fully engulf Tinunh. Eenunh's arms go around her. We stand, not looking.

As if by signal they break our little huddle, begin to roll up blankets, tie them. There's some peeing; one-place peeing, not round-about peeing. I mind my business. They tap shoes on the rock, climb back up, strap on pack-bags, bedrolls, canteens. I follow. They step over the rockpiles, jump down, and head across the hill top on toward the west, and down. I take a last look around the rock to see we've left nothing behind. I wonder about the rock piles. I step over them, head off and down the slope. Under the Albalnh I don't look up. The desert smells good. There is a minty smell in places, sweet smells others, sour smells. Nothing is overwhelming. It becomes a pleasure to breathe the good air, to smell whatever comes next. They've stopped.

Coming to them I see where Tinunh is pointing down. She comes to meet me, points again, on the ground where I've stopped. There are big three-toe tracks. It looks like the black lizard tracks! But... no... they're splayed more I think, maybe bigger. I take hold of the handle of my corn-knife. Eenunh motions for us to go on, speaks quietly to Tinunh. Tinunh murmurs back. I can't hear what they say. I scan the landscape. No surprises. No surprises today.

We're walking about half the day. I can't look up to see the Sunstar. It's pretty much high noon or later. It's not hot-hot. It's mild enough. It's comfortable.

I'm on constant alert, looking around, looking back, looking at the ground for tracks, seeing them. Lizard tracks, with tail-drag markings. Eenunh has stopped, turned sideways, looking back at me, pointing ahead. I see a dark line; trees! More thorn trees I imagine. But there are more of them. The dark line goes left and right of where we're headed. She turns, we keep going. In about an hour we're close enough that I see what looks like a forest. They look like pine trees, evergreens of some kind! It's still a ways off. I'm looking beyond the trees thinking I'm looking at a dark cloud. Then I realize it is mountains, dark blue, stony looking mountain range, another further back, lighter blue through mists in the air! I'm anxious to get there and see.

The sand... the sand is now more brown, like any stream or river or beach sand on Earth. I look back. I don't know where red sand stopped and brown sand began. I can see red hillocks back to the east. I can't see the red bump, the hive. There are vines growing out of the sand, with red blossoms, and, what looks like the same vine, with white flowers, that look like the same shape, leaves and flowers. There is a low wall of thick fog over in the western distance, below the treeline.

They turn off to the right a bit, go behind a little hill with woody bushes, big green leaves. There's... it... looks like a cairn, a pile of stones, a marker. It's not for marking the trail. I think... it's... a grave. They stand looking, Tinunh with her little arms crossed, Eenunh behind her, same pose. Eenunh reaches and touches her shoulder. Tinunh, turns her head, speaks. They begin gathering more stones. I pick up stones, bring them, add them to the pile. These are not stones for ringing a camp bed. This is something else. I don't know what. They are... solemn. I maintain that decorum. They stop gathering stones. I stand back. Tinunh is weeping. Eenunh hugs her to her belly, strokes her hair, pulls it away to put her hand on Tinunh's ear, and cheek. Tinunh dries her tears on the backs of her hands. She's done. Straight faced she passes me, doesn't look at me but touches my arm as she passes. Eenunh comes, touches my cheek in passing, smiles, says nothing, golden irises flickering. They return to the track, the trace we left, and keep going, ever west.

The Sunstar is hotter now. It shines under my ballcap, on my face, in my eyes. The mist has burned off. There are no clouds. We keep trekking. They've shed the jackets they slept in. I never put on my hoodie last night, plan on doing tonight. In a couple hours the desert becomes an upward slope, slight but ever upward, a little more ground cover, cacti, grasses, tall weeds, reedy bushes with tiny leaves, woody bushes with big ones. The ground... is a yellow... shale, or clay. They get to a point a little higher up and stop, turn back to me. As I come up I see they're standing on a white surface.

It... looks like... a road!

It comes around the trees, looks like pine trees, from the left, south, and goes to the right, north, over a low hill. It's about as wide as a one-lane road. Here where we're standing is a wider place, wide as a two-lane road, but... this side... this looks like it was a road coming off... an intersection. Yes! I can see broken pieces of the white surface in gulleys down the hill. I can see the trace leading to that location. The road was washed out long ago, perhaps reached the trace, but the trace was never... paved back to the hive.

The surface looks like asphalt, conglomerate, but white. The edges are buried a bit in a yellow shale or clay. I see one place where the edge is exposed. It's about six inches thick. To my left, south, it curves west, into the pines. I think I see it rolling over hills further south, disappearing and reappearing along the edge of the forest. To the right, north it goes over the rise, disappearing, reappearing, following the edge of the pine forest, rolling with the landscape, widening on some crests to left and right.

Eenunh points up the hill, into the woods. She seems in a hurry!

"Up there," she says. We go. I turn to look back at the road. When we get under the trees I see needles on the ground, like long-needles from pine trees, that rusty red color. There's amber sap seeping from the bark on them. I see pine cones! On the ground. In the trees. These are pine trees. Plain old Earthy coniferous trees! It's cool here in the forest, out of the Sun. They head up and up hill, turning to the right to keep climbing up. Soon they're at a top, a small, flat peak among the trees. I walk around it. I can see downhill under trees all around. The Sunstarlight dapples in through the trees. It's warm here.

They've set their pack-bags and blankets on the ground. No thorny abalnnh here, I guess. Tinunh is sweeping. I think we're making camp. There's dirt underneath, but when she exposes it, Tinunh stops and covers it back up. I see she's only sweeping out twigs and tossing out pine cones. She pulls small stones loose, lays them nearby. We settle in, just setting our pack-bags and bedrolls together in the middle. They strap on their corn-knives and I begin to worry. We go off, down off the peak, uphill again. But we only seem to be sight-seeing. There are blue stone rock outcrops further into the forest. There are trails, like animal trails. I see what looks like a deer... or pig... track. It's not very big. There's only one... several distinct tracks... but only one animal.

We've come in a loop back to our camp. They pick up smooth blue stones as we come up the hill, start laying them in piles. I get busy with that. I don't know what we need them for but I know we need them. Night is falling. It's darker earlier here under the trees. I can see through the pines, back to the east, the lit desert. From this elevation I think I can make out the little red bump I think is the hive, the... complex.

We arrange our bedrolls on the mound. I go to the right of theirs where I can have my corn-knife at my right hand overnight. The pine needles promise a more comfortable surface. We sit. Eenunh shows us what's in the gray paper packets. A meat ball, a greenie, an orangie, and one of the yellow fruits I like. We each open our own and all eat in silence. The Sunstarlight suddenly comes through the forest, low to the west, and south, redding everything. I look at their faces. I like their faces. I love their faces. They're red instead of green and I love them. I'd love them purple. The Sunstarlight almost accommodates my musing with purple hues. Darkness comes almost suddenly. We settle into our beds. I wonder about the rocks back out in the desert. If there was a reason to have them out there, wouldn't there be a reason here? Do we have enough? I don't ask, don't want to second-guess them or arouse fears that aren't already there. I'm very glad to see Eenunh's face relaxed, confident, like I'm used to it. Worries are left behind. I still lay out my corn-knife sheathe by my right hand.

They pee around. I pee around, a little further out than they did last night. They lay down. I lay down.

We watch the stars. They talk, and, I think Eenunh's telling Tinunh about her father, and being here, years ago. It's just a sentence, or two, a question, or two, answered, I pick up in my eves-dropping. Eenunh turns toward me, kisses me. We kiss some more, talk, kiss some more. Tinunh sits up, reaches over, pushes me, laughing, says, "Stop it!", pulls at her mother. We're all laughing. Tinunh lays back down. I reach over Eenunh and push her. She bursts out laughing! Sleep claims them, tries to claim me. Insects chirp and hum and buzz. I sleep.

I dream...
of a place on Earth,
pine trees,
a woman I... knew.