Part 2

On and on over blurred hours Rachel walked. Eventually, all of this walking, even at a measured pace, made her dizzy. She sat for a moment, and running her fingers through her hair, felt an unwelcome stickiness. It hurt. Inspecting her head with her hands, she felt for bumps and bruises. As she brought her hands down she saw the red of her blood, but ... she took a breath and stared at her fingers visualizing each digit.

Rachael sighed. "Just breathe, don’t get excited," she thought to herself. She knew this dream; next the hawk, who was also somehow her father, would land at her feet and berate her for not paying more attention to what she was doing, and ask her when she would stop wandering aimlessly, and settle down. "What do I do next?" she thought, reminding herself not to struggle. If she got too excited she'd awaken, and she'd be unable to take the next crucial steps. If she let go of her focus, she'd be pulled back, back into the dream, and then who knew if she'd be strong enough to re-manifest her consciousness.

A few gnats settled on her as she hummed the gentle tune her grandmother had taught her, “Why the Pines Stay in the Mountains.” The song gave her strength and called to the earliest moments of her consciousness, and perhaps to those parts formed even earlier. "Soft yet firm, ever wise, man and woman and child..." She loved the pines and their multi-faceted utility and beauty; breathing through her nose slowly she tried to smell their resin.

The gnats buzzed, and began biting her again. "Stay with the pain," she had been taught, "Seeing through the pain means to endure; enduring caries through time." Rachael sat in a calm discomfort for some time, focusing on visualizing her hands. When done with her hands, she slowly moved her focus up her arms attempting to see even the hairs on them. The welts were small reddened ruptures in her skin, in her being. The more solid she made herself here, the more particularly she felt the pain, and its hollowness.

She watched one of the gnats landing on her arm, its long, hair like antennae stroking her before it sank itself down to crunch into her flesh. "You know, you almost seem to be enjoying yourself," Rachael muttered to the insect, as she focused further on making herself fully present.

"It’s kind of important," the gnat sputtered, as if back at her, "I mean I have children to spawn and feed, and it’s not like blood comes easy, if you know what I mean. I am a little embarrassed at times you know, but you were put here for me to feed on, and who am I to question the works of the creator?"

The gnat’s voice was unimaginably high and thin. But that only helped Rachael focus further. She reached slowly into her tunic to take out the smudge pot, removed the flint and steel, and began to strike them together over the coal to light the pot.

"Can you do that a little bit less sharply?" The gnat griped, "I am trying harvest a bit here, and… ahhh what am I saying to you, you probably can't hear me even if you could understand..."

Rachael smiled to herself, as the charcoal took the sparks and the sprinkled sage slowly began to smoke. Yes that was better. The gnat flew off sputtering, as she cleansed herself with the sage smudge.