A Trial in Friendship

There is a legend, perhaps more the hint of a rumor.  You know how legends and rumors are:  like barely a whiff of smoke in a breezy autumn day.  An idea of a thought.

It concerned Shining Flower in an Early Spring Dawn, and Eagle Who Sleeps in the Sky.  The way I heard it was that they came in contact with each other one day, and something about each other impressed the other.  The way Eagle Who Reclines in the Clouds described it was that there was an honesty about her, a curiosity, and that someone was home.  I don’t know about Shining Flower. 

Not too long after that they began to communicate with each other.  Now, they were both Cowboys (or Cowgirls) at heart, and they both had fairly magical abilities, and so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at their methods, but I am.  What they did was to give their message to passing bees or butterflies, or hummingbirds.  Some times a chipmunk or fawn, or a beaver would be the bearer of these tidings.  (One time Shining Flower had a trout bring the news, but Bird Bath for Brains ate him.  The trout was good, but it was too bad that Baldy didn’t get the note).  Shining Flower started a “Fishes Rights” group, and High Soaring Monarch of the Heavens about starved to death.  Plus he was sad about missing the message.  Times were briefly tough for our feathered friend.  And really, she was the one who sent a message to an Eagle with a trout.  Come on!

However, I digress.

The thing was that these messages had meaning.  They had great care.  Eagle Who Snores Like Thunder With No Lightning had recently had the wings of his heart trimmed and he was learning that there was communication possible.  It was a period where he was learning that life could be lived, and dreams drumpt.

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He quickly grew to love the extraordinarily gentile ways Shining Flower would say things.  It felt like a current from the depths carrying him back to the surface, but it was very strong.  A couple of words would reorient his entire thought processes, like a dandelion turning a heard of stampeding Buffalo.  He would think to himself:  “Isn’t that something!”  It wasn’t all sweetness and honey; sometimes it was like she would be angry, and if you never had an agitated Hummingbird putting a message in your ear, boy!  There are new experiences in store!

Sometimes he seemed to hurt her feelings, and he would rather have died.  Sometimes he would respond without thinking and not really understand

what she had asked.  Sometimes he would send so many messages he didn’t know which she had received, or which she was responding to.  Sometimes he thought she would consider him a bird brain.

But it still was all so gentile.  It was all so caring, and somehow almost like a touch.  Somehow it seemed such a delightfully probing play.  Suffice it to say he was nearly an old buzzard, and had been touched in a lot of ways, but this touched him deeply.

As time passed it seemed almost like he was learning to answer the questions she would ask, maybe by the second time, and she wouldn’t have to ask them three or four times.  And she seemed to be understanding his answers, and playing with them.

And he loved telling her stories.

The butterflies and birds, and fawns were busy running messages and stories back and forth.

But the thing was Shining Flower was married, and yet seemed unsettled.  Her life seemed in order, but was that a hint of loneliness, or did she not feel loved (which she clearly deserved), or honored?

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Laughing Coyote was always off, chasing the army here, hunting Buffalo there, and stealing horses from the Crow somewhere in the middle.  He was an entirely respectable man from what Eagle With His Head in the Clouds knew.

She was brilliant, but was there something missing?  Was there something he could do?

It was a simple question.

He didn’t know how to ask.

He knew a kiss that destroyed a life was not a kiss at all.  He wasn’t even thinking about that, very much.

There were barriers that existed within him; some were challenging, and some he wouldn’t cross.

There were barriers that existed in society.

And probably it was the same with Shining Flower.

He knew something about how to fix things.

But he didn’t know even how to ask if there even was anything to fix.

He knew the grace that these messages were bringing to his life.  He was almost worried about losing these breaths of life and hope from the Honey Bees.  But in actuality he had this trust.  It was surprisingly absolute.

But did he know how to do as much for her?

And what was the funniest thing was that two competent magicians, such as they were, were entirely capable of developing as much or as deep a friendship as they wanted.  They could grow as much trust as they wanted.

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Trust isn’t protection, it is confidence.

Confidence is earned, built and developed.  One causes confidence.

Isn’t that a funny thing?  He was worried about it!

It is hard to picture an Eagle soaring in the sky with such ponderous thoughts.  You’d think he would be too heavy to fly.

A silly goose you might say.

Here is where that legend kind of drifts away, I haven’t been able to find any more about it.  I don’t know how it ended.

It has me intrigued; have you ever heard this legend, or know anything about how or where the story goes?

 © 2006 Thomas A. Smith. All Rights Reserved.