Chapter Text
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Lightning with the Yellow Hair-
Know this is your home.
Know I am waiting.
Know you fill my heart.
Know you are the wife of a warrior.
Know you are a warrior.
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...ride ride ride, clench your thighs against the pain, the bumps and jostles...
I had been in the saddle a long time before I could sleep beneath the stars again. I had ridden away from my heart walking on two legs that sometimes rode on four. I had to put my Sam behind me and look to the west, to the evening sky stretching out purple black like a blanket each night. To roll over and look behind me meant fighting the urge not to skip up on Lightning's back and fly out into the night, back the way we had come until I could be in his arms again.
I had made a promise though, and I had never been made a liar yet. Didn't stop his voice whispering in my ear when the wind blew.
"Lightning with the Yellow Hair...I think you're the lightning."
I told him every time in my head to hush. Reminded him with the whisper of my heartbeat that I was coming back, that I wanted to meet him there, that it burned me like a rope burns your bare hand that I didn't have him by my side. As quick as our love had grown, it was strong. Like the river after the rain, swift and deep and come upon you so suddenly that it washes you away if you don't hang on.
And so I would crawl under the wagon when we pitched camp at dusk, before the stars could spin over my head and twist me up so bad I'd have to fly back to him like a sycamore seed spiralling. Crawl under and into my bedroll and squeeze my eyes shut, wrap my arms around myself tight until I could pretend it was Sam holding me down to the ground before the tornado could rip me away from my promise to Mother and Daddy.
Then in the morning I would wipe the salty crust of tears from my face, put myself to rights and climb back into the saddle to continue westwards once more. Many days passed just like that, although sometimes Mother would swap with me behind the cattle and I would keep company with young John while I drove the wagon. Leading a team of horses used up plenty of my attention and didn't leave much spare for wind-whispers. John loved talking and so we would while away the hours as the big sky country passed us by.
"See those clouds, John?"
"Whit ones?"
"The ones that look like lemon ices with raspberry sauce"
"Wasbewwy saws?"
"Yeah. Looks like the weather will stay good today."
"Because of wasbewwies?"
"Yeah."
But eventually I would have to shake everything loose and gallop wide curves, cutting up the hills and streams we came across. The thunder of Lightning's hoofbeats was like my heart outside of my body, feeling where it wouldn't hurt me like when it was on the inside. The whipping air would cut against my cheeks and scour the fear of never seeing him again, dying in some nowhere place and him never knowing, waiting for me forever.
After a few weeks, the weather had started to change. In the mornings, dragging myself out from under the wagon bed, the air then had a new bite - a briskness that made the animals prance all frisky and blow steam from their nostrils. In no time at all we had to start cracking the ice on the water barrel too, then wrap our bodies in what spare layers we had managed to save after the struggle it took to come all this way. I wouldn't give up my beaded vest, proudly wearing it every day over the top of some long johns Mother had squirrelled away for all of us, knowing the cold days would eventually come.
The further two and a half months it took us to finally reach Oregon had me looking pretty wild by the time we arrived. The fringe on my pants still dangling low, the beads shiny on my chest, my hair longer than ever and flowing free for every breeze to pick at it.
"I think you're the lightning...Lightning with the Yellow Hair."
Sam's voice was still with me, but fainter now. Perhaps the distance of many miles and sky high mountains between us made it so. I had new scars since I left him, would he recognise me now? The arrow that just missed my guts had streaked over my right hip and ripped a path that curved around my side. The cougar that had knocked me out of the saddle in the mountains had left its clawmarks on my face as I drove my knife into its heart. The powder burn on my shoulder from a misfiring rifle speckled my collarbone.
How would he know me after these adventures? My soul should still be the same, if only he looked for it.