He wanted to be happy here. For her sake. For their sake, Tendaji corrected himself, looking over his dark striped shoulder at the two forms curled up in the den. Sethunya’s soft white fur was easy to make out, pressed snuggly against the patchy splotch of blue he knew to be Makena…and there was an empty space in the small pile of dried grass that made the stony floor comfortable, a space he himself had been laying only moments before. But then the dreams came, and with them the memories, and when the memories came sleep fled his reach.
His steps had been quiet as he left their den, silent so as not to wake his sweet mate and the young wild dog he shared her love with. He only had a short time out here, he knew. Sethunya would wake before long, wondering what had happened to the warmth she was so accustomed to and then curious as to where he’d gone. And then…then she’d be curious as to why he’d gone. And that was a question he did not want to tell her the answer to.
He wanted to be happy here. But it was for her sake and not his own.
Tendaji sighed heavily, his dark eyes glittering with the emotion he always buried when he was around others. It was his duty to be the strong one. His responsibility to be their protector. How could they feel safe under his watch if his eyes were constantly blurred with tears? No, no he would not be weak. Not when they depended upon him so. Not when he needed his strength to defend all that he had left in his heart.
It was wrong, he thought sometimes. Wrong to feel so strongly like this. No one would ever guess to look at him. At first glance, and second too, Tendaji looked like the strong silent type. He was large for a wild dog, powerfully built with well toned muscle rippling smoothly beneath his sleek dark pelt, and his cool dark eyes just another piece of his solemn expression. No one could ever guess the turmoil that churned within him sometimes. No one could ever come close to that painful vulnerability that lurked beneath his steady exterior. No one except for…her.
How Sethunya knew, how she always seemed to know…he could not find an answer for that. Simply did not have one. All he knew was that when she was with him, with her soft sweet words and her gentle mothering affection, she could soothe the secret storm and brush against that secret weakness without ever betraying it to the world. He could not imagine what his life would be like without her. He did not want to imagine it. He did not wish to think of what the world would have been like if the tiny white puppy he found half buried in rubble and spattered with the blood of the brother lying limp beside her had not moved when he whispered her name. If he’d not found the two of them that night, if he had been the only one to have survived the disaster he had never managed to understand…
…if that had been the case, then Tendaji knew he would not have survived at all. It was the two of them that had made him strong. He had been young himself at the time, too young to hunt properly, too young to know anything but the stories his mother used to tell him and his brothers to settle them down before sleep. If they hadn’t been there, if they hadn’t needed him to be their guardian… His mother had been wise in her naming of him, the gods grant her spirit rest wherever it might have been. He who makes things happen. It was a good name, a strong name, one that he tried his best to uphold in honor of the female who had bestowed it upon him. But there was only one tiny thing that wasn’t quite perfect. Tendaji did not mean ‘he who makes things happen because others need him to’, and that was the truth behind how Tendaji had lived as long as he had.
His childhood that had been forgotten in his struggle to grow up quickly enough to become the provider and protector for the pups that had been all he had left in the world, his countless failed hunts and the nights he struggled to sleep with naught but a few mouthfuls of grass in his belly…the nights he hadn’t been able to sleep for fulfillment of his self-appointed role in protecting them from anything, including their own nightmares. All of this…he had been capable of all of this before his legs were long enough for his then clumsy paws. But he could not, it seemed, fall asleep in a comfortable den, within the boundaries of a welcoming pride, nestled among the two people he loved more than life itself.
He really was a weak-minded fool.
“Help me, please,” he begged softly, his dark eyes fixed upon the stars above. It didn’t matter to him which of the gods or goddesses answered his prayers. He just needed to know that they were there, just as they had been when he awoke alone in the darkness that had been filled with the first kiss of death he had ever known. That they watched him still, watched all of them still. That the twinkling of the stars meant more than simply distant lights in an empty sky. They were there, the ones from mother’s stories. They had to be. Had to. Because he needed them there, needed to have someone to turn to when his strength was failing, when the darkness seemed too frightening and the night seemed too long. He could not ask any other, could not let his weakness show lest they too feel the fear that hounded at his paws.
But the gods kept their secrets. They would not betray his.
Tendaji itched to go and seek one of the shrines again. He had discovered a few by now, had studied the carvings and listened to the wisdom of their keepers. But he didn’t dare leave, not when his whole world lay curled in the den behind him. They would wake if he didn’t return. They did not remember a time when the three of them had not slept huddled together, alone beneath the watchful stars. Only he remembered their pack. Only he had been old enough to shoulder that nightmare. Was there something wrong with him, that he would rather sleep among some cold, lifeless stones rather than curled with the warmth of his mate and her other love?
The gods were everywhere after all, they must be here too. He was just being foolish again. Worrying for naught again. And he would worry Sethunya too, if he worried long enough. With one last glance up at the night sky, and all the stars looking down upon him, Tendaji turned and returned to the den. Curling up around his small mate, and even managing to rest his dark tail on Makena’s splotchy blue paw, Tendaji was still for the rest of the night. But not asleep. Instead, he dozed lightly, his dark eyes glazed as he listened to the breathing of his loved ones until the worry slid to the back of his mind…
Word Count: 1258
