The Unknown - Chapter 6c - by nova

I went to stand up and would have fallen over if she hadn't caught me. Once I got stabilized I stiff armed her away from me and bit back on what I wanted to say which was "Stay the fuck away from me!" I wasn't angry with her. I was angry with me. Angry with the way life had turned out, angry with my leg. Angry that I still missed Night so much. I took a deep breath and said, "Sorry, my leg fell asleep."

"Oh. Okay. Do you need a hand?"

"No."

I stepped off and almost fell over again. I reached out, grabbed her shoulder, heard her wince, loosened my grip a little, and told her, "I'll take a shoulder instead if you don't mind." We walked back slowly to the hogan where Ty was waiting. He pretended not to notice my difficulty walking and I pretended not to notice that he had seen it.

"Gardener."

"Yeah Ty."

"I talked to some people. They want to meet you and talk about what's going on."

"When's this supposed to happen?"

"How about now?"

I thought about it. I wasn't doing anything else. Well, maybe apologizing to Kat eventually and I had a pair of boots to pick up. Eventually, like in the next few days, I would be killing Apaches and who ever else got in the way. That was about it for a schedule. Somewhere in there was a vague desire to see if Kat wanted to go back to Utah with me. That might require some adjustments that I wasn't sure if I was up to and she was willing to put up with. "No harm in asking" I thought. Plus who knows. The meeting might be interesting as long as no one talked a lot and it was over fairly quickly. Maybe the women had made dessert.

"Sure. You coming Kat?"

She looked surprised, then said dryly, "Well, I was invited but thanks for asking."

I looked at Ty and we both started smiling about the same time. I told her, Okay but I'm riding shotgun."

I said goodbye to Grandmother, for a woman who always wore about six layers of clothes she was remarkably cool to touch. While I did that Ty got my gear together. Grandma said something to Kat and she walked away. Once she had Grandma reached up, pressed her hands against the side of my face, and said "What was once has come again. You will be fine." Then she left me standing there. I thought about that for a few minutes and couldn't make heads or tails of it. The best I could think of it was some damn Dine cryptic goodbye shit.