A father and son sat one morning overlooking the tribe.
s - Father?
f - Yes son?
s - I had another dream about the wolves. This time they took sister.
f - How are you feeling now?
s - Well, I'm scared. Not for my own life, because you teach me to hunt and how to use fire to scare the wolves off. I'm afraid for those who don't know what you taught me, And I'm afraid that when the wolves come again we won't be here to protect them.
f - Yes, son (he had a single tear drip down his face). There always seems to come a time when we fail to protect the tribe.
s - In my dream I had an idea.
f - Would you tell me?
s - What would happen if we hunted the wolves? We are such skilled hunters, and we know how they run and how they fight. We could kill them, father. We could protect the tribe.
Silence... a few more tears from the father as his head turned toward the earth.
s - But father, didn't you teach me that we must do everything we can to protect the tribe? We are the warriors! We don't have to lose more of our family! We can save them father!
f - Be silent.
Several long moments passed. Father's eyes drifted up and held his son with grace and intensity.
f - quickly now, there's not much time.
In an instant, they ran to the west. They ran through the night, and the whole next day. Father and son traveled far outside the territory of the tribe. The hills turned into rocks, and the trees that son knew so well began to dissipate giving way to new trees that son had never seen before. Yet they were familiar to son, and he began to recall the old songs that grandfather would sing describing these very leaves and branches. The children all thought that grandfather was insane for describing these trees that did not even exist, yet now he beheld them with his own eyes.
They ran for three days and three nights, only stopping for moments as father listened to the wind. The last day was the hardest. The hills were foreign to the son, they went up and never seemed to move downward. Finally they reached the top of a great hill, and son could see in the distance more rock hills, larger and larger. He could see forever, off away from the slowly lightening horizon behind them. Father began prayers of the tribe, and then new prayers that son had never heard. These were the oldest prayers that the tribe still kept.
After the sun reached halfway up the sky, son had reached his limit.
s - Father! Explain yourself! Have we reached this far away only for your old prayers and traditions? Have we forgotten our duty to protect the tribe so you could sing these songs?! Father please!
f - Your youth is beautiful son. You would destroy so much to save one. You would throw yourself into the hunt even if you could not win. Even so, what would you do if your decisions were wrong? How would you live if your decisions destroyed the web? How important is one in comparison to the whole?
... silence.
Once the sun had set, father began building a fire.
f - Are you ready to hear?
s - I am ready father.
f - There are things we cannot know son... until we have been taught. There are more questions than answers, and as we live we will learn. I am son to my father, and twenty fathers before mine this is where the tribe called home. You have heard of the great migration, a story of celebration of the tribe's success in finding plentiful land and rebuilding. You have not heard of our sins. From this point the tribe moved east to find our new home, first, however, we moved west.
f - In the west we found things more terrifying than the wolves. We found monsters in the place we wanted to settle, and these monsters seemed too vicious to let live; so we fought our war. We attacked the monsters, and we fought with great skill and might. We won our battles... until the battle came to us.
f - The monsters saw us fighting as we did, and found our Mother's blessing. They swarmed around us, all the monsters together. They trapped us in our home and they attacked. You have seen a friend lost to the wolves my son. Yet twenty father's before me our father was made to watch our tribe devoured as a result of his own decisions. They did not fear our weapons, and our Mother's tears rained down form the heavens putting out our fire. They did not hunt out of hunger and necessity as the wolves do; they fought for our mother to return the balance we had upset.
f - It was the son and the daughter who were protected by spirit to send this lesson onward. The tribe perished, and all was destroyed, yet these two were forced to live on and to find a new way.
f - We live to live my son, we die to die. We attack only to protect, and hunt only for what we need. We know now that within the web of life authority is not given to any strand to remove another. In this way we respect our Mother, our Father, and Great Spirit.
The fire burnt as only a few small embers at this point and all was quiet. Moments after father finished his story son heard a great swoosh. He ducked and father attempted to hold down a chuckle. As son reared his head back up the feather of owl drifted down upon his head.
So began son's journey in the way of wisdom. So began son's journey to father.
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