[piosenniel]

‘Briellah, I have noticed your warriors are gathering. Are they going after Chani?’

Once Jamílah had put up her tent and seen to the tents of her daughters’ families, she sought out her friend. Many of the men of the Painted Sands were heading toward where the horses were picketed. Their blades, hanging from their waists, caught the sun as they hurried toward the mounts, their robes parting as they strode along.

Briellah dabbed at her eyes, and nodded her head yes.

‘Come, sit with me,’ Jamílah said gently, leading her friend to the rug by the small brazier in front of Briellah’s tent. She took her time making some thick, dark coffee, talking her way through the process in an effort to draw Briellah’s thoughts into some ordinary state. When the ritual was done and each held their cup in their hands, Jamílah looked toward the west, where the young ones had gone.

‘Have you ever seen the lions hunt,’ she asked softly, as she sipped her drink, and rocked slightly on her mat. Her voice was low, the tone of her words like the start to some old story. Briellah said nothing, knowing that the question did not need an answer.

‘The pride gathers near their target, and the great maned males lie down, to protect their declared area, and the young. It is the smaller females, the aunts and sisters and mothers, who go out to hunt, together. They pick their intended prey and work together as one to bring it down. One or two of them will single it out and drive it toward the others who wait in ambush. All their thought is on the kill, and how it is needed for the survival of the pride. Death is swift, a crushing bite to the spine or a choking grip to the throat. Their thoughts are focused, colored neither by mercy or hatred. It is simply a necessary thing for them.’

‘Why do you tell me this, my friend? This story of lions?’ asked Briellah, a frown creasing her brow.

Jamílah turned briefly toward her, her dark brown eyes unreadable in her smooth face. ‘The sun moves toward its rest. Night is coming, Briellah. And night is when the lions hunt their prey.’

Her gaze turned again to the west, a considering look now on her face. She would say no more, but turned the talk to those little things that pass between friends . . . the little things of women’s lives that knit their families and friends together . . . .