Firebird
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 2
Firebird was up early; earlier than Red Hawk. Morning Star was curled up under her right armpit with her hand slipped up under her midriff shirt cupping her breast. She gently untangled herself from the child and sat up. Red Hawk awoke and looked over at her with a smile. She was taken aback and surprised by his gesture, her heart fluttered, she blushed and demurely nodded. Before rising, she covered Morning Star with a fur, kissed her cheeks and stood.
She walked to leave the tipi but Red Hawk gently took her wrist. She looked up at him and he held out his hand. She looked and saw he held a bone-handled knife with a long blade. The corners of his mouth curled into a perceptible smile and he said, “Become whatever you hunt. It makes no difference; rabbit, deer or man, think like your prey.”
She gave an affirmative nod saying “Thank you.” Firebird turned and stepped outside.
The blue shadows of a peeking dawn revealed itself as Firebird waited at her tipi’s entrance, a flicker of determined copper in the waning light. She was no longer a prisoner fearful of survival; her intention was to become a woman of honor and power within Cheyenne life—a true warrior. She heard the quiet step before she saw Buffalo Calf, the young warrior chosen by Red Hawk, her new Cheyenne husband, to teach her the ways of the People. Buffalo Calf stepped forward, his moccasins leaving barely a mark on the ground. His smile was shy, but the gesture he made—a hand beckoning—was clear: Her lesson was about to begin.
Without words, Buffalo Calf gestured to Firebird to leave her shelter. He knelt beside a thicket, lifted a thin sinew cord, and demonstrated how to twist it into a loop—the snare for rabbit and varmint. His hands moved slowly, and his eyes met hers, coaxing her to try. Firebird copied him, learning by sight and touch, not sound. Buffalo Calf showed her how to walk near the brush, toes pressing softly, as silent as the moon above. His feet were protected by moccasins, her own were bare, feeling every stone and root. At first, she stumbled, her steps loud to his ears, but with each gentle correction—a lifted finger, a flat palm—she grew quieter, her footfalls landing light as Buffalo Calf’s. Together they set several snares, Buffalo guiding her with hand gestures and patience, Firebird adapting swiftly, the fire in her hair matched by her fierce concentration. Buffalo Calf next instructed her to select three sites and set her own snares.
She crouched where the grass grew thick, Red Hawk’s words echoing in her mind: “Think like your prey...” Firebird closed her eyes for a heartbeat and saw the world with astonishing clarity, every blade and shadow branded in memory. She recalled the nervous way rabbits shivered beneath swaying grass, the way leaves trembled at the edges of a stirring wind. With a calculating mind—quick, sharp, genius—she tracked how the scent trailed and shifted with the breeze, how the tiniest movement might betray a hunter. She was not merely setting a snare. She was vanishing into this living world, her senses stretching in all directions for the trembling silence, the sudden hush, the secrets only a watcher would notice. This was more than survival. Firebird would excel—she would learn every nuance, every detail, until even the most cautious prey, or greatest warrior, could not escape her.
Her spirit shone in every movement, every mistake corrected. When the work was done, Buffalo Calf raised two fingers—signaling respect and approval. Firebird met his gaze, knowing this was only the beginning. As they walked back to camp, side by side in the deepening dusk, the bond was forming: not captive and captor, but apprentice and mentor. Firebird smiled at the setting sun, her eyes on greatness beneath the endless Cheyenne sky.
Entering her tipi, Firebird was nearly knocked to the ground by a squealing, exuberant Morning Star as she wrapped her arms around her. She hugged her child laughing, overwhelmed by the feeling of this innocent girl’s pure love. Firebird backed away at arm’s length, took Morning Star’s face in her hands and started laying butterfly kisses all over her face. Red Hawk silently smiled as he watched his new wife’s interaction with his baby sister. Once the affectionate greeting was over, that is when Firebird first saw Red Hawk. She genuinely smiled at him and sat beside him.
He handed her a warm bowl of water and asked, “Can you now catch your little child’s breakfast?”
She smiled out of the corner of her eye and retorted, “Not can I, will I. And yes. I will prepare my husband and baby girl’s breakfast in the morning.”
“Big words from little white woman.” He had laugh lines showing with his grin. Morning Star was now pulling her arm, coaxing her away from her big brother. She wanted some one-on-one loving affection from her new spirit mother.
Red Hawk smiled as he laid down on his back as Firebird crawled to the other side of the tipi where she and Morning Star slept. Next to their bed furs was a large basin of warm water. Using hand signals, Firebird asked her, “What’s this?”
Smiling, the girl pointed to her brother, motioning that it was for washing her feet. Firebird’s heart fluttered. His gentle caring heart for me is peeking at me. He never looked over. She then realized that for now, they would share a tacit kind of love where there were meaningful conversations in their silence. A complete antithesis of the expression of affection needed by Morning Star’s almost infant-like need for a mother-like female’s willingness to give her child what she needed. She thought as she lay with the child draped over her right side in a tight embrace, When she’s asleep, I need to talk with Red Hawk about a few things...
At the appointed time, Firebird awoke Morning Star. Red Hawk sat up and slipped into his moccasins. They walked to the fire pit and took their proper place in the communal circle for the evening meal. Morning Star was not shy with her clingy affection. For the last part of the meal the child ate from her hand. The tribe paid close attention to the interaction between the two spirit-girls. Red Hawk could see the approving looks given to Firebird for her ability to sensitively care for Morning Star like a loving Cheyenne mother; not an uncaring white woman.
After the meal, Chief White Eagle asked Buffalo Calf to stand and give a report of Firebird’s progress on setting snares. He stood and told that Firebird is a very quick learner, she understands the flow and movement of nature when selecting her snare sites; her choices were excellent. “I think she will retrieve three or four rabbits in the morning.”
That night, after Morning Star finally settled into sleep, Firebird whispered to Red Hawk in the darkness, “I need to speak with you.”
He rose without question, and they stepped outside into the cold night air. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in her minimal clothing.
“I...” she began, then faltered. “I don’t know how to ... Morning Star needs so much from me, and I want to give it to her, but I—” Her voice cracked. “And you ... I feel things for you that I don’t understand, and I don’t know how to be both things at once. Wife to you. Mother—no, husband—to her. I’m confused and I’m afraid I’ll fail them both. Fail you both.”
Red Hawk studied her face in the moonlight. “This is not a question I can answer. Come.”
He led her through the sleeping camp to a tipi set apart from the others, smoke curling from its peak. He called softly at the entrance. A raspy voice responded in Cheyenne, and he gestured for Firebird to enter.
Inside, the air was thick with sage smoke. An ancient woman sat by the fire, her face a map of wrinkles, eyes sharp as obsidian. This was Fasting Woman, the tribal shaman.
Red Hawk spoke to her in Cheyenne, then turned to Firebird. “She will hear you. Speak your heart.” He left them alone.
Firebird knelt across the fire from the old woman, who studied her with unsettling intensity.
“You are troubled, Firebird.” The old woman’s English was halting but clear. “Speak.”
“I ... I don’t know how to do this,” Firebird said, tears threatening. “Morning Star—she needs me in ways I never imagined. Physical ways. Touching, holding, nursing ... and I don’t feel disgusted by it. It feels natural. But I’m also supposed to be Red Hawk’s wife, to lie with him, bear his children. How do I reconcile being a wife with an intimate life with my husband, and yet be Morning Star’s husband and ... mate?”
Fasting Woman was silent for a long moment, then asked, “What is your connection to her now? It must be very strong to want so much to meet her needs.”
Firebird’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I have no conception why I feel her soul and mine are one, but we are. I had just met her and she nursed at my breast. I was not repulsed or ashamed. It seemed so natural to me. She is why I have determined in my heart to become Cheyenne in mind, body and spirit.”
The old woman’s eyes gleamed. She leaned forward. “You have answered your own question, child. Your souls ARE one. This is rare—even among our people. The spirits have bound you together in a way that goes beyond the white man’s words of ‘husband’ or ‘wife.’ These are just names for something much deeper.
“You ask how to reconcile being wife to Red Hawk and mate to Morning Star? You think these are different loves that must compete?” She shook her head slowly. “They are the same love, only expressed differently.
“With Red Hawk, you will share passion, make children, build a future. This is the love that creates and expands.
“With Morning Star, you share souls. This is the love that sustains and protects. One feeds the body and makes tomorrow. The other feeds the spirit and makes today bearable.
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