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Badger hailed, “Where are you going, Evie?”

I took a deep breath. “I need a cigarette.”

He lit and handed me a hand-rolled. The first drag rolled across my palate. Some of the strain released from my shoulders. I pointed to the shelter where my gear resided. “Whose lean-to is that?”

“Uh…that’s Lone Eagle’s. He doesn’t sleep there much. He stays out there.” He gestured to the surrounding woodland. “He put your stuff there? It’s yours now. I don’t think he’s in the habit of hanging around people. He grew up with us. You know, on the reservation? All our families were close. But then his parents split. He left for Texas with his old man. Came back in the summers sometimes. I guess he was some sort of football champion in high school. Heard he got a big school scholarship. But something happened. He didn’t go. Then he disappeared. That is until a few months ago. He found us after the outbreak…”

I tuned him out, counted to ten. Then counted again. Eventually, he took a breath.

“Did you ask him what happened? What he’s been doing?”

He laughed. “Of course. He told me the Lakota don’t ask questions and scolded me for talking too much. Now I just leave him alone.”

A fucking understatement.

“What’s that?”

Shit. I said that out loud? “You do talk a lot.”

He held out his hand, his face split in a grin. “Then come back to the campfire and you can do all the talking. We don’t know anything about you.”

I considered his offer. I wouldn’t be able to avoid their questions for long. And I didn’t feel an urgency to run off just yet. They were nice. Decent people. Most of them.

Maybe I could answer a few questions. Recount some impersonal aspects without picking at unhealed sores. I accepted his hand and followed him to the hearth.

The Lakota were all there, listening to Akicita unravel a captivating tale about an encounter with a grizzly. Jesse sat on the far side, his expression cryptic. His vivid copper eyes followed me until the bonfire’s blaze blocked his view.

Badger pulled me down next to him and prodded me with questions. So I began my story with the aphid by the pool. Then I detailed my other aphid encounters, brushing over particulars about my personal life. They hooted at the narration of the night I met Darwin.

My talkative friend couldn’t resist questions about marriage and children.

“Like you,” I said, “I also lost everyone I loved and cared for.”

Akicita followed my noncommittal response with the Lakota story. His eyes sparkled, and his soothing voice curled around me in a warm embrace.

When he finished, I said, “Tell us another one.”

He cast me dark eyes underscored with years of knowledge. “I have many more, but first…” The corners of his mouth creased. “I give you a Lakota name. We will call you Spotted Wing.”

“Spotted Wing?”

Naalnish ran his hand through my hair. Two ladybugs clung to his finger. “They like you.”

My lids drifted closed. The journey there had been a lonely one. And lingering at the edges of my mind was a sad resolution that my future held more of the same.

I had a myriad of questions for them, but I remembered Badger’s warning. The Lakota didn’t ask questions. I found a kind of safety in that. They offered possibilities. A new name. A new life. In the Allegheny Mountains among gentle men. As far as options went, I couldn’t come up with a reason against staying.

Jesse stood, hurled a clod of dirt into the fire. Then he pinned me with a glare and disappeared through the timber.

Okay. There was one.

Let everything you do be your religion

and everything you say be your prayer.

Lakota Sioux

The following weeks flew by as we readied for winter. I learned to make clothes, weapons, food and medicine from the mountain plants and animals. When the first snow forced us downstream, we settled into an abandoned one room cabin.

Idleness and seclusion narrowed the world to that little room where hibernation imposed itself on me, shoving me into a painful awakening. Stripped of distractions, I was left with an abundance of introspection. Those final hours with my dying children. My forsaking Joel to escape within myself for two months after. The dark basement at my father’s house. My knife in Joel’s head.

With Akicita watching over me, I slept to escape my self-scrutiny, my loathing, and my mistakes. Only, sleep forced me to face my nightmares.

Akicita administrated sleep aids on the worst days. He told me a restful body would germinate a conscious mind. I just wanted numbness and accepted his antidotes with abandon.

And so, I slept. In and out of consciousness, days turned to weeks until four months had passed. Time nurtured my trust in the Lakota, my worry about the aphids and crazed men forgotten. I knew the bugs were still out there in our isolated woods. I could hear my companions fighting them.