Short Stories

Yee Naaldlooshii

TW/CW: genocide, cultural erasure, abuse by church and state, death, murder, revenge, gore, arson

He had been running single-mindedly for weeks, and it showed. The pads of his paws were bloodied by miles of hot tarmac and blistering desert sands passing beneath them. Though he was big for his kind, it was clear he hadn't taken much sustenance on his way Northeast.

Still, he was a cunning creature; intelligent eyes the color of mesquite leaves peered out from his furry, tattered hide. He traveled at night when there was less chance of humans coming across him.

His mission was too important to allow himself to be captured now.

He noted the temperature change as he crossed out of the desert and into the midwest plains. He didn't rest until he was far into Chickasaw territory; he knew he would be safe for long enough to recuperate and push on. With some food in his belly and some time for his paws to heal, he then made the push toward the Keystone State.

Ánaaí Máii still had a long way to go.

* * *

After a month of running, cutting across the continent, he knew he would have to shift soon. It had been at least that long since he shifted into his animal, and it wasn't happening now, either. I need to move faster, with less human interference, he thought.

He was deep into ancestral Chickasaw territory when he decided to find a cave, shift long enough to sleep Coyote off, and shift into something else. He knew Osage territory would take him almost all the way to his destination, but he needed a better vantage point. He had an idea of how to get it. With that thought in mind, he made his way into a cave system, sniffing around for any recent human activity. Finding none, he squeezed himself into a space just large enough to accommodate his human form and began to shift.

The sound of bones reconfiguring themselves, lengthening, shortening, popping, cracking, echoed through the cave, along with his groans. He was getting up there in years and spent most of his time shifted when he could. Being an animal--any animal--just made more sense.

He was old enough to remember the schools, though it was his elders and ancestors who walked the trail. The stories were as fresh in his mind now as when he was five summers old.

As he lay naked in the cave, his human skin covered in scars and dark hair tinged with grey, he fell into an unrestful sleep, plagued by the memories of the real monsters reaching out to him in the form of nightmares.

* * *

He could hear them howling in their inelegant, foreign tongue. He'd heard many unfamiliar languages in his five summers, but theirs made no sense at all. It was harsh, and when they tried to beat it into him, the order was all wrong. It took too many words to say what one meant, too.

He hated it.

They refused to call him by his actual name; he'd tried to correct them several times and had bruises the color of eggplant on his face to show for it.

"Haash yinilye!?" the woman in the funny black and white dress barked.

"...Shash," the boy answered timidly, wincing.

"No!" she shrieked, hitting him across the face with her pointer. "Haash yinilye!?"

"J-Joseph," he stuttered, setting his jaw and blinking back tears.

"Yattey," the nun responded, incorrectly. He thought better of correcting her.

* * *