Ahiga felt almost envious of their position, of the knowledge of self he mentally assigned in them as he watched them twinkle as the remains of the sun gently faded and the deep purple of night overtook what remained of the day.
He sat there on a blanket, the beauty of the pale red background and the deep cream colored zig-zag lightening pattern on the Storm Blanket beneath him hidden as the light faded and Ahiga felt like he alone was drifting on an endless sea of black.
He was one of The People, Din’e, one of the Children of the Holy People… the rather disliked name of Navajo ‘Indian’ to most of the tourists who flocked to Din’e Bekeyah, the Navajo Lands, taking photos and asking stupid questions of the people who lived there, oftentimes bringing their cultural ignorance and of late, their diseases to the Din'e. He was relieved that all tourists areas and national parks were shut down, no one outside of the Din’e allowed within their lands.
Right now, all was quiet as there was a curfew in effect, and knowing it was against the laws and rules set my his own people, he snuck out into the night to try and gain some peace and perspective.
It was silent and rather chilly this night, around sixty-four degrees thought he knew that sunrise the temperature would soar into the low nineties the next morning though he planned to be safe at home before that happened.
For now, he sat and waited and contemplated his life up to this point. He breathed softly, the cotton of the face-mask he wore pressed gently against his nose as he stared down at his arm, gently running his thumb over the raised scars that ran from his wrist to halfway to his elbow.
He recalled some movie line in some stupid little teen drama he watched as a kid where one of the main antagonists touched similar scars on the deeply depressed loner protagonist and said something like, “I see you went up the highway instead of crossing the street. There are faster ways of killing yourself.”
At the time he didn’t know how relevant that dumb little throwaway line actually was, but now looking down at the similar scars that marred the perfection his own beige-gold skin, he contemplated how he almost ended his own life even before the virus even had a chance to snatch it away.
He was not proud of what he had done, sad to know that it was his beloved grandmother who found him and ultimately saved his life by applying pressure to the wound and calling for help. After that, he spent many dark days on medications that were supposed to help him with his issues when his issues had little to do with the pills they tried to force down his throat and more with the stunning disapproval of his family as they struggled to understand the real him.
Ahiga was beautiful, tall and muscled with silky hair the color of sin and dark bedroom eyes that captivated all those who caught his gaze… at least that’s what his mother told him time and time again as she pleaded with him to find some nice woman to settle down with and give her beautiful grandchildren.
Well, that was not going to happen because Ahiga was totally and completely gay with no room for interpretation. He would never forget the look of horror on his mother’s face as he explained through a haze of painkillers and antidepressants that he had done such a horrible thing because he was gay. He would never give her the grandchildren she wanted. He would not be marrying the girl from Window Rock she kept throwing at him. He would not settle down and live a tortured existence where he had to hide who and what he was.
He knew what his parents thought of gay people from the nasty comments they made when he was a kid of about eleven and they witnessed two men holding hands. He remembered how his mother sneered at the disgusting creatures and later their cheerful acceptance of the 2005 Din’e Marriage Act, an unjust law that denied the rights of same sex couples to marry and have their marriage justified by tribal law.
He knew what he was and he knew what his parents were and nothing was ever going to change so at the time he felt the best way to deal with his burdens was to simply take himself out of the equation.
His grandmother disagreed.
Michelle Nakai was a formidable woman, even at ninety years of age and immediately took in her teenaged grandson when his parents refused to allow him back in their house. The former weaver had not faltered, telling her grandson that he was Nadleehi, a Two-Spirit, and as such should be considered sacred, a person to be respected and cherished. “You carry the spirit of both male and female within your body,” she informed him as she cradled him against her frail body, wiping away his tears as he cried out his anguish and his pain, “and as such you hold very powerful medicine.”
She went on to tell him the story of First Man and First woman, of how they quarreled causing the men and women of the world to split into two separate camps. It was the Nadleehi, the third gender twins, the first born of First Woman., who stayed with First Man and the men who followed him across the river. The Nadleehi twins performed traditionally famine tasks like weaving and harvesting food while the men hunted and it was the Nadleehi twins who helped broker an accord between First Man and First woman so they could be united as one because men and woman were suffering. “The men were using fresh animal meat to satisfy themselves and the women were using horns and stones and feathers to satisfy their urges as were giving birth to monsters that would later roam about the lands and murder humans.”
He remembered his grandmother speaking of such legend and stories while healed and how much pride and acceptance that she and her contemporaries lavished upon him. They, and their acceptance of the Traditional Ways and roles of The People soothed the anger and abandonment that burned in his soul. It was because of Michelle Nakai that he became the man that he was today.
So it was with great pride, sadness, and love that he sat beneath the stars as he bid his grandmother farewell as she passed away from the Third World, the place where humanity existed today, and on to the Forth World, the afterlife where one day he would be reunited with her.
“Beyond old age there is joy, happiness, confidence, and peace,” he prayed softly, his words muffled by the mask he wore.
His grandmother was nearly one hundred when she passed and before she traveled along the Yellow Corn Pollen Path and passed on the White World, the Forth World. She had lived a life of happiness and confidence and trained him to see himself not as his parents who were educated in federally funded boarding schools and were assimilated into Christian beliefs that taught them what same sex relationships were wrong. Instead she taught him to believe that he was sacred, that he was not bardache or some male whore who dressed in women’s clothing and was some sort of sexual slave. He was Nadleehi, a Two Spirit who deserved… demanded respect and acceptance in this twisted world.
He smiled beneath his mask as he recalled with pride how his grandmother urged him to attend Din’e Pride and had happily accompanied him with her nails painted in rainbow colors and how she demanded that he take photos of her standing in front of the Navajo flag that flew proudly in the center of a display of LGBTQA+ flags that felt outside of the Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock.
It was in that moment, staring at her smiling careworn face, that he accepted all that she had thought him and for the first time he took real pride and joy in the fact that he was a sacred person and had just as much right to exist as any other person in the world.
Now, he looked down at the scar marring his flesh and ran one thumb over it before looking back up at the beautiful night sky.
He was so engross in his contemplation of life that he didn’t notice the footsteps until he felt the presence of another right behind him.
“Six feet back,” he spoke calmly as he turned and froze at what he saw. There was a man standing before him, one of the most beautiful people he had ever laid eyes on.
The man was tall, his coper toned skin seemed to glow with an inner power that couldn’t have existed anywhere on earth. His hair was tied up behind his head in a tsiiyee, a traditional bun, with a blinding white cotton belt and gleamed in the growing moonlight. It made Ahiga feel just a lit
tle underdressed as he wore his hair in a simple long braid that touched his waist.
His body was tight and muscular, muscles rippling underneath his perfectly flawless skin as he shifted his weight from foot to foot as gleaming black eyes stared down at him.
Everything about the man screamed otherworldly and the way his gaze traveled over Ahiga’s body made his heart stutter a bit before it began to pound wildly in his chest.
He discovered to his surprise, that he wasn’t as scared as one probably should be as he was in the middle of a pandemic, grieving the recent loss of his grandmother, and suddenly there was this glowing god-like creatures standing before him in traditional deerskin leggings and moccasin. His chest was devastatingly bare and he arched one eyebrow as Ahiga sat there, enthralled by his presence.
“Maybe I’m dreaming,” Ahiga stated as the silence between the two of them grew.
“Maybe you are awake and very much aware of what’s going on around you.”
Ahiga turned that thought around in his head for a moment before he settled himself more comfortably on his blanket. He really should be running scared at the moment. Glowing people were not the norm, but he didn’t feel any danger from the man standing before him. Curious, very curious.
“So, I am Ahiga—”
“I know who you are.”
“Rude,” Ahiga muttered, crossing his arms defensively under his chest. “So what do you want?”
Really, maybe he should be showing some kind of reverence for the behind standing before him but for all he knew, this man was the trickster god, Coyote. He considered himself to be somewhat of an amateur traditionalist as he was still learning all of the lessons from his people’s past before colonization and he knew that sometimes the gods tested people.
The man was still damn beautiful thought. Despite the possible danger he could be in, Ahiga couldn’t help but notice that this man was everything he ever fantasized about in a lover when he was first discovering his love of the masculine form.
Without asking for permission, the man loved to the edge of Ahiga’s blanket and calmly took a seat, sitting with his legs crossed as he rested his hands on his thighs, his gaze still firmly on Ahiga’s.
Ahiga felt his heart lurch and really, he should be running screaming into the night back to his home and his safe bed but instead he sat there, staring at the dark eyed glowing man who wouldn’t look away.
“Well?” he asked as the silence between them once again became uncomfortable and he had to resist the urge to fight as the man grinned at him, showing off perfect teeth and a devastating smile that managed to steal his breath.
“Do you know who I am?” His voice was deep and velvety, lyrical in its tonation and if ever there was a sexy voice, this man had it.
“If—” Ahiga had to clear his throat and try again as his first attempt sounded more like a squeak than a question. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.” Ahiga ran his gaze once again over his seated visitor before he took a deep breath and took his life into his own hands by asking, “You are not Coyote, are you? Because if you are, I have nothing for you. There is only me and all I have is my dignity and pride.”
“And the mean erection growing in your pants,” the stranger pointed out and chuckled softly as Ahiga felt his face redden in embarrassment.
So his thick sleep pants really didn’t hide his reaction to the man, but that was okay. Getting erections in the face of a man you fantasized about was natural, totally and completely normal at that. It’s what you did with your burgeoning hard-on that was important.
“Who are you?” Ahiga asked outright, wondering why all the hot men, even the ones he wasn’t sure his mind was conjuring out of loneliness and grief, were kind of assholes.
“You may call me Naayee Neizghani—”
“Monster Slayer,” Ahiga breathed.
“So you know of me.”
“I— my grandmother told me the stories… she…” he trailed off for a moment, his grief seeming like a dagger to the heart but he pulled himself together and continued. “She taught me about you and your twin, Born of Water.”
“So you know then, why I have come?”
“No,” Ahiga answered honestly.
“You are not going to rail at me for not defeating old age?”
“No, growing old is a privilege. With age comes wisdom and if we listen to our elders before they complete their walk along the Yellow Corn Pollen Path and into the White World, we learn to strike a balance within ourselves.”
“You are very wise.”
“I am repeating the words of my grandmother.” This time the thought of her careworn face made him smile. There was beauty in growing older and his grandmother was one of the most beautiful wise women he had ever known.
“So you don’t know who I have come to you on this night?”
“Unless your answer is to slay the monster that is Covid-19, I am not sure.”
“Covid is indeed a terrible of a monster , but have confidence that it will be slain. The People survived the epidemic that the Europeans brought around 1575 that began the time of Running From Death where about eighty percent of Din’e perished. The People will endure this plague as well and will become stronger for it.”
“So you are here for another monster.”
“You understand this monster.”
Something in Monster Slayer’s words chilled him for a moment and his gaze turned again to the scar that ran along his left arm.
“You understand more than most,” Monster Slayer spoke again as Ahiga felt tears well up in his eyes but he refused to let them fall.
“I—I nearly killed myself.”
“This monster’s grip is insidious. It burns within the hearts of The People and it takes away the honor of those who would be sacred even as it infects more and more every year. It is in your media, in the words spoken my Din’e who no longer believe in tradition. It claims the lives of too many of The People and awareness of this monster and what it represents, of what is teaches, one the best way to combat it.”
“We are trying.”
“And that is why I am here?”
“To do the impossible? To change the minds of a great majority of the people who walk the face of the earth? To fix all our problems with hatred and homophobia then bless me with your magical dick? I don’t know.”
Ahiga knew he was losing his temper and he strove to control it, but there was no way that even legendary beings straight out of his people’s past was going to just pop in and fix everything. Life didn’t work like that. Even in the legends Monster Hunter and Born Of Water couldn’t go against the natural order and it was foolish to believe otherwise. And Ahiga may be a lot of things, but foolish wasn’t one of them.
To utterly defeat this monster, all peoples had to unite as one and recognize and celebrate the differences that truly make each person an individual. They had to work together to change the laws and legislation that discriminated against people who didn’t fit into society’s norms. They had to rally around each other and lift their voices until no one could deny that they were sacred and had the right to live their lives in the best way possible, to love whomever they chose without fear of repercussions, to ensure that not another child succeeded in taking a life that was gifted to them.
They were making great strides but more needed to be done, more traditional ways needed to be taught, more awareness needed to be brought to the world.
It was tiring and it was exhausting, and it was so fulfilling when you could see the baby steps of progress taking place and know that more were to come.
Like the old stories and oral histories taught, the gods may be capable of great things, but even they must follow order and balance. This was a human problem and it would take all of humanity working together to change it.
“While my dick is quite magical,” Monster Hunter chuckled, “that is not why I am here.”
“So what are you here for?”
It was funny how a legendary otherworldly being would have such a good understanding of the human condition. The anger and frustration he felt rapidly receded and that left only the small amount of awe he felt being in this beings presence and the banked arousal he felt that started to thrum again.
He again looked down at the mark, the perfect example of his struggle to accept what he was and the proof that if anyone fought hard enough, they could push back the darkness and find a way to carry one. Sometimes it took help, sometimes it took a whole community… sometimes the person succumbed to darkness and they lost them, but as for him, as long as there was breath left in his body, he would continue to fight for himself and those who struggled just as he did. He would do his grandmother proud and pass on the traditions and teaching that she shared with him.
“So this visit… what you are doing now is a reward for not dying?
“No ,” Monster Hunger assured him. “this visit is a reward for choosing to live.”
Ahiga fought the urge to preen after hearing these words, but he still wasn’t sure what was going on. A reward for choosing to live?”
“Do you not see the scars? I didn’t … there was a time when I didn’t choose life.”
“I see the scars and I also know that you’ve already done the hard part and you face that same demon every day, when times get hard, when the world seems to turn on you and you feel that you don’t fit in and will never belong. I have seen you, I have been watching you for a long time now.” He offered that same devastating smile. “You didn’t try again.”
The Glittering World Anthology: Native American Romance Paranormal Fantasy Page 10