Dawn Awakening

Cries of joy and happiness rose around them as the drums beat and a ceremonial wedding dance started with John Mark at the lead. He took her by the hand and guided her around the bonfire. She didn't know the steps of the dance and it didn't matter, because neither did he. Like so much of life, especially married life, they were making it up as they went along. A hand, warm and strong, grabbed onto her free hand. And then another hand to that hand, on and on, till the brothers, all of them, were dancing in a circle with no beginning and no end, just one continuous circle of life, weaving and bobbing around the fire in an endless flow in a dance of celebration of rebirth, life, death, and everything in between.

The celebration died down close to dawn. The embers of the fire faded to a dull orange glow in the pale golden wash of dawn's first light. Morning mists drifted up into the sun-streaked sky. Morning dew glittered like diamonds on the brown autumn dried grasses of the clearing. John Mark held Robbie in his arms. She rested her head rested on his chest, sighing contentedly, the way she did when she was happy and had no words to convey the emotion. "Here's to a new dawn," he said, gently kissing the top of her head.

Robbie didn't know what the future held for them. The past had been one hell of a wild ride. She would never understand the why behind the way things happened the way they did. But, she saw the outcome with absolute clarity. John Mark was meant to be a part of her life. Her parents chose their own path. She chose a different one. In places, the past and present overlapped, sometimes by oceans of time. Sometimes, they didn't touch at all. They simply were.

Pain changed who you thought you were and who you were supposed to be. Life happened. And death was a part of it. She looked up at the golden sky, inhaling deeply of the fresh, crisp, clean scent of the morning mists and the rugged, woodsy smell of John Mark. The world was quiet. Calm. Holding its breath in anticipation of the coming day and what it might bring.

This moment was the true definition of hope. The smell of hope and the feeling it brought along with it. Quiet on the golden rays of dawn. Calm as the whisper of the morning mists through the pines. Rugged as the earth beneath her feet. Hope. This was their first morning as husband and wife, their first dawn together, the first of many more to come. "To a new dawn." And they were ready to face whatever Ka tet, fate, might have in store for them as one.