Sacra

Sacrifice. That word had come up more than once in the last few days. The sacredness of everyday had never felt more real. Camilia instinctively shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the velvet robe. A chill seized her as her left hand felt something, a disc of smooth stone? Pulling the object out it was indeed a disc the size of a silver dollar put plump so more like a hard small dumpling. Across the face of the stone were lines within a circle. "A compass rock." Without thinking Camilia rubbed and then pressed the point where the two lines crossed.

Whoosh ...  Across the room projected this imagery. "How clever and contemporary those in charge of this mystery ," Camilia's voice and the structure of that one sentence tickled something within the woman. She had slid into a contemporary pidgin, a pattern and grammar not used in her everyday world of Salish. How comforting, she had not forgotten how.

Camilia recognized Pua Kanaka`ole Kanahele right away. Alex did not. "This won't take more than a few minutes," Camilia had seen this presentation before. She laughed out loud and in response a bench appeared for them to sit while the Hawaiian elder did her thing.


I do so love a bench, and now what happens?