Our Auras Hovering in the Air as We Move

Now we are in the deepest part of the night, the sky dark as an old well. I remember the sound of my heart thundering in my ears the night Mun and I ride home after stealing the radio from the widower. All the way home the muscle storming in my chest. This time, my heart lies still, but I am not fooled by its silence.

It takes an hour to get to the fourth ger. Once again the driver cuts the engine. We roll noiselessly for another few hundred meters before coming to a stop. The girl takes a deep breath in through her mouth and pushes it out through her nose. I wonder if she does this to quiet her mind, or if it’s just a habit.

After her, I slip out of the truck and wrap my robe around my shoulders. Even in the limited moonlight the breath visibly issues out of our bodies, our auras hovering in the air as we move. The three men pull the masks over their faces. We are still fifty meters from the homestead. It is a large operation consisting of a series of ger, the smallest one larger than the one my opponent and the little girl call home. The ger are positioned to form a U. In the center are multiple pens, though there are so many they stretch beyond the safety of the half circle.

My opponent taps the little girl on the shoulder and makes a signal with his hand. The child then turns to me. Remember, she whispers, if you see anything, whistle. I neither agree nor shake my head, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The four of us fan out behind her.

The first pen is farthest from the ger. There must be a hundred animals behind the wire. What is it about the child that keeps them from panicking? Easily she cuts through the flock, culling three before closing the gate. When they’re out, she hands them off to my opponent, who runs them back up to the truck. The rest of us move on.

At the next pen just as the girl is unhooking the gate my wrist beeps the hour two times, to my ears the sound like a shotgun. We freeze in our tracks. I stop breathing. A lifetime passes. I remind myself there is no liberation apart from the Triple Gem; to access it we must move beyond fear. Fortunately, we are far enough from the nearest ger and the wind is blowing away from us, away from where the family lies sleeping. From the way he balls his hands, I know the second man in our group wants to hit me, but he is too far away. After another minute of standing still, the girl opens the pen and makes her selections. This time it is the driver who disappears into the night with the animals.