Another Tribe

Part 5 Reluctant respect

Ringwind had never liked the sleeping Robert, but after he woke up, he developed an even deeper hatred of Julii's pink-white man. She would have been very happy to share her white man with her best friend, but Ringwind would not even make the effort to try talking to Robert.

Quite literally, a world of learning was right there at his fingertips but Ringwind was too rude to join in.

She had never seen Ringwind be mean before, but now, whenever he found the opportunity, Ringwind was rude to her Robert.

Luckily, Robert would never understand what Ringwind was saying about him because her pink-white man had absolutely no interest in learning Julii's words.

Every day she would pump him for more of his words and he would happily talk for hours but, much to her amazement, he had no interest in learning hers.

How could he miss such a wonderful opportunity to learn? It made no sense to Julii but it did give her more time to learn from him. She felt a little selfish but it wasn't as though she hadn't tried to teach her words while spending every free moment with him.

It annoyed her that she still had to fetch water, skin the jack rabbits, and butcher the deer that Ringwind and her father killed. She no longer enjoyed doing any of it. She no longer sat with the other girls and laughed about Ringwind and the other boys. All she wanted to do was get back to her Robert.

The girls teased her. They said she was in love with Robert. Julii told them that her only interest in him was learning his words. It surprised her how stressful not telling the truth could be. She had never not told the truth before; she had never needed to not tell the truth before. Everyone in her tribe knew what everyone else was doing and thinking, so not telling the truth had never made any sense before.

Things then got much more complicated when not telling the truth once, as it led to having to not tell the truth a second and third time. Julii had not prepared herself for her not telling the truth leading to the need for more not telling the truth.

This spiral of deceit all started when one of the girls asked Julii, "If you only want to learn his words, why did you sit with him during all of the days he slept through fever?"

This forced Julii to simply make-up: "I needed to keep his throat clear or he would suffocate."

But then another of the girls asked: "If that is true, why do you still sit by his side when he sleeps by the waterhole?" This necessitated another untruth in order to support the previous untruth. "The leaves on the back of his head must be changed regularly."

But this was not the truth either. Her Robert's head had healed days ago. The only reason she still bound leaves to his head with a strip of hide was because she had not told the truth and needed to perpetuate her deceit. It all felt very stressful.

Now the untruth that had barely silenced the girls had to be perpetuated even with her Robert. Every day she had to change his leaves while telling him he still needed them.

The very man she had wanted to completely reveal herself to was now being misled because of an untruth told to others. She hoped that he would never find out that she had not told the truth. This was all so horribly stressful!

Julii constantly felt as though she was about to get caught for doing something bad. The only thing she had done was say words that were not the truth for no personal gain, and she hadn't hurt another. Why did it feel so bad? This was unbearable!