Four years for our fierce little warrior girl.

Photo copyright Wings, 2018; all rights reserved.

It can't possibly have been four years.

But it has.

Four years since our little warrior girl, the one Wings nicknamed Kachina (in part because of her fierceness, and because her eventual acceptance of him felt like a spirit's magic), walked on. 

Lilith was not the dog I ever intended to have, but she found Griffin and me, and it was a done deal before I ever knew it. Griffin taught her how to be a dog, how to be. She had been so badly abused, she knew nothing but pain and fear — and relief at having found us, and then the kind of love that is so utterly terrified of losing it, of being lost.

She was also the toughest dog who ever owned me, because her terror of being hurt again, of being abandoned, made her aggressive. Not toward me; just everyone and everything else. She was so suspicious of Wings that by the time she finally deigned to take food from his hand, or look at him without baring her teeth, he called it a victory.

As much difficulty as she caused me, we understood each other, she and I. We had too much in common for it to be otherwise. By the time Wings took that photo, the most beautiful one of her, looking happy and inquisitive, time had worked a little of its magic, and she was mostly calm. She was happy. She wasn't healthy anymore; her battle with cancer consumed nearly the last three years of her life. She fought it like the warrior she was, but we always knew there would come a point when it would win.

When it won over our fierce little girl, it took its victory in the gentlest way possible. She went to sleep on her own, breathed deeply for a while, then slipped away with the waning sunlight. Around this time last year, she visited me in a dream; I haven't seen her lately in any world, but I assume that's because she now has her brother back, and they're happy.

This is always a tough week: The three who came with me from the East Coast to here, Dom, Lilith, and Griffin, are all in that other world now — Dom in 2011, on the 14th; Lilith in 2014, on the 10th; and Griffin in 2016, on the 16th. Today is the first of the three, and just seeing her beautiful little face, so happy in this world at last but with so little time left overall, breaks our hearts all over again.

In a few minutes (at 4:16PM, to be exact), I'll go out to where her body rests, and give her cedar and tobacco. Her spirit's long gone, of course, but I think she'll know. At least now when her spirit comes back to visit, she has a house to stay in, comfortable and warm.

We love you, Lilith, our fierce one.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.