Chapter One: Happy Birthday
19th day, Cold Moon, 112 AE
Okmulgi, Aniyunwiya Nation

     A handsome young man slouched artfully over his math notes, glossy black hair uncut and unbound flowing over his shoulders. Only half of his attention was on the teacher’s words, half on the two girls in his class. This was his last course of the day and he was impatient for it to be over. He was seventeen today, finally old enough to legally drink and a couple of his older friends had promised to take him out to a place they knew after school.
     A change in the pitch and speed of the old man’s voice warned him to sharpen his attention although he did not shift or look up from his aimless doodling in the margins of his notebook.
     “Laughing Coyote!” The grey-haired instructor snapped his name and he whipped his head up as though startled. Dark eyes set in a seamed and weathered face tried to pierce his guileless gaze. After a pause the old man asked for a definition of the formula he’d just described.
     Laughing Coyote blinked as though thinking and then carefully recited the rhymed poem he’d made up to remember the formula by. He’d been particularly proud of how he had managed to work it so the number of syllables was an integral part. But Iron Cloud didn’t seem to be impressed; he just gave a curt nod then turned on the whispering girls and shot queries sharp as arrows at them.
     Finally the assembly drum sounded out the welcome rhythm of the ending beat; signaling the end of classes for the day at the college of Okmulgi. He quickly tied his notebook shut and folded his math book back into its case then tucked both into his shoulder bag. He capped his ink bottle and put it and his quills into their case and slid the case into his bag’s side pocket. He rose gracefully to his feet and shouldered his bag, flipped dust off the black and blue striped blanket he’d sat on and folded it over his other shoulder. Taking a glance around the hexagonal room he saw that he was the last to leave; only Iron Cloud stood still in the middle of the circle.
     Laughing Coyote nodded respectfully to his elder and went around the right side of the circle towards the entrance. This counter-sunwise path seemed to irritate the old man and he humphed before saying “Young man, stop a moment.” He stopped, a step after Iron Cloud spoke, maybe two. Suppressing a sigh he turned a face of polite inquiry to his teacher.
     “You have been my student for over a year now,” Iron Cloud began, “you are a bright and quick learner, yet I feel there is more to you than you have shown. I think you could achieve great things if you were ever to truly apply yourself.”
     I’ve heard this speech a dozen times Laughing coyote thought while keeping his face perfectly still, the only talk more annoying begins with -why can’t you be more like your brothers.
     “You come from a proud family, a strong clan that has done much for our people. You have been given many opportunities and your family expects that you will make the most of your abilities.” He raised a grizzled eyebrow sternly, “I doubt your mother would be pleased to hear how you’ve been breezing around like a summer wind seeing how many skirts he can ruffle.”
     He stiffened slightly; his mother and most of his family lived in the capitol city of Etowah where he was born. It was not that far away. “Have I been lax in my schoolwork? Have I ever failed to meet any of the requirements?” At Iron Cloud’s headshake he continued in slightly aggrieved tones “I have also offered to help other students with their studies.” And he had offered to help the girls, singly or together with their schoolwork. He had also offered to do anything, singly or together, that they might wish on an afterschool evening. Both had rejected both offers. “I am taking several difficult courses and doing well in all of them.”
     “Yes, you do well at several things. Think how good you could be if you narrowed your focus to just a few things. Think of how great it would be to focus all your will upon just one thing.”
     Laughing Coyote privately thought that being tied down to just one thing would be the most boring thing in the world. Like eating cornbread for every single meal. “I haven’t fully decided what I want to focus on.” He replied noncommittally.
     Iron Cloud gave him a long penetrating stare, “I know that today is your birthing-day. You have been a man for a year now” he didn’t finish with the obvious it’s time you started acting like it. But it hung unspoken in the air between them.
     “Yes, thank you. I have people waiting to celebrate with me in fact.” He took a step backwards towards the beckoning entrance and smiled big, “I shouldn’t be late” another step back.
     The old man bent his wolf grey head and waved him off; he beat feet away with as much haste as was seemly, down the hall and out into the cold sunset. He breathed deeply of the crisp air and glanced around the open court in the center of the circle of seven academic buildings.
     In the very center of the circle were seven sculptures of the original founding clans of the Aniyunwiya. Tall Otter and Yellow Horse were waiting for him by the bird clan statue talking to a tall beautiful girl in a red leather dress. She stopped smiling when she recognized him walking up, and pulled her bison robe closed to Yellow Horse’s clear dismay. She excused herself as he joined the group giving him a long cold look as she left.
     “Well Lazy Coyote, what took you so long? We were set to go without you.” Tall Otter joked as he pushed himself off of the giant black-lacquered eagle claws he’d been lounging against. He hefted his leather bag, decorated with otter skin and shells onto his back and they started to walk along the western path which led out of the schools complex.
     “It wasn’t my fault! My last instructor just wanted to chew my ears about not being focused enough, just as the three before him did, more or less word per word. Sometimes it is truly annoying that my grandfather has tenure here.” He made a tragic face and Tall Otter laughed, but Yellow Horse was still sighing after the retreating form of the girl in red.
     “What did you do to her?” Yellow Horse lip pointed. “She was ready to come with us until she saw who we were waiting for.”
     “Rather ask what she did to me!” laughing Coyote protested his innocence “They don’t call her Cat-Claws Swift for nothing as the scratches on my back can tell you.”
     Yellow Horse snorted, unamused “They should have named you Horny Coyote!”
     Laughing Coyote started to object to the besmirching of his name when the sight of another girl over Yellow Horse’s shoulder caused his breath to die in his throat. “Hide me, quick!” he whispered and ducked. His friends stopped joking and closed ranks in front of him, screening him from view as his lover stalked by, her nose in the air.
     Tall Otter was chuckling “Too late Hiding Coyote, I think you were spotted.” He shook his head in disbelief “Whatever could you have done to anger someone as gentle as Owlfeathers?”
     “She’s not nearly so gentle when she catches you in her sister’s blankets instead of her own.” He mumbled, ungentle was hardly the word for the fit she’d thrown, along with anything in reach and not fastened down. And the things she’d called him, he hadn’t thought a girl as sweet as her would know words like that. She hadn’t even let him explain.
     Both his friends turned on him looks of not-very-shocked shock and not-that-amused amusement. “What!?” They exclaimed together and then went on separately;
     “You are a dog, she’s the sweetest girl in our year group! I thought you were serious about her?”
     “Is there any girl at this college you haven’t tumbled and then angered?”
     “Blue Hawk, River Sheen, and um, Never Smiles.” He replied to the second question while peering in the direction Owlfeathers had stormed off in.
     “Ha! Only the man-hearted ones he claims not to have had.” Yellow Horse tossed back his dark braids bound with yellow ribbons and tucked his thumbs into his woven leather belt. He leveled a stern look at Laughing Coyote. “You said this was going to be a new year for you. And here it is not even twenty days into it and you are following the same bad trail as before.”
     He was still looking after Owlfeathers and not really listening to his friend’s words just nodding agreement. Over his shoulder he saw her return. She had brought friends.
     He hurried his steps to get through the curving arch that marked the entrance of the college and out to the junction of several streets that met in front of the school. He glanced back again as his taller friends had to stretch their legs to keep up with his quick pace. Owlfeathers and the pack of angry girls had paused at the circle of statues to meet up with Cat-Claws Swift and another girl. Yellow Horse saw him look back and followed his gaze, a corner of his mouth quirked up.
     “Oh wait a bit Laughing Coyote, I seem to have forgotten my bag.” Yellow Horse feigned great distress at this and threw a meaningful look at Tall Otter.
     “Of course you must go back for it.” Tall Otter said with great seriousness “Don’t you think so Laughing Coyote?”
     “Yeah, sure, of course. I’ll just uh, meet you guys there!” He bolted off down the street that led towards the ocean and the docks. He could hear Tall Otter laughing behind him.
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