Spring 29, 513 AV
The Sea of Grass near the Southern Border
--------------------------------------------------
The webbing team travelled slowly - there was no reason to hurry, and every reason to take time. In rotating shifts two or three of the traveller's would ride slack on their horses, their eyes empty and faces absent as they drifted loosely through the web, seeking anomalies, weakness, imperfections. The party marched, particularly with the current limitations of the fragile web as a warning system, in a close formation.
Ara had, in her first few shifts at this, felt continuously taut and nervous, worried she'd fall in the twilight of consciousness during her own shift. She'd picked up, quickly, the knack of it, for it was really tremendously simple - trust Canterfoot. The strider, after all, in her way understood the web for more intimately than even a master human webber did, and could feel the slip and slack of her physical form as surely as she felt Ara's webbing form vibrate across the arc of her back. She knew how to keep her Drykas on her back.
But, as they rode in slow progression through the winding grass around a dry gully, Ara had no particular duties to the team. And so, she rode loose on her yvas, her hips falling into sync with the rise and fall of Canter's back. She concentrated on the subtleties of that rhythm - she felt the habitual tiredness of a long journey, but the immediate energy of good rest, in the gentle tramp, the lift of the hooves, the rolling of the long spine beneath her, the relaxed energy of her neck muscles vibrating down the ribs and through Ara's thighs. Canter was well, the trail was easy. The sensual enjoyment of that feeling of being knit to your horse pulsed gently through her.
When she was young, she had thought that the art of the Rider lay in the full-tilt gallop. There was an art to that, it was true, but there was an art, related but different, to the slow trot, to the canter, even to standing at rest, a rhythm and force and energy all its own. Ara's legs and back plied this art, now, the art of oneness, the art of listening closely with all the knots and sinews of your knit form, the art of resting energy, of conservation, in balance with the horse. In her young days, when she and Canter had still been learning from each other, she had not mastered the balance of this - she would relax in a way that rested her and exhausted Canter, or she would pull herself up light on the saddle, leaving Canter relaxed, and exhausting herself. Slowly over time, for Canter was a wise and patient teacher, she had learned the balance, and then the trust more than this - trust in her own legs, and trust in Canter herself, in her strength, balance, and care.
Ara, herself, was working now, then, riding with one arm wrapped around her distaff, the other spinning the long train of cotton. She whistled softly to herself, as she rode, a faint song, mostly simply to give her mind a rhythm to move along with. It was harder, here, spinning alone. She had thought at first it was environmental, that it was the spinning on horseback, or in the campstools in a low, unfamiliar tent. But time, now, had taught her it was not this - it had to do with Livvy, with her singing, the droning rhythm and the sliding tones of her odd, self-instructed music. She had taken to whistling it to herself, low hollow whistles. She had not whistled, not really in years, except as a way of shouting at her younger siblings when she needed their attention - the sound of her whistling was not a particularly pleasant one to her, being so unaccustomed to the vibration of sound made inside the body. But she had learned to make a tone that was hollow and mournful and low like Livvy's. She whistled it now and thought lyrics of the songs in her head, while the spindle dropped and dropped, and dropped, swaying gently with the rolling pulses of Canter's hips.
"Long road rising
Don't you worry about the end.
Long road rising
Don't you worry about the end.
Somebody wait for you around that bend.
Long road rising
There's a cook fire there
Long road rising
There's a cook fire there
And a lady with a cooking pot o' stew to share."
There was a harmony to all of this, a sympathy of moveless movement. The spindle fell, but never grew lower, Canter's muscles pulsed gently against her thighs, so natural and familiar, it was hardly like walking. Her hand danced across the fiber, smoothing it, but their dances were like a moth - fluttering and wild, and in the end, static, like a pattern you can't quite tease out. And the grass itself, the grass itself, ever rolling, never changing, eternity in the shape of waving, gentle fingers of sharp green in the dull brown light of afternoon.
The distaff was growing thin, and the spindle fat. She twirled her fingers in winding, fluid ladder steps, to catch the Little Wooden Mistress in her hand, then reached the lead thread to her mouth, snipping it with sharp, pearly eye-tooth. The half empty distaff she slung across the saddle, like a spear, and then slowly started whirling the thread into a slender skein. Skeining the thread took much longer than the wool, because it was so fine, and she sighed softly, with a smile, watching the skein grow.
A man rode beside her on his own Strider, an older man, with mild, brown eyes and knotted hair. She wandered her own eyes and caught his, now for just a moment, inadvertently. She smiled politely. He smiled back, a bit more dreamily and reached over to pat her thigh in a way uncomfortably half-way in between the condescension of a father, and the appraisal of a horse breeder - and it was a little higher on her thigh than she would have liked as well, but not to high as to be inappropriate. She smiled a little more wanly.
"Spinning. That's a good craft for a young girl to learn."
Unable to really respond in any other way with her hands knotted with string, and her voice utterly averse to leaning into the close intimacy of a whisper, she simply nodded, politely.
"Very good. You weave when you're at home, too?"
She nodded.
"Very good work for a young girl. You'll be having babes in a year or two, hmm? You can spin their swaddling bands, hmm?"
She blushed, now, but nodded again.
"Hmmm. Yes, I imagine."
He patted her thigh one more time and went back to his own thoughts.
She stared at the skein uncomfortably, now, marriage lace unformed in her hands. Not that the concept of a marriage was repellent to her, of course. Marriage couldn't be repellent in her mind any more than, say, riding sentry could. It was simply a thing that one knew must be done at some point. She had no particular hunger for it, for none had excited one in her, but it was a meal that, her mind accepted, she would eat one day. It was not repulsion, just simple nervous fear. There was a part of her that, out on this trail, that thought of the whole webbing adventure as a lark, as an adventure in the way that children understand the word. But then the core of her knew it wasn't. It was the ending of something and the beginning of something else - of responsibility, perhaps. And it was not that she resented this. On the contrary, being a good servant of the Web was something that resonated strongly with her, it was a life she could imagine with pleasure and joy, the slow abdication of self to endeavor, of identity to purpose. It was in contrast that she was afraid she was not ready, that she was not enough of an adult - a feeling as if she, a little girl, was an impostor posing as a full fledged adult in a room full of wise men.
The skein was wound, and she untraced her fingers from among its whirling threads. She opened up her saddlebag and nestled the skein down by the others she had spun. Then, she opened the sack that hung from the other side, and began to pull and whirl the fibers of raw, picked and seeded cotton, to splice it to her remnant and wind it in slow sheets around the distaff. Work, in all things, work was an escape.
x
The Sea of Grass near the Southern Border
--------------------------------------------------
The webbing team travelled slowly - there was no reason to hurry, and every reason to take time. In rotating shifts two or three of the traveller's would ride slack on their horses, their eyes empty and faces absent as they drifted loosely through the web, seeking anomalies, weakness, imperfections. The party marched, particularly with the current limitations of the fragile web as a warning system, in a close formation.
Ara had, in her first few shifts at this, felt continuously taut and nervous, worried she'd fall in the twilight of consciousness during her own shift. She'd picked up, quickly, the knack of it, for it was really tremendously simple - trust Canterfoot. The strider, after all, in her way understood the web for more intimately than even a master human webber did, and could feel the slip and slack of her physical form as surely as she felt Ara's webbing form vibrate across the arc of her back. She knew how to keep her Drykas on her back.
But, as they rode in slow progression through the winding grass around a dry gully, Ara had no particular duties to the team. And so, she rode loose on her yvas, her hips falling into sync with the rise and fall of Canter's back. She concentrated on the subtleties of that rhythm - she felt the habitual tiredness of a long journey, but the immediate energy of good rest, in the gentle tramp, the lift of the hooves, the rolling of the long spine beneath her, the relaxed energy of her neck muscles vibrating down the ribs and through Ara's thighs. Canter was well, the trail was easy. The sensual enjoyment of that feeling of being knit to your horse pulsed gently through her.
When she was young, she had thought that the art of the Rider lay in the full-tilt gallop. There was an art to that, it was true, but there was an art, related but different, to the slow trot, to the canter, even to standing at rest, a rhythm and force and energy all its own. Ara's legs and back plied this art, now, the art of oneness, the art of listening closely with all the knots and sinews of your knit form, the art of resting energy, of conservation, in balance with the horse. In her young days, when she and Canter had still been learning from each other, she had not mastered the balance of this - she would relax in a way that rested her and exhausted Canter, or she would pull herself up light on the saddle, leaving Canter relaxed, and exhausting herself. Slowly over time, for Canter was a wise and patient teacher, she had learned the balance, and then the trust more than this - trust in her own legs, and trust in Canter herself, in her strength, balance, and care.
Ara, herself, was working now, then, riding with one arm wrapped around her distaff, the other spinning the long train of cotton. She whistled softly to herself, as she rode, a faint song, mostly simply to give her mind a rhythm to move along with. It was harder, here, spinning alone. She had thought at first it was environmental, that it was the spinning on horseback, or in the campstools in a low, unfamiliar tent. But time, now, had taught her it was not this - it had to do with Livvy, with her singing, the droning rhythm and the sliding tones of her odd, self-instructed music. She had taken to whistling it to herself, low hollow whistles. She had not whistled, not really in years, except as a way of shouting at her younger siblings when she needed their attention - the sound of her whistling was not a particularly pleasant one to her, being so unaccustomed to the vibration of sound made inside the body. But she had learned to make a tone that was hollow and mournful and low like Livvy's. She whistled it now and thought lyrics of the songs in her head, while the spindle dropped and dropped, and dropped, swaying gently with the rolling pulses of Canter's hips.
"Long road rising
Don't you worry about the end.
Long road rising
Don't you worry about the end.
Somebody wait for you around that bend.
Long road rising
There's a cook fire there
Long road rising
There's a cook fire there
And a lady with a cooking pot o' stew to share."
There was a harmony to all of this, a sympathy of moveless movement. The spindle fell, but never grew lower, Canter's muscles pulsed gently against her thighs, so natural and familiar, it was hardly like walking. Her hand danced across the fiber, smoothing it, but their dances were like a moth - fluttering and wild, and in the end, static, like a pattern you can't quite tease out. And the grass itself, the grass itself, ever rolling, never changing, eternity in the shape of waving, gentle fingers of sharp green in the dull brown light of afternoon.
The distaff was growing thin, and the spindle fat. She twirled her fingers in winding, fluid ladder steps, to catch the Little Wooden Mistress in her hand, then reached the lead thread to her mouth, snipping it with sharp, pearly eye-tooth. The half empty distaff she slung across the saddle, like a spear, and then slowly started whirling the thread into a slender skein. Skeining the thread took much longer than the wool, because it was so fine, and she sighed softly, with a smile, watching the skein grow.
A man rode beside her on his own Strider, an older man, with mild, brown eyes and knotted hair. She wandered her own eyes and caught his, now for just a moment, inadvertently. She smiled politely. He smiled back, a bit more dreamily and reached over to pat her thigh in a way uncomfortably half-way in between the condescension of a father, and the appraisal of a horse breeder - and it was a little higher on her thigh than she would have liked as well, but not to high as to be inappropriate. She smiled a little more wanly.
"Spinning. That's a good craft for a young girl to learn."
Unable to really respond in any other way with her hands knotted with string, and her voice utterly averse to leaning into the close intimacy of a whisper, she simply nodded, politely.
"Very good. You weave when you're at home, too?"
She nodded.
"Very good work for a young girl. You'll be having babes in a year or two, hmm? You can spin their swaddling bands, hmm?"
She blushed, now, but nodded again.
"Hmmm. Yes, I imagine."
He patted her thigh one more time and went back to his own thoughts.
She stared at the skein uncomfortably, now, marriage lace unformed in her hands. Not that the concept of a marriage was repellent to her, of course. Marriage couldn't be repellent in her mind any more than, say, riding sentry could. It was simply a thing that one knew must be done at some point. She had no particular hunger for it, for none had excited one in her, but it was a meal that, her mind accepted, she would eat one day. It was not repulsion, just simple nervous fear. There was a part of her that, out on this trail, that thought of the whole webbing adventure as a lark, as an adventure in the way that children understand the word. But then the core of her knew it wasn't. It was the ending of something and the beginning of something else - of responsibility, perhaps. And it was not that she resented this. On the contrary, being a good servant of the Web was something that resonated strongly with her, it was a life she could imagine with pleasure and joy, the slow abdication of self to endeavor, of identity to purpose. It was in contrast that she was afraid she was not ready, that she was not enough of an adult - a feeling as if she, a little girl, was an impostor posing as a full fledged adult in a room full of wise men.
The skein was wound, and she untraced her fingers from among its whirling threads. She opened up her saddlebag and nestled the skein down by the others she had spun. Then, she opened the sack that hung from the other side, and began to pull and whirl the fibers of raw, picked and seeded cotton, to splice it to her remnant and wind it in slow sheets around the distaff. Work, in all things, work was an escape.
x
