Open To Spin a Yarn

[Ava Felldancer]

31, Summer, 513 AV Retting flax to make fiber to spin was one of Ava’s least favorite things to do. It ranked right up there with cleaning bits of dung, dead insects, and other questionable materials out of a sheep’s fleece to prepare the fiber for spinning. The stalks of flax should be ready now at least. This yarn was destined to be sold, not woven, which suited Ava fine. She would weave with linen, but she preferred wool as her canvas. Ava reached the part of the stream where she used rocks to secure the stalks of flax in the water. She knelt and quickly picked up each rock with one hand, using the other hand to catch the waterlogged plant stalks before the current swept the stalks away. She tested the stalks, frowning as a strand of hair fell into her eyes. “Finally done.”, she said to herself as she gathered the dripping plant stalks into a bundle. A equine snort behind her had Ava shaking her head as she stood up, the bundle held securely in her arms. “Oh I know, this is your least favorite part. I don’t blame you really. I don’t like carrying the things either. They are wet and slimy. Nothing I can do about it though.”, she replied as she walked up to her strider, Orsino. The stallion laid back his ears as she approached with the awkward bundle. “Now relax Orsi. It’s not that bad.”, Ava said in an attempt to coax her strider into accepting the task. It would all depend on his mood as she very well knew from past experience. She kept talking while she slowly secured the wet bundle of reeds to Orsino’s back via his yvas. The stallion shook his head once Ava was done and peered out from under his wild mane with a long suffering look. She smiled and reached out to rub under his forelock affectionately, “I know. I owe you a pampering session after this, yes?” Orsino bobbed his head repeatedly at the question. “Alright. I promise.”, Ava replied, amusement in her voice, before turning away from the stream to head back to the pavilion. Ava pulled her straw hat back onto her head since it had fallen to hang down her back while she was working. The day was promising to be a good one, bright and clear and of course hot. It was early enough in the summer that if she wasn’t careful she would end up with another sunburn. One a season was more than enough as far as she was concerned. A brisk breeze stirred the grass as Ava walked beside Orsino, keeping her eyes open for any plants that looked edible or would be good for changing into dyes for her yarn. The spring flowers were gone, but some of the summer plants would produce a bright yellow dye, and if she could find any of those beetles her grandmother had always wanted then she could dye up some more red yarn which was always prized by her clan. Her keen eyes spotted a likely plant, one that the beetles liked to eat. Her attention focused on the plant she veered off of the path she had taken to get to the riverr. Sure enough, the dark spots on the plant are the beetle she wanted to collect. A quick trip to get her collection container out of a bag tied to Orsino’s yvas and a minute later she was happily occupied with the capture of bugs.

[Aramenta]

Aramenta had fallen asleep. Waking, this surprised her.

Each morning, since her womb had begun to fill, she woke up at four bells, with both a pervasive nausea and a powerful pain in the nerve bundle at core of her left buttock for no reason she could understand. And so, every morning, she crawled out of the bed she now shared with the still unfamiliar scent of her husband, had Livvy help her dress, and went down to the river to bathe. This had become her moment, the moment of the day in which she could be quiet and alone, and away - for even sleep, now, was not her own, under the weight of her husband's arm. Livvy would help her to the waterside - for the pinch in her nerves made walking an absolute agony - but then would, with delicacy, leave her mistress alone in the water, to go and tend to the horses, and do the morning's chore work.

The water was seductive - cold and clear and running over her skin, it gave her a feeling of cleanliness that almost... almost took away the feeling of being dirtied that pervaded her, now. So cold, beneath the hot summer air, her skin bare to elements, and noone to see her but the occaisional quiet visiting rabbits and ducks, who paid her no more heed than they would a clump of immobile water-lilies. She would lie in the water, watching her flesh float and flow, placing her head even under the water to to feel that way it tugged at her hair. Sometimes, like this, when she was truly unhappy, she'd dunk under the water, then drop into webbing, feeling the strange push pull, of the seductive whisper of the underweb, and teh desperate cries of her own limp body, far, far way. She would wake with a gasp and an involuntary struggle, feeling the sudden frenetic energy in her limbs - just to feel something. Panic was a feeling, at least. Each time she pushed, just a few seconds longer, waiting as long as she could to fight her way out of wherever her body had drifted. She had learned to fumble towards the shore from the deep current in this way, her narrow, shiver arms and legs fighting against the river's cold, impassive current as her passive body was drawn into the main channel, one day.

But today, she had lain, her body submerged and her head resting on a stone, and had drifted off. She awoke very late in the morning, her body shivering violently in the current, almost as if her limbs had become possessed. Her water-wracked body shaking clumsily as she pulled herself to shore. It was late now, she was lucky noone had ridden down and found her there, and told her husband, and then... then there would be questions, and she knew, she would not come alone to bathe alone in the blue-clear water. She would have to be more careful.

She took her dress - since she had gotten pregnant, her trousers fit peculiarly with the bloating, and she spotted blood at unpredictable inconvenient times - on her arm, and pulled herself into the sun, to let the warmth de-palsy her limbs, the dress pulled over her like a blanket. She felt the sun stroke her skin, and became sleepy again, her eyes drooping.

No! She had to be careful! She needed these baths.

She jerked up to a sitting position, and woke her ears.

A horse, and footfalls, and a quiet voice. She involuntarily tried to call out - but of course, she had no voice, so that did not good, instead, awkwardly, she tried to wriggle her wet arms into the dress. Hoping she could work fast enoguh with her clumsy limbs not to humiliate herself.
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[Ava Felldancer]

Not one, or two, but three plants of the type she wanted grew close together and all happily speckled with the dye producing beetles. She left several of the bugs on each plant since she didn’t want to decimate them. It was the way of the Drykas to take what was needed and leave the rest to grow more for next season. To do things any other way would be to doom themselves as well. Ava straightened up, her container full of precious bugs firmly clasped in her hand. She tipped her head back to peer at the sky, her hat falling off of her head to hang down her back again. It was later than she thought, but the time had not been wasted. Her grandfather would be... Ava sighed as her thoughts shifted, No, he won’t be pleased because he isn’t here to know. I miss you grandfather. The young woman stood there, staring into the distance for several minutes, lost in her thoughts. It was easy to remember the last patterns her grandfather had taught her. It was late that winter and Ava’s grandmother and her father’s new wife had just succumbed to the pox with her younger sister having died earlier in the winter. Spring was around the corner and they were hopeful that would be the end of it, until the day her grandfather couldn’t get up to greet the morning. The next few days were a whirlwind, tending to her grandfather while learning everything he wished to pass to his granddaughter. The patterns were a gift she would always cherish even as she mourned what was lost. Ava’s head snapped up as a familiar whicker interrupted her thoughts. It was Orsino, but not nearby. It sounded like the stallion had wandered back to the river. “Blood and fire!”, Ava swore aloud as she pivoted and broke into a jog back towards the river. It would be just her luck that Orsino would decide to go for a swim, or worse roll in the mud. That would make the processing of the plant fiber just that much more difficult, if not impossible. If her wandering mind had ruined the past weeks work. Well, her father would say that is what she got for letting her mind wander. Ava swore again and pushed herself to a run, keeping the container with the bugs grasped firmly. Maybe if she was fast enough she could keep Orsino from any mischief, maybe. Fortunately for Ava her wayward strider was far more interested in the young woman he had found dressing by the river. The stallion never passed up an opportunity for mischief so he had moved as quietly as a strider could up to the edge of the river where Ara was fighting with damp skin and dry clothing. The strider’s muzzle snaked out to try and catch a bit of Ara’s dress in his teeth. It was a game he instigated with Ava since they were bonded and he never passed up a chance to play it. He whickered softly as the hem of Ara’s dress fluttered around his muzzle. Pavi Common Thoughts

[Aramenta]

The bodice caught on her wet forearms and she began to wriggle it down, the skirts whisking about her chest while her goosepimpled legs braced against the grass. Hurry, Hurry! She tugged and gyrated, trying to figure otu... no! The dress was caught on something. She started at taking it back off, perhaps, she though, she had caught it on a low hanging branch of one the stream-side cottonwoods - but then she would be even nakeder. so instead, her constrained arms began to feel around.

It was then she felt hot breath, and the sound of a voice - a horse's voice, mind you, but still, a voice, low and baritone. It startled her and she dropped to the ground, pulling out of the dress with a loud ripping of the seam in the back and rolling away, legs and arms curled round her nakedness, looking about.

In a better moment she would have found the whole situation ridiculous - the horse was practically laughing at her, the white dress hanging, torn and cocked from his great teeth, and the sound of a young-woman's footfalls, running. Ara pulled herself back into a brake of scrabbling brambles that led down toward the river, crouching pitifully into the weeds, and looking back up at the horse. She pushed the damp rope of her unbound her back over her shoulders and looked imploringly at the horse, signing insistently: Please, please, please. My dress.
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