Tendays were usually celebratory. There was almost always an opportunity for Naadiya to encourage the music to be played louder while she dragged the more hesitant settlers to dance. The songs she had picked up while on the Svefra ship were easy to remember and just as easy to learn for the first time and a couple of times she had even gotten Syka’s unlikely musicians to belt out a note or two between drinks. Those efforts had been the only contribution Naadiya could claim to bring on those occasions but even that was no longer.
This season’s Tendays had not featured much dancing. Or music. Or joy of any kind. The bits of laughter that escaped tensed lips seemed stained with uncertainty. Was laughing appropriate in the recently stress filled environment? She recalled Faye’s quickly aging body and the rotting husk Ialari saw herself as, and Naadiya cringed biting the inside of her cheek as she got ready.
It had taken Naadiya almost half of Spring to find out what triggered her curse. Unlike some of the other settlers whose afflictions could be considered constant, Naadiya’s had a way of being quelled. Thankful that her's was had a way of being reversed, part of her still envied the mage scholar, Reve, able to slip on a pair of gloves to cancel out his contact-driven rusting effect on metals. She wondered if Uta had been able to find a way to similarly mask her magnetism, with both curses affecting metal but she also doubted it. While the curses may have had a single original source, they seemed to be entirely different from one another in their nature.
It had taken her a while to embed the habit in herself into waking up every morning in a very mindful manner, but when it had stuck, it stuck for good. She woke every morning, denied herself the refreshment of her usual glass of water, and read from her journal which now sat where the water glass and jug had once been.
The notebook, much like her room, was an awful mess. There were pages that been torn out and stuck back in, some held with sewing pins, others just shoved between intact pages. Sketches for rug and towel layouts were mixed in with building floorpans, a running account of her finances and future plans, and copious notes on both her own curse and those of everyone else she had found out about. Her handwriting still had a strong slant, a trait she had unintentionally kept from writing Shiber so many years, but at least she wrote in fairly straight lines without the need for guidance, the positive aspect of having written from such a young in a culture that put so much emphasis on education and perseverance.
“The innkeeper is a curly haired blonde woman named Tazrae. She knows me and I know her but will continue to forget her if I’m not close to her.”
She read aloud, though her voice remained only a whisper. Naadiya had written the note on the top of the page, in a fast scrawl as if done after the rest of the writing. The same statement was also found on two more pages and Naadiya bit her lower lip. How many times had she forgotten and made a note to keep herself from forgetting only to forget again? Regardless, she had to keep trying. Naadiya wrote the same note on several more pages, right on very top of each page.
Going through the other things she had written of others, Naadiya definitely regretted some things she had done and said, whether she’d done it because of their curses or her own.
“We have to do better than this. I have to do better than this.”
Naadiya slipped her robe on and picked up her book, open to the page when she’d had the notes and walked to kitchen when there was already the sounds of chopping, stirring and pouring.
She got a somewhat hopeless expression from the woman doing the work and holding the tattered notebook with both hands, in an almost uncertain voice she spoke.
“You are Tazrae. I know you. I know that I know you. I also know I will forget you and forget that I know you. But you are not forgotten. Well you are but you're not!”
The word ‘know’ was starting to sound less and less like it belonged in any vocabulary but she didn’t let herself get lost in that thought. There was almost an instinct to introduce herself, but she remembered the woman did not forget others the way they forgot her, or at least Naadiya had made no such note.
Surprise lit the innkeeper’s eyes, and Naadiya could see the hint of a smile when the woman told Naadiya that if there was anything she wanted to eat, just to grab it while she continued to bake.
Naadiya skipped the yogurt and fruit topping, avoiding all cool and wet things. Instead, she took a warm cinnamon roll and dipped it in hot coffee, letting the baked treat sweeten the coffee and the coffee balance the sweetness of the roll.
After she ate, Naadiya thanked the innkeeper and took her book to the bathroom where she lowered herself in a steaming tub. A few drops of a lavender oil in the water and she relaxed in the vapor that rose from the water’s surface. She’d run out of oil soon and Juli had already told her there wasn’t anything similar that readily available for sale in Syka. Naadiya had considered asking James to try and find some while in Riverfall, but she always ended up deciding against it. It wasn’t the first of her products that she was running low on, but Naadiya couldn’t imagine that if she gave that type of list to James that he would flat out refuse, let alone actually come back with the correct phials and bottles. He probably wouldn’t even know if what he was buying was of good quality or not.
Reaching over to the notebook while remaining sitting in the hot water, Naadiya flipped to her 'To-Do' list and made a note to find some lavender and make the oil herself, it was an easy enough process and she had at last found her mother’s recipes and had started transcribing them from the tiny cramped script to a larger version in her journal, it always did good to keep some information in more than one place.
“Maybe I will use those orange lilies instead of lavender, there seemed to be plenty of those.”
Finished with her bath, she toweled herself dry and got ready for the presumably sad excuse for a tenday that today would hold. Along with her notebook, which she had put in a long strapped bag slung over one shoulder, Naadiya also took a wide brimmed hat. Her body was almost entirely covered, long sleeves and long pants. But the discomfort from the heat was less than the risk of getting caught in a sudden Sykan spring shower.
As expected, the crowd at today’s tenday was not the liveliest. She listening to the letter being read. In the short time she had known Alric, he had done nothing that would make Naadiya think there was reason to distrust him so she paid careful attention. He seemed to have a similar list to the ones that had been popping up around town and added his own experience with the divine.
She had suspected a god had something to do with the goings-on around the settlement, like many others amongst them. But Naadiya had feared it may have been Leth, not Rhysol who had been to blame. Glad that she had never voiced her suspicions, she also wondered what risk they each took in potentially accusing the wrong deity. Surely that could not have any positive consequences.
When the kids came running and crying for help, Naadiya had not been one of the first few to move. Children liked attention and she wasn’t sure just yet that this wasn’t a some trick they were playing during the tenday since everyone was gathered in one place.
Only when her eyes actually saw the dead woman’s body, did Naadiya finally believe. She had stood motionless, her hand covered her gaping mouth, only moving when she saw Shiress falling. Naadiya couldn’t understand how the doctor had actually tripped but she hadn’t been paying attention and the sand could sometimes gave way unexpectedly underfoot. Or it had been something else more sinister. Either way, she helped the woman up but was shaken off almost violently in the process.
Naadiya’s hat fell in the sand but she herself did not fall. With impatient hands, she beat the sand off her hat before slipping it back on and throwing a glare in Shiress' direction.
People were whispering, crying, arguing. Naadiya said nothing. She was silent. She was thinking.
Things like this didn’t happen in Syka.
Though… what do I know, I haven’t been here long enough to make that assessment. Even as she thought it, Naadiya knew she would not be able to convince herself the settlement had such darkness looming on a regular basis.
The body was being moved, the blade was revealed and it all became clear.
Matthias already had several people approaching him, so Naadiya scanned the area for the next in charge. She found James' face among the rest of the worried expressions and beelined to him.
When she reached him she spoke hurriedly, letting her distress and even anger pass through the filter.
“This is our fault!” She pushed her words out through clenched jaws. “We could have stopped this!”
First, the man almost wanted to react to her tone, as it seemed to point a finger. But Naadiya barely paused to breathe, panic seeping in. Who would be next?
“We knew she was having suicidal thoughts! We’ve known for nearly forty days! There are even notices all around town with her name and curse written there right at the bottom! But was anyone charged with watching her to make sure she wouldn’t act on those thoughts?! No?! It’s not like she’s important, right! She’s only the person caring for a horde of parentless children! Children who are now permanently scarred, even moreso than they already were!”
James’ jaw was tight enough to match Naadiya’s but he remained calm and in control.
“This is not anyone’s fault, Naadiya. The curses-“
“The curses!” She spat back bitterly, “they are not going away on their own! We pray and we pray but are we even praying to the right deities? None have helped so far. Is that our plan?! Thoughts and prayers?! That has been working so well, we now have a funeral pyre on a Tenday!”
Her last words, hit a soft spot and James’ shoulders dropped a bit, “I know.”
“We are not doing enough. We need to do something different, our appeals so far have not gained the right attention, if any. This place is blessed or guarded by Kihala isn’t it? How do we get her to show some interest in her flock?”
By then, there were Svefra arriving and the docks and James glanced over to the ships occupants as they crossed the sands. Naadiya followed his gaze, not forgetting he had still given her no answer.
“More sheep heading for the slaughter,” she said of the sea folk when she'd met James’ eyes again. “We have to do
something. The ship I came here on…”
She could see James remembered the ship and remembered its captain, an old and unsavory acquaintance of his own.
“When I got on the ship, they claimed that Laviku had nearly destroyed their vessel after the captain himself had insulted the god with an unsatisfactory sacrifice…” Naadiya watched the man’s face waiting for him to reach the same suggestion she was about to make, they were his people after all, and his god.
“To mend his errors,” she continued, though his face was already frowning at her, “he made another sacrifice. My camel. I’m not saying what he did was right or just but we sailed smoothly enough to reach Syka unhindered.”
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