Flashback I Left to Her the Twisted Skein

[Aramenta]

Summer 67, 504
The Edge of Endrykas
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Ara leaned hard on Livvy's arm. The strangled breathing in her throat still terrified her, but she refused to simply lie in bed. Her mouth was red and raw, and and when she swallowed, desperate to moisten the dry burn of her throat, she could still taste it, the floating ash of burning canvas, the sick flavor of burning horseflesh. She felt almost she could taste the individual Striders she knew so well on the scorch of her tongue: Featherrun, who had been retired when her grandfather had died, Junat who her father wept over like a lost brother, and her mother's strider, Dillflower, her stout, warrior's haunches like sharp mace on Ara's tongue.

Her mother.

Ara stopped, squeezed Livvy's shoulder. Livvy looked back up at her, her own young eye as sad and knowing as Ara's. Livvy had lost her mother in that same fire, after all. Ara had heard her crying about it in the middles of the nights when she awoke, thinking of her own loss. She had always liked Livvy. Their shared loss, something of it now made her realize a real, and meaningful love for her. Livvy did not speak, she did not need to speak. She understood. They walked more.

Her father and the healer had both told her the walking would not help anything. But Ara knew - she was not looking to help recover her physical injuries. She needed to walk. She needed to move. Sitting was death. She gasped through her hissing, tortured throat, but squeezing Livvy's strong, steady girl's-arm, she stumbled on through the long grass outside the temporary shelter they'd taken. Back and forth. Back and forth. Watching the herds pull docilely at the grass. Back and forth.

"Ama, Come la', slow down. We gone walk, we gone walk, but slow, slow…"

Ara nodded, with a quiet jerk of the head, and looked to her friend. Livvy looked back her brow furrowed, then pulled on her hand to stop her again. Ara stopped again, and turned to face Livvy. Then with a suddenness that made Ara start a little bit, Livvy threw her arms around her, and pulled her in tightly.

"Ama, you gone be okay… you gone be okay."

Ara was so young, still a little girl, though she'd grown a great deal in the past few days. When you are a child, perhaps, there is an understanding of love that is vague and passive. At that moment, with Livvy pulled tight against her, trying to comfort her, Ara knew, precisely and actively, what it was to be loved.

//She needs me. She needs me to be okay, she needs me to be comforted. Oh, Livvy…//

Ara wrapped her arms back around, and tried to speak, tried to respond, "I'm okay, I'll be okay, we both will." Her throat hissed and scratched, pulling at the words painfully, and she started, and cringed slightly, unable still to make a sound.

"Shh… hush, Ama, hush… let it rest. You jus' gotta let it rest. It'll come back. Your voice will come back. You remember Ama? We was learning a song. We gonna sing it again, just as soon as you's better."

"You will call my daughter Mistress, Olivia."

The voice of her father entered Ara's ear, and she stood up as if she'd been slapped. Father had been strange with grief. She tried to speak to him, but stopped, simply signing. It's ok, papa. It's ok.

Livvy did no such thing. She turned a terrible pale and looked at Ara's father with terror in her eyes that frightened Ara in reaction to it.

"Yes sir, yes sir. I'm sorry, sir, I 's jes'… sorry."

Her father nodded with a cold, impassive dignity, "Its fine I, understand child. You have had a difficult week. The only way, though, that this family is going to survive is if we all remember our roles. And fulfill them."

Ara's heart sank. Livvy bowed her head.

"Now. You go rest, Olivia. I'll take my daughter for a few bells. I need to speak with her."

"Yes sir."

Livvy looked back at Ara with something between hurt and regret, meeting her eyes perhaps a moment longer than she ought. Then turned, and left, and Ara, suddenly, felt a sick worry in her chest. Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong. Livvy was leaving, her papa was broken, their home was gone, and Mama…x

[Aramenta]

"Ara, you have been working too hard."

He looked sternly at his daughter, the expectation of a response heavy in his strong face. She opened her mouth to speak before remembering herself and shutting her lips, and making a sign that communicated, at once apology and entreaty. She didn't know what she was asking for, really. To let her keep walking, perhaps. Standing still, there was nothing to do, but quiver, and taste the death on her tongue.

Her father looked down, embarrassed and regretful at her silence. His voice softened.

"I know… its been hard for you. I know, I… have. I know what you're going through. I…"

She frowned, hard, she wanted, desperately to go and hug the man, but something in his manner, still, was desperate, foreign, angry in a way she found terrifying. It was not directed at her, this anger, but it was too big for her to approach.

"You need something to do that won't slow down your throat healing. And… you need to prepare to be useful in this family. There will be work enough for us all, now, with the pavilion burnt and… your mother gone, and the striders burnt."

She nodded. She felt ashamed. She had been little use enough before, being so young, and she was just a drag on the family now, hurt as she was.

"It is a strange way to be marked, but you are wind marked, now, one way or the other, my daughter. They will come, now that your burns are healing, and make the inkings for you soon. But you are marked, whether or not the external showing of it is there. If you cannot run, yet, or ride, as the healer says, I will teach you what you may do without using your body. I shall teach you the Webber's Way, and you will practice. You are a clever girl, you will learn it. And you can use it to help protect us from things in the future."

Ara's eyes went wide, and she desperately wanted to speak, though she had no idea what she would say, a fact made apparent by the paralytic stillness of her hands. Webbing! She was Drykas-born, and no slave, she had heard murmurs of it, had seen her mother fall into it, even. But real explanations, these had always been put off. It was a sacred thing. A thing for those who were wind marked. She felt frightened and excited all at once. What would it be! Would she be good at it? Would she hurt herself?

//Will I be able to speak?//

"Now. Lie down. The boys are tending the herd for a while, and your Livvy will obey. Lie down in the grass, then. It is a thing that must be shown rather than told."
x

[Aramenta]

Ara lay in the grass for a very long time. She did not understand. She wondered if she had failed somehow, if something magic had been meant to occur, but had failed to do so. She closed her eyes, feeling the waver of grass-stalks on her face, hearing the faint whirring of the high-summer cicadas off lower in the fields, tasting… still only ash and death, and the rawness of her own mouth.

And then, she was asleep. And asleep, she began to dream, idly, the faint, thin dreams of someone only halfway into the realm of Nysul. She was riding along on Canterfoot, who was healed form the burns on her legs, just as Livvy was. They were riding, only somehow, the earth they rode on was the sea - not the grass sea, but the salt sea she had seen spreading out beyond the fields, once or twice. The water whisked beneath her, and she did not waver or even feel the pounding of hooves beneath her, she only glided along. She leaned in close then, and lay her face against the strider's neck, and breathed deep, and Canter, somehow, was Livvy's own mother, her smell, her hard, war-scarred skin, her thick muscles.

And then she was awake, but could not see anything that had woken her. But she felt a strangeness, a sort of humming in the seat of her pelvis, a sort of electric tension inside of her. She closed her eyes and focused on it, felt, very faintly, something like the whisper of knots being tied inside of her, as if her whole body was a weaver's loom, and she were smashing the shuttle up hard against the strings to make a thick, strong weave. The smashing did not hurt, it felt, rather, natural in a way, the way she imagined the loom itself must feel - as if it were meant to be so. She sighed, a soft, heavy sigh, and left her eyes shut. Her hand pulled at her blouse untucking it, absently, and finger sought, where it was tied around her waste, the slender braid of her mother's hair she had cut from the back of her fire-molded corpse before they had sent it to the winds. She stroked it, softly, with her child-small fingertips, and realized her hands were shaking. And she smelled something, something strange she had never smelled before. It was as if, suddenly, instead of smelling what was in the air, her breath had changed, to carry in the running sap of every living thing around her. She smelled the confused smell of men's ambitions, the calm and nerve and surety of striders, the buzzing of flies, all in one great cavalcade, and beneath everything, the clean, vivid life of the grass itself, the eternal, unending grass.

And then, the humming in her own belly swelled up, thicker, and sweeter, like hearing, but hearing it in the center of one's bones, instead of the root of one's ears. It was a strange sensation, like being struck by a gentle lightning that never finishes its strike. And then she realized what it was: the sound was the sound of herself, and she felt it in her hands, soft and pliable.

The shuttle slammed, again, again, again. She felt the corners of her voice, and heard a sound, a great, roaring cacophony of sound, a thousand, thousand sounds, all together at once, and she felt frightened a moment.

And then, a secret moment, a moment she would not tell, not even to her father. For in the center of song, she heard one song, and though she had never seen her here, had never known even that she came here, she knew the song - it was her mother's. It was faint, fading, nearly gone, the last shadows of a voice long gone and not yet reborn elsewhere, the song of someone gone but still echoing.

"Don't be frightened, this is home, too. Don't be frightened, this is your place, too."

And she closed her eyes… and everything was sharper, clearer, sweeter. Her ears were clumsy still, she did not know this world, but she could hear a harmony to it, and the harmony of it made her laugh. She heard the laugh, in her song, as if she were outside of it, and was surprised to hear what she sang.

"I have a laugh again,
I have a song again,
I have a laugh more beautiful,
I have a song more sweet,
Than Livvy ever sang,
And then my Canterfoot will ever whinny,
For here, here, here, I am the spirit of myself!"

She breathed deep again, now, and felt, strong and filled with force, the shuttle slam again, and the shuttle was her father, and she could feel his hand now, not the hands of someone strumming at the cords, for… she could feel her own fingers now, and they did just that, they laced into a silken cord just underneath her. But Papa's hand gripped the cables, full force, and turned them. The hands of potency and of ambition. They felt queer and exciting and secret. She knew something now, about her father that, perhaps, she had known before, but had not really realized. And again, she laughed, and opened up her eyes. And father stood, his hand around a shuttle, and he looked at her, and something livid filled the web-scent of him, something terrified and angry, and she saw his hand rise up, as if to strike her, and she bent her song up "Father! Father! Father, no! Its me!"

"Foul spirit! Foul beast! You will not make a mockery of my wife!" he reared his hand again eyes wild.

And Ara woke, and screamed, her father had struck her hard against the cheek. She tasted blood in her mouth, and saw her father's face change, fill with terror, then with the slower sickness of horror.

"You… sing the web."

Ara stared mute, and gestured confusion and apology.

Her father gestured back the reluctance of apology, "It is like your mother. I did not expect that."

They were both silent for a moment. Then he stood, and turned, and spoke quietly, "Your face… you should have your slave attend to it. I will… you will not learn this way from me. I will hire a teacher for you. I'm… I'm sorry Ara…"

And then, slowly, without meeting her eyes, he took her hand, and pulled her to her feet. She stood, and frightened, pulled her hand away. His face knit with pain, but he simply nodded. And walked quietly down the hill towards his herds.
x

[Jackalope]

Aramenta

Award

Skill	XP Earned	Lore Earned
Observation	+3	Father's View: Olivia is a Slave
Webbing	+1	Initiated to the Web with a Slap
		Spectres of the Past

Witty Remark Here

Thanks for writing this! I'm always interested to see someone's take on the web. It was a little difficult to follow in the sort of dream/sort of nightmare/sort of webbing part, but I think I gathered it all together, and it was an enjoyable read. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out.