Summer 14, 513 AV
Home of Maybell Lightfinder, Endrykas
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Aramenta Stonewhistling - no. No, that was not her name anymore. It still felt fresh and raw on her, the sensation of being married. For the first day, she had even felt uncomfortable walking, treating gingerly the flesh of her thighs and belly. She had worked, though, and as with all things strange, it grew familiar, and then became normal. She still felt the queerness in her belly, the feeling of unusual, wet fulness. She began to wonder, perhaps, if she was pregnant - but this was, after all, not something she wished to think too hard about it. If it came it came, and she would worry about it as short a time as possible.
Livvy, her slave attendant, trotted miserably beside her. Livvy, of course, had her own place now, no longer set to attend her mistress of a night-time. But nonetheless, Ara still felt she knew the girl's sleep. And it was poor. She could almost feel it in the hazy half-dream space, could feel Livvy wrestling with oblivion. Herself, her general emptiness and the exhaustion of desire made her wish to do nothing but sleep. She fell asleep immediately when she lie down, and then would wake early, when the world still rested, and stare quietly at the roof of her unfamiliar pavilion, listen to her husband breathe, try not to move under his sleeping, grasping hands.
But this morning, she was dressed, and carried draped carefully over her arm, fine cotton lace. It was already assembled - and not by her hand. She was still apprenticing, and made only the long rows of filetting that strengthened and bound the piecework together. The lacework shone, ivory-toned, in the sun.
But she carried this simply after the manner of a Drykas woman - there was no reason, ever, to have one's hands at rest, for there was always work to be done. She knotted placidly, counting carefully. One, two, three - double. One, two, three - double. The pattern had been invisible to her when she had first made the stitch rows - and in consequence, her teacher had made her undo long strings of them. She did not mind, but felt a certain hollow comfort, now, in her competence. If she were to have no heart, at least, she thought, she could have a body for her people to use.
And today, she walked, perhaps a bit more quickly than usual. Her grandmother was now finally nearing her final end, and Ara, for her part, had opted to make for her a shroud, for her sky-burial. IT was an old fashioned gesture, even wasteful, for the body, once it passed, was only a husk. But Ara did not ask. She simply went out this morning to do it. Her hands, as they wove, quivered through the patterns of webbing she had worked the night before. A shroud, today. For her grandmother. It was all Ara had left to give.
She came then to the tent of Maybell Lightfinder. She was working with her own teacher on lacework edging for the shroud, and for the cloth itself, Livvy carried under an exhausted arm a long piece of thin muslin, spun and woven by Ara's own hand. But plain muslin did not speak of her granmother sufficently. And in her youth in Amethyst, Lightfinder was a known known for its skill in embroidery. Besides, she thought quietly, the old Lightfinder, perhaps, had even known Ara's grandmother - they were both getting on in years, and probably had been young wives together.
She came, then, to the tent, still counting. One, Two, Three, double. One, two, three, double. And she whistled softly, her throat, of course, still incapable of speech, to announce her arrival. And she waited to be invited - for she was not sure, now, if these were still her clansmen, now that she was wed out of the clan. She bowed her head, patiently.
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