Summer 17, 514: Washing Stones by the River, Endrykas
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Summer was coming on high, there should have been a great deal of singing by the river, running, laughing children, chattering laundresses. It was the cool of midmorning - as much as ever there was a cool this miserable summer - and the work of scrubbing the dirt of the trail from clothing was almost, ALMOST a pleasure, with the cool water and the shade of sparse, narrow cottonwoods.
But the river was hardly a river - a trickle, little more. The pavilions had put careful controls on its use, laundering being deemed, almost entirely, a luxury, when there was barely enough water to wet the gullets of the riders. And so, the washing stones were empty, more or less: a few of the Watch clattered back and forth over them, to stop any contraband water use, and that was almost all.
"Aye, girly, that's where you'd find her. Tall and fair, usually in white. Gathering herbs, down by the washing-pool, tomorrow morning, I'd expect."
Ara gnawed at the sentence like a child on sugar-sap, interrogating it for meaning in the nervous manner that a rider might have, lost with no web-trace nearby. Tall. Fair. By the washing pool. She clambered down the bank-slope slowly, picking her way along with more timidity than caution. Her belly was big - bigger, even, than it should have been, nearly the size of a full term, now, in spite of being but halfway to childbed, now. IT made her clumsy, and she stepped slowly in consequence, giving her a curious, waddling grace: a sacred goose (or, given what a child she still appeared, a gosling).
This, Waisana, an Opal-girl, had been recommended not even to her, but to Livvy, who had come to her, boldly, in spite of Ara’s attempts to avoid her. She had looked beautiful, Livvy had. Ara had missed her. But Livvy had given her a good stiff tongue lashing for how she was treating herself, and then told Ara of Waisana, a contact through a friend of a friend’s master’s friend, in a chain Ara had hardly understood at the time: but not a gossip, a woman who knew something about herbs, and a woman who knew how to be discrete.
IT had taken her another month to be brave enough to slip out to go looking for her - that had been a challenge in itself. ITs not that she wasn’t allowed to be alone. But given things, they certainly didn’t trust her to be, and kept a close eye at home. The insomnia helped here - she rose before anyone else, and slipped out quietly, then skulked amongst the herds for a while, grew nervous that her father’s men might see her, skulked in the market, grew nervous that her fellow-wives might run into her, and went, at least, to the Opal tents, to ask after her as quietly as possible. That was where she’d been pointed to the washing-stones.
She wore a wide, riding skirt, dusty and limp with dried dew - as little of it as there was these days - and fought with burrs along its hem, and her feet were as bare as winter. Her eyes darted quietly among the stones. Searching.x
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Summer was coming on high, there should have been a great deal of singing by the river, running, laughing children, chattering laundresses. It was the cool of midmorning - as much as ever there was a cool this miserable summer - and the work of scrubbing the dirt of the trail from clothing was almost, ALMOST a pleasure, with the cool water and the shade of sparse, narrow cottonwoods.
But the river was hardly a river - a trickle, little more. The pavilions had put careful controls on its use, laundering being deemed, almost entirely, a luxury, when there was barely enough water to wet the gullets of the riders. And so, the washing stones were empty, more or less: a few of the Watch clattered back and forth over them, to stop any contraband water use, and that was almost all.
"Aye, girly, that's where you'd find her. Tall and fair, usually in white. Gathering herbs, down by the washing-pool, tomorrow morning, I'd expect."
Ara gnawed at the sentence like a child on sugar-sap, interrogating it for meaning in the nervous manner that a rider might have, lost with no web-trace nearby. Tall. Fair. By the washing pool. She clambered down the bank-slope slowly, picking her way along with more timidity than caution. Her belly was big - bigger, even, than it should have been, nearly the size of a full term, now, in spite of being but halfway to childbed, now. IT made her clumsy, and she stepped slowly in consequence, giving her a curious, waddling grace: a sacred goose (or, given what a child she still appeared, a gosling).
This, Waisana, an Opal-girl, had been recommended not even to her, but to Livvy, who had come to her, boldly, in spite of Ara’s attempts to avoid her. She had looked beautiful, Livvy had. Ara had missed her. But Livvy had given her a good stiff tongue lashing for how she was treating herself, and then told Ara of Waisana, a contact through a friend of a friend’s master’s friend, in a chain Ara had hardly understood at the time: but not a gossip, a woman who knew something about herbs, and a woman who knew how to be discrete.
IT had taken her another month to be brave enough to slip out to go looking for her - that had been a challenge in itself. ITs not that she wasn’t allowed to be alone. But given things, they certainly didn’t trust her to be, and kept a close eye at home. The insomnia helped here - she rose before anyone else, and slipped out quietly, then skulked amongst the herds for a while, grew nervous that her father’s men might see her, skulked in the market, grew nervous that her fellow-wives might run into her, and went, at least, to the Opal tents, to ask after her as quietly as possible. That was where she’d been pointed to the washing-stones.
She wore a wide, riding skirt, dusty and limp with dried dew - as little of it as there was these days - and fought with burrs along its hem, and her feet were as bare as winter. Her eyes darted quietly among the stones. Searching.x
