[Aramenta] A Crushing Reality

[Naiya]

Rue

Summer 514 AV Day 30

"What was that?" Rue asked the empty shop as her mind drifted once more to the encounter that hadn't left her mind since Shahar had left. She told herself that the sense of wanting, of absence, that he'd left in his wake was only in her imagination.

It didn't make it feel any less real.

She shook her head, sending her copper locks swirling around her in a pleasant way that reminded her of how much it had grown in the year. It was a simple distraction but effective enough as she moved through the displays, folding and straightening items she had tousled in her search for the perfect piece for -- And she was back again to the vacuum that wanted nothing more than to pull her in and leave her to wallow in the unfamiliar. Emotions that she had shoved to the back of her mind crying insistently for her attention.

She tucked the sleeves of a tunic towards the back, lining the hems up as she folded the item over itself, leaving the collar's intricate embroidery visible at a glance. She fussed with the lines of the folds, pulling and prodding the article into submission. Only when it was sharp and perfect did she move to the next.

She worked with an intensity unwarranted to the task, sorting the folded clothing by fabric and then by color. It had been a struggle to find everything she had sought for... with her last customer because of the disarray the racks and displays had fallen into in her absence from the shop. Surely no one would mind that she was changing things, making this table one with only linens, and the next only the various wools they currently stocked.

It would be easier to work with everything together in this way, and the task had her flitting from one table to the next with this or that article that should be here, not there.

It was the perfect distraction.

Ever so slowly the shop began to feel her own once more, as things began to resemble the shop she had left behind at her family's insistence. She was only back because they had decided it was more trouble than she was worth having her around the pavilion the entire day.

Nightsong

[Aramenta]

When one had people staring at one all the time, wishing one was not there, one developed, perhaps, the gift of silence - and Ara had, after all, the predisposition towards it, as she had no voice. And so, her slipping inside the tent was less noticeable as a sound. A sight, more so than normal - for her belly hung before her, rich with child, now, bigger perhaps than it ought to be, beneath a long skirt that she still felt out of place in - but then also without Livvy, Livvy who was gone now. If anything, the most pressing sensation would have been nothing but the wave of the cruel summer heat from outside that followed her whirling through the cool and shaded interior space until it accustomed itself to it's new surroundings.

But then, vision, yes, perhaps, a little. For the girl - despite the belly she still carried herself like a child - was pale, paler than a sun-kissed Drykas ought to be. As she turned to shut the latch behind her, there was the hair, too, a hank of it still too short from where it had been cut - ah the rumors around that simple hank! It was braided as neatly into the surrounding hair as could be managed, but even so, the sharp eyes of a Drykas woman would recognize the difference. It was, after all, not only the hot eyes of the summer sun that she was hiding from these days.

She slipped silently along the perimeter of the shop, then looked, merely looked, said (of course) nothing, at the girl who had helped her make the shroud for her Grandmother. She simply looked, for a moment, then quickly darted her eyes down, ashamed, to the fabric before her - something in wool, dyed dark (wildly unpopular this season, her subconscious surmised). Her brain picked out a collar and a long tail, but was too scattershot to assemble it into a defined garment, per se.
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[Naiya]

Rue

A harsh wave of heat pulled her from her fervor, bringing Rue to the realization that she was sweating despite the cool interior of the shop. She paused in her organizing to wipe sweat from her brow, to pull hair over one shoulder to bare her neck and allow the heat trapped there to escape. Peaking out at the nape of her neck and across the now visible skin of her back was just the tangling tops of her windmarks. A relatively new addition to her person that she thought of at each instance of its visiblity.

A small movement in the corner of her eye brought her back to herself. She wasn't alone in the shop any longer, that was the significance of the wave of heat that she had initially missed.

She turned with what grace she could muster, turning to find yet another familiar face, the lines of which differed greatly from those of her memory. Her body formed welcome even as her mind struggled to catch up, searching intensely for the name of the girl who stood before her shame riddling her posture for reasons Rue couldn't place.

"Aramenta." Rue called, glad to have pulled the name from the depths of her memory. "Look at you." She substituted the words for her original 'you look great' for despite the beauty of pregnancy that swelled within the girl turned woman, she more the rough for wear. Rue couldn't quite place her finger on what exactly caused the roughness, though maybe it was not a single thing, but instead many smaller one, like the inconsistency in the braids of her hair, or the way she carried herself.

"It had been a while since we last spoke."

Nightsong

[Aramenta]

Aramenta looked back up - that is her eyes tilted up, though her chin stayed tucked low. Pregnancy had not treated her skin kindly, and it shone, oily, with a few red pimples around the eyes.

She meant to smile, but her lips forgot to obey. Her right hand came up with the timidity that spoke of unexpectedly necessary courage to display itself. She signed with an undertone that expressed apology.

"Greetings. You are Drykas? Windmark. Good."

She pulls the hand back in quietly, and turns little bit. The other hand reaches absently, instinctually, to the missing braid, the fingers still not quite accepting of the missing piece. Its a subtle movement, the sort of movement a man might make who has lost his finger. Phantom pain.

She leaned against the table, trying to hide her sweaty exhaustion.

Her hand signs once more, something more difficult to translate into words, an expression of kind concern, a subtle question, that says I-see-something-may-be-wrong-but-I-wish-you-to-be-allowed-to-ignore-my-question.

[Naiya]

Rue

Rue had seen a similar look in her pavilion, the harshness of pregnancy in one of Father's wives, it had roughened her body rather than smoothed it, as it appeared to with Aramenta. But Father's wife had been old, far older than Aramenta was now, and the child had been the last she was able to carry.

Surely it was not so for the girl before her? Rue was no healer to tell, but all the same her expression of openness turned to concern.

"Yes, my Wildfire found me a bit more than a year ago." She answered the more obvious of the questions Aramenta had asked, speaking out loud so that she could move as she did, ducking behind a table with an assortment of unfinished garments on it.

When she appeared again she held the stool that was used as a seat to work at, and she placed it just past the door, leaving it with an air of If you desire.

The quirk of her hand caught Rue's attention, but she wouldn't ask the question that prodded at her. It would be rude to draw attention to it, and she knew how sensitive matters of hair were to Drykas women, herself included. Instead she pondered the subtle offer of a listening ear, half way signing words of feeling unsure, worried, and unknown.

If it was so obvious to the girl that something bothered Rue, then the older girl would have the problem of explaining it to her family when she returned home. It was a troublesome thought, she realized as she propped a hip up against a display table, because she couldn't even explain it to herself yet.

Nightsong

[Aramenta]

Ara watched the girl's half-signed response, and her eyes flickered softly, the subtle sign language of the face that one speaks without intending to. The slight wrinkling of the brow, the knit between her eyes. Concern, and maybe curiosity, but timid, very very timid. And yet the girl Rue seemed... wrong. Not-selfed. Perhaps Ara just remembered wrong, she had not seen the girl in a long time. She stepped backwards, mentally. This was an intrusion, heaven knows she understood that idea.

But no disgust from the Nightsong girl, no coldness, and none of the horrified fascination, the faux-kindly voyeuristic interest in plumbing her depths, which was almost worse. Rumors had, perhaps, not travelled quite this far.

The stool was a bigger issue, and she didn't quite know what to do with it. Looking at it, her face fell a little, her emotions perhaps too apparent these days. She hadn't been quite sure WHY she had come. But now she knew: her mind, in suddenly realizing the impossibility of her desire, defined her desire. She had wanted someone to talk to, not to sign, half-talk with, but to really talk with, hands and lips. There was no one left now, and this girl, she had been so kind about Grandmother, and already seen her at her worst, after all, and seemed alone in her own way, and... and... but no. If the girl was lonely too, Ara talking to her would only make that worse. And she was working. Ara looked down a bit, in shame, and signed very, very quietly, and a bit apologetically.

"Not buy, just look. No money, hard season. Sorry."

Just look, just look, she would finger a few things, stupidly, and leave, yes. That's what she should do. The space was not large, and so she walked, passing close to Rue, to try to go to the opposite side of the tent, out of the way.
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[Naiya]

Rue

What troubles you? the question mirrored the other girl's, asked, but with the signing that left open a polite way to decline to answer by not acknowledging there was any question at all.

She had not answered Aramenta's question to satisfaction, and she wondered if perhaps her discontent had been less noticeable than she had thought, maybe the girl had meant to ask after something entirely different. Rue couldn't tell, and wouldn't know if the other decided to close their visit so quickly. She could already see Aramenta closing off, preparing to leave.

The thought struck her, where was the other girl... Livvy? Rue had never seen them apart before. Once more she had to remind herself that it was not her place to ask such things, and only if the other offered such information should she seek it.

oocI made a small edit to my response to Aramenta's silent question that will require you to edit yours as well. We spoke of the possibility that this might happen, but I think the small change will set it all to rights

Nightsong

[Aramenta]

What troubles me?

Her hands in a distant, semi-conscious way half-echoed the question, as she stopped walking.

What troubles me?

The crushing, illogical loneliness of her place fell on her, then, fell hard and pressing, and her eyes wandered bleakly downward to the floor.

We are all a fine cloth, and I am a snarled thead, waiting to be cut.

This thought did NOT make it into her signing. Though the bleakness crawled into her face. She turned back, attempted a smile, though it came across false.

"My baby rests heavy. Sorry." The first half inflected nothing convincing in the way of emotion, the sorry was full and rich with it: shame and perhaps a waver, to the sensitive eye, that spoke of a real self-loathing. To the casual eye the hands said, 'Sorry, I didn't mean to complain.' To the closer inspection, it said, "Forgive me, I should not have come to you" - though, again, this last is only half-intended, like a quaver in the voice of someone trying to hide they've been crying. More visibly, she avoided the stool, her eyes occasionally wandering to it, but her body kept steadfastly upright, not even leaning on the trestles of fabric.

Her hands fussed, though, unsure, her mind upset with itself - she had left things awkward. Clumsily she grasped for something to offer back to cover the stale sentence, and something simple enough to express without her voice, not wanting to force the intimacy of her peculiar speech of the girl.

"Your strider, congratulations. Your family is proud yes?"
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[Naiya]

Rue

A shadow fell across the girl, or maybe it had already been there and Rue had not looked closely enough to see it. Rue couldn't keep the frown off her face, and it deepened as Aramenta turned a strained smile towards her.

The baby, surely was not the sole cause of her upset, but maybe it was the reason for the wavering of her hands. Like a half glimpsed shadow in the corners of one's vision, Rue thought she may have caught a deeper meaning in her apology, but before she could examine it, her chance was gone.

Reassurance, Wonderful company He hands moved almost without her thought and she smiled to reinforce their meaning. "It has been hectic today, do you mind if I sit and work on a project while we talk?" Her question was more a distraction from the from the question of her family than a polite request, but she knew she would give an answer anyway, she just needed time to think of an appropriate one.

She dropped back down behind her worktable, reappearing with a two distinct feathers, a few others and an assorted grouping of different thicknesses of string, and a thick sharp needle that was usually better suited to patching pavilions than to sewing clothing. It would do nicely for making the hair ornament though.

She settled herself on the ground near the stool, subtly offering the very pregnant woman a seat once more.

"Having a Strider," here her hands signed pride, joy, "It has brought me many things, and it has made me more.." She searched for a word her hands faltering in their signing, "attractive as a wife. It pleases my family that this is so."

It was all she could offer without revealing the constant ways in which she fell short of her family's expectations. Their often expressed displeasure with her was not something she needed to share with anyone, let alone someone who already looked so troubled.

She let the words fill the space, content to turn her attention to the needle she was trying to force through the tip of the feather without splitting the entire tip.

Nightsong

[Aramenta]

Ara looked at the stool again, as the girl offered it, and an internal battle crossed her eyes. Finally, her face crimson, she nodded very tentatively, and took the stool - pulling it close enough to Rue to be able to speak if necessary. She signed very small, "Kind, thank you," and drew her own work from her bag: a bit of lacework, which she began filleting in tiny, simple diamonds with a wooden hook.

The work itself gave her a focal point, something to do with her hands and body, to spend her nervous energy at. Her eyes drooped slightly, and and she leaned forward, listening more clearly to the girl.

The hesitation and unsurety in Rue's response left Ara unsure of her footing, and she bit her lip softly, knitting her brow again. She sat in silence a moment, gnawing at it. The words felt so... frustrated? Distant? It pleases my family that this is so. Ara sought, quietly, for the correct response - her brain, logically, said to offer nothing specific, but her mind felt the loneliness of those alienated words, and was drawn to them.

Finally the weight of it became too heavy. She stopped the row of knots for a moment, and leaned forward, setting her lips about an inch from Rue's ear, so that the heat of her skin, still flushed from the hot sun, wavered onto the other girl's cheek, and the rich, heavy smells of pregnancy wafted around her.

Her voice came through, and it grated just slightly, at first, thick and dry from disuse, and in a piece of her mind, Ara realized how long it had been since she had used it.

"It can be very hard, making... one's... one's family feel pleased with them."

The words were obtuse, and dismissible at will, conversation continuing as a dance, instead of a direct exchange of information and request. Even so... the feeling of speech, of her own voice on her own lips was queerly powerful for Ara, and the experience of speaking impressed her with the contours and delineations thereof - the tiny muscles of throat and mouth tensing and flexing and relaxing, the slow pour of warm streams of her own breath, and the sight of the other woman's ear...

She sat back, and her shoulders huddled in, a certain quiet pleasure entering her lips, which relaxed just... slightly. But her eyes went down, avoiding the other girl's, staring intently at the long row of knots. The slender cotton thread traced across her fingers like spider-threads, quiver just slightly with the waver of her own hand muscles. Pull, loop, push. Pull, loop, push. The knots went quickly, interlinking in long lines, but moving very slowly in space, simply because they were so fine.

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