55th Winter, 515AV
55th
Everything was raw, painful. Ife found herself struggling to breathe, to keep herself together, over the most simple and unemotional of things. She would see a passing woman or child - also red-eyed and emotionally exhausted - eating a piece of dried fruit and suddenly the earth would fall from her feet and Ife would be left, gasping for breath and clutching at her chest. Breet likes dried fruit, she would think over and over again, long after the fruit-eating individual in question had disappeared from view.
And below it all, buried beneath her hurt and longing to be reunited with her brother, was a tiny pocket of joy. Ife was pregnant: something she knew would happen sometime after her getting married but she had not expected to be with child so quickly. And nor had she expected such happiness to be wedged between such heartbreak and upset. It was cruel, really. This was time when she and her family should be celebrating, but instead everyone was too raw, damaged. Even Ife found herself noting that as much as she would adore her child, he or she would forever be attached to the awfulness of their uncle’s capture. For as long as Ife lived, the time she fell pregnant with her first child would eternally be known as the time Breet was taken from us.
And for that reason, Ife felt guilty. And angry. And disgusted. And confused. In fact, the combination of her brother’s disappearance and her pregnancy bought with them a whole host of new emotions that the Inarta struggled to cope with. For a woman who had always managed to naturally find the joy in life, the world was a dark and twisted place.
And so Ife buried herself in her work. There was something soothing about working with birds, as they had no clue what was going in her life. They regarded her in the same way as always: the bringer of food, the blower of the training whistle, the trainer who always tried to stoke their feathers affectionately, even when such advances were not appreciated. To her charges, Ife was not the sad pregnant lady whose brother had been among the captured. She was simply who she always had been.
She had started working late, pushing her exhaustion out of her mind. Yes she was tired, but sleep always seem to elude her the moment she lay down beside her husband. Instead, she would grow restless and irritable, having mental discussions with herself that centred around the debate: why won’t you sleep? If I sleep now, I’ll have five bells’ sleep….
So she worked, even more dedicatedly and passionately than before. Because now, Ife was no longer working for the sake of earning her wage, but instead she was undergoing her own personal form of rehabilitation. Whilst she watched tiny animals get killed by owls and hawks, she found herself slowly computing and dealing with what had happened. It would take time, yes. And it was far from a perfect way of coming to accept her new life, but Ife was starting to heal.
This evening, while Syna sunk into the horizon and pulled Leth up with her, Ife would be training a Storm Owl. Unlike the hawks and eagles with their pointed and narrow faces, there was something friendly and patient about the owl’s circular face.
Rain began to spatter down upon her, turning Ife’s grass-green dress dark emerald. Wiping the worse of the rainfall off her forehead and out from her eyes, the Inarta turned to her feathered student. As a nocturnal animal, it only made sense to train the owl during the early evening, and with winter pulling the longer nights into shortened days, now seemed like the perfect time.
“Let’s go.” She whispered fondly to the owl, positioning her arm towards his feet so the bird would hop on. Holding the bird on one arm and his jess on the other, Ife walked away from Endrykas a short distance. She daren’t travel too far, but needed enough space for the owl to fly and hunt without damaging himself. After pushing the owl into the air and allowing the bird to flutter upwards, she opened up the small basket that she had been carrying. A small, wide-eyed rabbit tumbled out and hopped tentatively into the shadows.
