44th Fall, 518
Eyes closed. Skin covered in soak. Vision soaked in sunlight, insistently piercing the ramshackle cloth cover dividing Elea from the world at large and her eye cover, mostly failing, still making a mark. Then, a cold sensation of liquid flowing through our protagonist, in the purifying ritual of standing in the garden and pouring water over oneself. Once the waters stopped flowing, Elea bowed down, eyes still closed and drew more into her bucket, the instrument of the whole ordeal. Rinse and repeat, until Elea’s skin was wet, without any soap or impurities. Now enter home and do the same to the feet. An annoying detail, something Elea was increasingly grumpy about, for some reason.
Most of the time, she’d be content to keep her lifestyle cheap. You had to pay for bathhouse and same could not be said about a creek nearby, for summer, and Kinelli springs, as well as water barrel at home, for other seasons. But for some strange reason, Elea found her own clumsy ordeal to be more and more burdensome. It made little sense: She was integrated into Lhavit well, was making acquaintances. But she was still angry. Or was it grumpy? Or just annoyed? Or tired? She’d be unable to tell you which one was it.
Everyday, for 30 minutes, a fairly harsh headache would manifest itself. Every single day, Elea’s sight of the world would suddenly increase in brightness and she’d be stumbling about, forcing her to lay down in cruel pain. After that, echoes. Strange, unreal echoes, always whispering, never revealing themselves. At first, Elea was trying to investigate. At first, she was soaked in delirious fear. At first, she though it would be the end of her.
Now she treated it the same as she treated the ambience of the birdsongs and city chatter. She deduced that echoes were in her head for some reason and it may have been connected to the headache that they followed. She found comfort in knowing the origin of the occurrence.
It’s the same old morning ritual now. Take the bread loaf, cut it, add some salad and tomato cuts, eat up. Simple and easy was the watchword of this meal. It was also nutritious and economic. There was no work today, so Elea could just do what she liked the best. Take her mother’s journal and finish reading it up under a spreading chestnut tree. Then she could say that she knew most of the tricks laid there. She’d still consult it, for convenience, but it always felt good to finish a book. She reached out for a place where it last was, only to find out that reaching out and taking it wasn’t the same thing. When Elea’s eye rested on the table near her bed where it was supposed to be, she found out that expecting it to be and actually seeing it there weren’t the same thing.
The table was empty. Where the hell was it?
Books were precious commodities, even ones that were small and written with amateurish calligraphy. Their value, both monetary and intellectual, made them more worthy than gold in Elea’s eyes, which made sense considering her streak of knowledge-craving. To lose a book, was something that took all the warmth from Elea’s chest and left her fearful, almost shaking in cold sweat. She never once lost a library book, or her own before.
But could it be that the thing was simply lost under a table? Or under the bed? Elea took a deep breath. Now was not the time to lay about and worry, now was the time to dive under her furniture. No shape of a book was seen, however.
Time to pull the bed out of its place to see again? Thankfully, it was quite light enough and Elea’s strength was nothing that failed her often. But, light casted upon the suspect area, revealed nothing.
It would seem Elea lost her mother’s journal, the only connection with Ravok that was tangible. That she was given it in the first place, that piece of somewhat silly calligraphy, spread upon the pieces of old, smelly paper, bundled together in an even older cover, a thing that her mother seemed so attached to, signified how much Elea’s mother valued her and that her motherhood was something she would not take lightly, even as Elea left her.
It was an heirloom. A symbol that her mother is okay with her and loves her as she always has. That all is well back home. That she’s missed, but not reviled for leaving. Finally, it was simply a bloody useful thing for a non-expert philterer. It’s searching time! Elea felt like her headache was about to set in as it has 3 hours ago, but she also felt that the longer she does not have the item, the worse she will feel.
Whole house has came under the scrutinizing eye. Furniture switching positions, each and every drawer searched, each piece of clothing searched, including those that did not had the pockets fitting the journal, the chest searched, the floor searched… good thing there was not that much furniture in the house. No sight of the book, though. Elea actually took to the garden, due to that. Then local privy. Then back home, to ascertain where to go.
Pacing her breath, clearing her thoughts, she attempted at laying down the plan for the search. If the book wasn’t found at home after the search that was as thorough as hers, it wasn’t there. Or was Elea so tired of her problems that she missed the spot? She spent the next half an hour shaking down the house again, to no avail.
950 words
