Naadiya had no doubt as to what she would do if she encountered a large, loose snake heading towards her…. Run screaming for Tazrae, The Snake Whisperer, to come dispatch the legless monster.
“Is fire a good deterrent? Or smoke? We’d sometimes throw certain herbs or wood chips into the fires and fan the flames. The heavily scented smoke can be particularly pungent or cause burning sensations. That often helped to repel a variety of pests and other unwelcome stragglers, but I’ve never tried it on snakes.”
She considered it in her mind but seemed unconvinced of the results.
“Snakes generally have a great sense of smell, I’ve been told, and it’s always the acute sense that are easiest to overwhelm to the point of disorientation… Though, I suppose they are usually quite low to the ground, the smoke might not even reach them.”
For Naadiya, drowning would be a real issue with or without a snake in the water. She needed to learn how to swim, or at least how to really adapt to moving in water. Holding the underwater bench with her hands, Naadiya kicked her legs forward a few times. The near buoyant feeling of being in the water was relaxing both physically and mentally, she found, even when the topic was serpents. It slowed her breathing and took the literal and metaphoric weight right off. Her feet did not ache, and neither did her back. Serenity seemed within reach in this place.
When she’d started hearing about the Akalak city, Naadiya’s beautiful mental painting of the place was ruined, marred and covered in red. Was there anywhere in the world where innocent blood was constantly and needlessly spilt?
Who is the person who decides what is or isn’t ‘needless’.She couldn’t answer that. Her own cultural history was no cleaner than that of the indigo warriors and from what she’d seen, the Svefra side had not been any less cruel.
“I had always heard the Akalak were meant to be the height of chivalry… There are stories that ran through the tribes about how visiting their city as a woman meant being showered in gifts, love declarations and even bribes to keep them from leaving… When I was a teen, I had friends who’d all planned to run off to meet their imagined hugely muscles lovers… I even had fantasized about it at some point.”
It was such a problem with the younger girls that mothers often punished their daughters when hearing them, as talk of leaving the desert was frowned on, particularly if the person leaving was a potentially fertile woman.
Naadiya wondered how easy it would be to come and go from the Akalak city. Would it even be possible to be in the city just long enough to enjoy its fruits but not long enough to be found out as the barren trash they would see.
I would rather be trash than be ripped apart from the inside by my own spawn, and have death unavoidably follow birth like an octopus. “But if it was a cage, how did you escape?”
Having not yet met, Oralie, Naadiya did not want to pry into her story. She was hesitant, not wanting to look like she was nosy or attempting to elicit gossip from the woman.
“Well I’m sorry to say, but our people are not so terribly far from the Akalak, in where they place their value of woman. But our men don’t have such dangerous seed thankfully which I'm sure prevents a whole sleuth of related issues. But our numbers are not what they once were and there are many miscarriages, infant deaths and infertility. Grandmother used to say it was because the tribes were too incestuous. I never actually met any siblings who coupled but it wasn’t hard to see where she got that. Family lines die out all the time so marriages are highly strategic and preplanned, taking not only the continuation of a family name, but also the monetary assets involved. The frequent interweaving of the same families happens due to lack of numbers. And woman are both the glue that binds society and the main commodity that sustains it. Yet a woman can be disinherited or labeled Tiach, for refusing to go through with a marriage, I’ve heard. They are so depending on women to continue their lines they do their best to exert control. But the barren are not trash. There are many roles that need filling in society and people are a resource. Those women tend to be the ones who get to live outside the home. Yes, they often are nannies, cooks, or teachers, but the few who have the means and status for it sometimes pursue their own trades and goals."
“I was married a few times,” Naadiya found herself being unusually open and blamed it on the water again. “None of them stuck…” she patted her flat stomach stomach a couple of times. “I’m afraid I probably won’t be much help in populating this town either.”
“I do think an orphanage is an admirable pursuit though, and eventually those orphans would eventually grow to add to the community, if food and water are plentiful, they could do well here. I hate that it would mean so many girls are left behind though, is there nothing that can be done? If you got out, couldn’t other comes out the same way?”
Upon hearing the explanation for the Chaliva vessel’s name, Naadiya found a new empathy for James and Juli. While the loss of a parent was not the same as the loss of an infant, it was still a deep bond lost forever. Naadiya was glad to hear of the apparition before encountering her. Coming across the unknown could incite feelings of fear, even if the object of distrust was not truly harmful. She would hope to not solicit any of the ghost’s ire, horror stories had always been plentiful by the campfire and she had no desire to live through one of them.
“Yes, you are right. There is grief in his eyes, I thought it may have been for a lost love and assumed ‘Veronica’ was Juli’s mother. I’m glad I didn’t say anything.”
Tazrae’s change of tone when it came to her father brought a sad smile to Naadiya’s face. “I did not know him enough to claim if he was good or not, our people tend to keep most of the bad carefully hidden. But if he had a bad reputation, I can only say that it never reached my ears. He was fairly influential, and patient enough that when people would speak to him he wouldn’t interrupt. But that’s really all I could say.”
Why did Grandmother leave?“I-, well I guess in all honesty I don’t know. She never really liked to give details about her past. My older sister told me that when she was still very young she once asked Grandmother and was told that she’d left because Grandfather had died and she couldn’t stop thinking about him, but that had been before I was born and when I asked she never answered.”
When Naadiya was about sixteen, during a holiday at the fluctuating city, Wadrass, her family all went off in different directions, eager to see what new wonders the trade hub had to offer this year. She was with her uncle and after he’d had one too many peppery flavored drinks, Naadiya asked him about his father. She had gotten a few jumbled lines out of him before slipping that her mother never spoke of him. The comment he’d replied with stuck in her mind to this day.
’Oh you mean her father?’Almost immediately he seemed to have realized what he’d said and sobered up. Like a cloud that has passed over the sun, Nadaiya knew she had lost her window.
“I don’t know why she left. It was always just another one of her mysteries that she would answer with pivots to fables, children’s stories or songs… But... In the desert, there is a fashion that people still sometimes like to follow of gifting a bangle to a woman you were about to marry. Bangles in general were gifted in different special occasions but she had three different betrothal bangles,” Naadiya remembered only recalling the memory after her own third marriage when she'd had three of her own.
“I could have been mistaken, it was a hectic day, I only noticed it at my last wedding day. Or she could have gotten them some other way, I suppose. I never asked and never knew. But I also never knew the Kois were being so heavily manipulated from within. That is not widely known, or I would assume the other tribes would have stepped in, unless Florentin’s already gotten to them.”
Naadiya submerged herself in the cool water. For a couple of seconds the sounds of the forest were muted, and she could hear her heart beat in her ears. Breaking the surface again, she sucked in air and filled her lungs. She could smell wet soil and figured this area probably always had a bit of the scent lingering in the air. Free was the right word. The feeling you had being there was one of freedom. Free to be, free to grow, free to live. Naadiya wondered how long that would last for.
“Alric, huh?” Naadiya tone became playfully sultry, “is this a love connection? Maybe just a lust connection? He must be special if he is getting a one-on-one dance… especially one so…. heated…”
Tazrae seemed so impressed and even interested by the fact that Naadiya could weave fabric, it took the girl entirely by surprise. It was something she had almost always known how to do, and a skill that went by almost unnoticed in a family filled with weavers. Her grandmother wove and had taught her children. Her mother had married a cloth merchant who insisted all their children be taught to weave as well. And he enforced it.
“Weaving is a medium like any other…” She was trying to float but having a fairly unsuccessful attempt, the peaks of her breast only occasionally coming up for air. Talking made it harder and she tried to steady herself with a hand on the pool’s ledge.
“It’s how you use it that ends up defining it’s value and if I’m being honest, I’ve never really tried to take it beyond a means of income. Mainly it was out of need. Weaving was how my family made money so it was why we were taught as children and how we were introduced to it. By the time I was born the business had grown enough that Father had always dictated what we could produce according to predetermined orders he had arranged the previous season or even the previous year. Sometimes my younger sister rebelled and tried to use her own choice of colors for certain patterns, but she did it so clearly out of spite it was never to the benefit of the fabric. Father would often have to sell her textiles separately at lower prices locally, Lisuli can some times be blind to the line between garish and stylish. It's still too soon to tell what it will be like to weave for the Swiftwaters but I've got my fingers crossed."
One long, deep breath had her torso above the surface for a few seconds. When she had to exhale, Naadiya let her body bob lower in the water.
She agreed enthusiastically to going paddle boarding, it sounded relaxing and less life-risking than Tazrae's next suggestion.
“You know, I’m not to sure about that one…” Naadiya laughed, “If I was meant to fly, I’d have been born with wings. Besides, what is the general plan-B if something goes wrong with the contraption in the air? Prayer?”
Settling back into her seat, Naadiya looked back at the other woman. The levity of her tone was gone but there was no hostility in it either.
“I don’t know if it’s happiness I’m after… Or rather, I guess it’s more accurate to say that, I’m not sure if it’s happiness that I will find. I take joy where I can get it, it can be fleeting and often in short supply so I’ve learned to take it like water in the desert. But I left Eyktol to find someone. I don’t know where he is, and didn’t even originally plan on coming to Syka but this is where fate has left me. I’ve almost no coin left, I lost my mount, and while I’m not entirely new to surviving in the wild, that is tough to do without tools that need gold to be bought.
I’m not sure if Syka is where my story ends. If I don’t find him, I may have to leave in search elsewhere but my mother used to say that sometimes life puts a wall in front of you so that you can stop, take a breath and rebuild your strength before you go on. Maybe my wall is green and thick with foliage.”
Word Count: 2200