Owlsight

Disrobing in a stranger’s house and taking a bath there? And not just a stranger, but a strange male? Her mother would be scandalized, but again, this wasn’t Errold’s Grove. The promise of a hot bath - and the state of her sore muscles - decided her.

Besides, even if I were as pretty as Shandi - which I’m not - at the moment I’m sweaty, dirty, and staggering. That’s hardly enticing.

“Thank you! You are the most considerate person I have ever met!” she said fervently.

“Oh, you should meet some of the others before you say that,” he replied lightly. “Here, come this way.”

Other than the two pillars, so far she hadn’t seen any signs that this place was inhabited. As she followed him up a twisting path, she still didn’t see any kind of housing, though the path itself was man-made and very ornamental, with a sparkling little stream crossing it several times, all manner of fragrant flora, and baroque lanterns hanging from carved posts.

“I thought you were settling here,” she said. “Where is everyone?”

“Up there,” he pointed, and she looked upward toward the trunk of the tree he indicated.

“There’s a house up there!” she exclaimed involuntarily, stopping and staring in fascination. Warm rounds and rectangles of light betrayed windows, and through the branches she glimpsed bits of walls and floor, and a stair spiraling around the trunk.

“An ekele,” he corrected. “Almost everyone has an ekele; Hawkbrothers prefer to roost.” He grinned. “The exceptions are the hertasi, who’d rather burrow, the kyree, who like caves, the k’Leshya Kaled’a’in like Nightwind, who like homes built into the sides of cliffs, and me.”

She was relieved to discover she wasn’t going to have to climb one of those twisting staircases. With the way her legs felt, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to make the trip!

“And here we are,” he announced just then, gesturing grandly at a tall mound of leaves - a mound with windows glowing warmly beneath the leaves, that is. He opened an otherwise invisible door, and they stepped into one of the oddest, and yet most inviting houses Keisha had ever seen.

There wasn’t a single straight line in it, though, and that was a bit disconcerting. “One of the hertasi designed this place,” he said, as he led her through the first room (which was so neat and clean she could hardly believe it belonged to a male), a second (obviously a bedroom, and a bit more cluttered), and into the third. There was a single oil lamp turned low, hanging from a wall-sconce; he turned it up, and busied himself with a metal spout in the wall.

The whole room was tiled in white, pale blue, and pale green ceramic; even the ceiling (what there was of it) was tiled. Most of the ceiling was actually a window! And around the four sides of this window were boxes with vines growing in them.

Sunken into the floor was a tile-lined bath tub; Darian had just turned a spigot and put a plug in a hole in the bottom of it, and water poured in. Clear, clean, and very chilly-looking, the spray made her shiver.

Darian watched as the water filled the tub, and turned the spigot again when it was within a thumb-length of the rim. But then, before Keisha could ask him how the water was supposed to be heated, he held his hand out over it.

Something was happening, something she felt, rather than saw, until she closed her eyes and did that little trick with vision. Then she saw light-energy moving from Darian to the water, but what did that mean?

Wait, it was getting warmer in this little room, and more humid! A moment later, she knew where the heat was coming from, for the water in the tub had started to steam.

“Try that with your hand and tell me if it’s hot enough,” Darian said, just as she blinked, and lost the Oversight. She knelt at the side of the tub and gingerly put her hand in.

A little more and it would have been too hot. “Definitely,” she told him. He grinned.

“I like it a lot hotter, but I’m used to the Hawkbrother pools. Now just wait a moment, and I’ll bring you something to wear when you get out.”

He ducked into the bedroom, and came back with a loose, gauzy shirt and breeches of the same materials. “You can keep these, they’re too small for me now.” He opened a wicker-work chest next to the tub. “Clean, dry towels are in here.” He turned and pointed to a series of stone boxes at the side of the tub. “Gourd sponges are in there, a scrub brush, and soap; there’s a couple of different scents, so you’ve got a choice. I’ll be back in a while.”