“Well you certainly wear the color of having worked. What is there to show for it?”
She pulled herself up from the dirt and turned to the small pile she had spent the hours shifting and pressing. Óraithe gritted her teeth and focused hard on the pile. The satyr watched her with a grin. The pain welled up fast and she was beyond exhausted. She could not move the dirt, not as he had, but she would show him her resolve. As the dirt began to shift, a pained grunt escaped Óraithe’s mouth and the satyr wrinkled his brow. For the first time he looked to the dirt. Her grunt turned to a scream and her legs began to shake under her, but the dirt moved. Slowly, it compacted itself into a tiny cube just at the top of the mound. The satyr’s eyes widened and he crouched to look.
It was her limit. Óraithe fell again to her knees and slumped backward. The cube fell away, leaving a small mound of packed earth behind. The old satyr ran his hands through the dirt, his mouth open but speechless.
“You are something very curious, elf child.”
She barely heard the words, only looked up at the blue of the sky. She was tired, but she would not sleep. A wonderful door had been opened and she wished to see everything on the other side.
R
Rianaire
Though they had moved south and were not so high in the mountains, the weather had not decided to warm at all. The road south from the Bastion City was so often full of carts that Rianaire had been foolish enough to look forward to the ride. There were so many unexpected treats and interesting meetings along the road in the other seasons, but Bais was different. She had known it well enough, though her trips out into the province were few, but somehow it had slipped her mind in the joy of escaping the unending mountain of papers and meetings that awaited her.
As it was, the ride was long, somewhat bumpy, and unceremoniously quiet. There was no tension in the air, just the cool quiet of her stoic bedmates. It had become the case, over the past season, that Síocháin kept to herself and let Inney hold the bulk of the conversation. Even though it was not so odd for Síocháin to keep to herself, she generally did not lack for words in private. Inney had noticed it quickly enough and the two of them seemed now to be in a sort of competition whose goal, it seemed to Rianaire, was aimed at finding out who could bore her to death most effectively. It had occurred to her for a moment that there might be better conversation with the carriage driver or his young assistant, but their faces were so plain she thought that conversation might be worse than the silence. He was one among the hundreds who attended the Bastion whose names she had never bothered to learn and she genuinely had no interest now. There was something utterly boring to her about the sort of people who would make lives of tending to others. She chuckled to herself, having thought it and realized that she tended to people in a way.
The crossroads had been clearly visible when they’d crested a hill just north of the city. They exited the wood at the bottom of the hill and the small town was pulling ever closer. There was not much to it, maybe two dozen houses all told, a small tavern, and the various accompanying shops to serve the outlying farmlands. That the city was so small was something of a curiosity, as the crossroads fell a decent distance between Daingean and Casúr to the west and east, and was a half-day’s ride south of the Bastion in good weather. The well-kept road was likely at least partially to blame as it made for brisk travel.
“Well, I’ve had nearly as much silence as I imagine I can stand for a lifetime. Inney, inform the driver we shall stop to water the horses at the crossroads.”
Inney nodded and pulled the chain to sound the carriage bell twice and then returned to her pose, one that plainly imitated Síocháin’s but neither said anything about it. Perhaps they’d end up killing one another and she’d be forced to find new companions. That would be troublesome. As much as she liked to venture out into the world, there were very few elves alive that held her interest for very long. Though, certainly, that Drow who had done in Spárálaí seemed to have an interesting disposition.
The carriage pulled to a comfortable stop just outside of an aged looking stablehouse. Rianaire looked out the window at the town proper and found that most of the houses were of the same look. Old, wooden, and not updated for some years. There was a charm to it that Rianaire found curious. The doors of the carriage opened and she made her way down into the cold, hard dirt of the street side.
Music and singing seemed to radiate out from the tavern just down the street and so, without a word to anyone, Rianaire started off in that direction. Well before she had reached the tavern, Inney had rejoined Rianaire’s side. The small half-elf looked over her shoulder to see where Síocháin was and finding her nowhere near, decided to speak up.
“Why have we stopped here?”
“Because the two of you are insufferable children, Fires take you, and if I am to handle all of the talking myself, I should at least like to be drunk while I do it. Tell the guards to wait here. I don’t expect I’ll be long.”
As they made the brown door of the tavern Síocháin caught up to them. Rianaire pulled the door open and a great gust of warm,
