Iso and Alyssa are now bonded, bound by ribbon and rings and vows spoken by the sea. I was late to the ceremony, and so only caught the last part, but it was a lovely ritual, and I wish them the luck of it. Alyssa wore a dress of blue spidersilk, and Iso was neat and tidy in his suit. I'm glad I polished my armor before showing up.

Dancer came when the ceremony was over, and though my blood rushed to my head and drowned out even the ocean's roar when I saw him, I merely smiled and made my greeting. Butterfly was coaxing people into the sea, and I went to join her.

Dancer followed.

Butterfly and I splashed and played. She rushed me and I caught her, falling back into the waves with an armful of laughing guildkin. The sea sluiced through me. It trickled between my teeth, left salt in my hair, scoured me clean inside and out. And then I stood up, soaked and sodden, and went to Dancer, who greeted me with open arms.

We played. We hooted and hollered and didn't care what people thought. He ducked me under, and cooperated with me to get him under as well. He was gentle in his roughhousing, and did not scowl or glower when I managed to get the best of him.

Bris said... He remembered what it was like to have someone who understands you. I don't know if that precisely describes Dancer and I, but it is true we mesh well. Our dance has had very few missteps.

We played until I was cold through, and then went to the guard quarters. We stripped to our skivvies and hung our sodden clothes up in silence, and then we collapsed on his pallet and fell fast asleep.

I had missed him, but everything is all right now.

I've always been one
for exploring,
discovering,
running and laughing
and always turning the next corner

as long as I could go home again.


I learn
who you are
and what you want,
what that smile means
or what that shade of
honey-warm-molasses means
in contrast to that
deep-dark-glittering-black
in your eyes.


I've always been one
for exploring,
discovering.
So I will let my fingers
map the planes of you.
I will send them
gliding, dancing,
sliding, caressing
along the ridge of
the spine that holds
you up so fluid-limber-lazy.

And when I am replete,
I will come home
to your arms

again.

Are you hungry, Sigarni?

At almost every meeting, he asks me this. And brings me whatever I request, no matter where he must go to retrieve it. The offerings vary, but the lemon tarts he brings me are always the same; ritual.

He nourishes my body, and also my soul. In the way he looks at me, I draw wonder. The way he listens to me, I draw confidence. In the way he lets me go my own path, and take my own chances, I draw strength. We laugh often, and spar with words. We share kisses and glances and smiles. My days are brightened by him, my nights made sweeter, and yet if a day or night passes without hearing from him, I do not pine, do not wither.

I am not diminished.

When I first learned to whittle, I viewed it as an amusement. It was a neat trick, and my first carvings were crude things of children's fancies, painstakingly and clumsily wrought as I sat beside my father and listened to him talk in between swallows of ale. He told me stories of the land, and of Selene, and when he was deeper in his cup, he'd tell me tales of wonder.

In his tales, there were always heroes. And in his voice, it was always clear that heroes were other people, not like us. This was the first lesson.

When the Crier called his alarms, we would all run pell mell through the fields, gathering in houses and barns as we waited for the heroes to arrive. And they always did, eventually. They would dispatch the threats with an almost casual ease, with no more excitement than I viewed plowing or planting or driving bos. It was a chore. Something that needed to be done.

But beneath their weapons and their armor, they looked just like us. This was the second lesson.

I was not the only one who took note of these lessons. As the years passed and we grew older, more and more of us drifted away to see the world. The village dried up. The farms shrank and the fields lie fallow. I was one of the last.

I do not know if I am a hero. But I am a Shaper.

I've learned that I can shape the wood to be what I want. I do this for other people, friends and otherwise. I've learned to listen to the wood and tease out what it wants to be, too. That is when my best work comes to life.

I must remember to listen to my heart more, and shape myself to be what I want to be. That is the third lesson.

Wanderer asked me if they walked in dreams. It's a pretty way of putting it, and I had to smile even though inside I felt like crying, or wailing, or gnashing my teeth. They do not recognize me any longer. They call me by other girl's names, and talk about me as if I were still a child. I cannot show them the things I have done, or made, or earned, and have them recognize them as my achievements.

I watch the way my mother has to squint to see things close up, and how she pushes calloused hands hard against the table to push herself to her feet. I hear the crack of her joints, the pop of her bones, the shuffle of feet she never can seem to pick up anymore. I hear her sigh and groan and talk of all the things she must do that day-- and never mind that she no longer does them. Where she walks, she thinks she does.

She speaks of her roses. The ones outside of the window at the farm we no longer own. At the farm they haven't lived at in years. Sometimes I wonder if leaving the farm is what sent them into such sharp decline, like blooms transplanted to soil that is too thin.

Certainly, my father has shriveled. His broad chest has sunken, his muscles sag on his arms. His eyes are watery and his hearing slight. And he knows me no better than she does. No Sigarni from his lips. No Stormy, either.

But they know each other, even in their ramblings. Their eyes follow each other as they did when I was a child, before their senses left them as guileless as children. They drink each other in, and touch often, and it warms my heart to see their love for each other, to know they still have each other.

But oh, it hurts, too. They walk in dreams, and their dream is closed to me.