actions - “speech” - thoughts

Agar seemed to like her idea of heading to the cottage and started to steer them in the direction she pointed. It wouldn't be too far. She nodded when he came to her same conclusion of moving on before the snow comes around. She liked the way he talked, it was very matter of fact, very... solid. And she enjoyed how he tried to turn to lighter tones when he brought out jerky for them.

She paused as she gently took it from his large hand. She was struck by how he was so willing to share, she was sure he had just enough for himself and here he was, offering some to her. She looked up again to his face with large green eyes and a genuine thankful smile. She couldn't remember the last time she smiled, she even let out a half laugh at his comment about fine dining. She felt as light as a feather.

"Thank you, I've had to eat my catch before I had a chance to smoke it lately!" She said lightly, still smiling. She bounced ahead of him, taking a bite of the jerky and relishing its saltiness. She led the way out of the woods, looking back at him to make sure he was still there, and smiling wider and wider every time.

They reached the edge of the woods and the trees gave way to gently sloping moors. On a lonely hill, close to the forest, was a ramshackle falling down ancient stone cottage with a thatched roof made only this previous summer. A large old hide covered the doorway. It had been patched several times with smaller furs. On the Northside of the hill was a large garden slowly succumbing to the waning sunlight and colder nights. She led the way into the garden first, looking to see if she could find any gourds that where still good.

"Here we are!" She exclaimed cheerfully pulling up a smaller pumpkin and using her knife to cut it free from the vine. She led the way inside and waved him to follow her with a quick, "Watch your head!" As she scrambled to cut and gut the gourd.

Inside it was a dark one room hut around a central fire pit. She had several dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, sloppily made jars and jugs filled with all kinds of fermented juice. A central hole in the roof for the smoke to find its way out. She stoked the coals and added some some dry wood while she plunked the gutted and cut up gourd pieces into a pot, covered and hung it from a low spit and added several different herbs and spices. Soon the hut would grow warm and smell like roasted rosemary and lavender, oregano and thyme. She had even thrown in a small dash of salt she had to harvest from the sea shore earlier this year, she didn't have a lot of it left, the sea was just too far away.

"There, it'll take a while to cook and get soft." She was excited to share her cooking finally, her previous lover had a strange aversion to plants and cooked meat. She never remembered really smiling around him. Around Agar though she couldn't stop. "Would you like a drink?" She asked ushering him to find a seat among the furs or stumps, "I have plenty of brews. I've been experimenting, my mother showed me how to brew and I've made this delightful one with grapes and strawberries. Or I have this warm grain brew I've made with dandelions and wheat. It's a little more bitter but it came out so much more smoother than my others grain brews." She was giddy, suddenly she couldn't really stop talking! "Or tea! I still have plenty of herbs to pull from, chamomile, and raspberry leaf, or I found this incredibly sweet plant, it almost tastes like honey! Honey has been so hard to come by around here. I was never much of a beekeeper." As she was talking a mile a minute, she was showing him the jugs of brews and letting him smell them, and she brought out a few dried leaves of the sweet plant she found for him to nibble and taste how sweet it was. She had an abundance of dried and fermented plants but her stores of more meal like vegetables and fruits was paltry.

She would grab a wood carved cup and fill it with his drink of choice before sitting down, pouring herself a cup of the strawberry wine.

She was delighted at how well he seemed to be enjoying himself. She could hardly keep still as she swayed her legs back and forth in her seat and her cheeks were already sore from smiling so widely. She watched him carefully as he took his first sip of the dandelion beer and couldn't contain how much his enjoyment pleased her by tapping her feet on the floor in a giddy half step. Clutching her own cup to keep herself from clapping, hiding her smile so as not to look so childish and silly.

She stoked the central fire some more, warming the hut and roasting the pumpkin to a nice soft consistency.
She laughed loud as he mentioned tiny brewmaster.

"Oh, thank you. She was the one who taught me how to mix flavors in brews and the different types. My teacher, the village shaman, he taught me how to make it for medicine. Apparently that's the easy part around here. I was the village healer, hence why I was gone when the volcano struck the last time. I was gathering ginger, turmeric, cumin and cinnamon from the tropical south. There aren't many merchants from there coming this way and my teacher had done a stint of learning from a master healer down there and my original tribe was a lot closer to the hot rain forests." She had started light and easy but the sadness and grief slowly crept into her voice near the end. But it was an old sadness now, something to be remembered, something to be held. She had lingered on it already before and had come to accept it as part of her life and loss. "A taste of my old home brought my new one to ruin. Well, not really of course. My brother and friend didn't want to come with me. They were too wrapped up in planning a wedding. Something in my soul told me to go and take what I could with me. And the last time no one listened to me either." Indicating she had known something was going to happen. Her voice was even as she added a few dandelion and nettle greens she had gathered that morning into the pot to steam. Once nettle was cooked it was harmless and incredibly nourishing to the body.

She put the lid back on and turned to Agar taking another sip, the brightness and light from her features had dimmed, she felt compelled to finally tell someone her story. It gave her practice speaking anyway. "The village elders didn't want to listen to an apprentice's dreams of a fire destroying the village. Thinking it was just a call for attention. I was all but shunned by my tribe since birth." She grabbed a lock of her long white hair and nodded to it as an explanation before continuing, "Then after my brother and I had started to settle again I could feel the earth warn us of oncoming doom. But he brushed me off thinking I was jealous of his new relationship. I was hoping to come back and at least find something. But the land had changed so drastically that the village was just gone and everything was on fire. If I had been there I wouldn't have escaped either." It was hard to tell by her tone whether she counted her self lucky or not. She didn't know if being alone and alive was better or worse than being dead with her tribesmen.

"So my job was healer, no one wanted to believe I could be a shaman. But I can read the signs, do my part to tell someone if it concerns them, but if they don't believe me, that's for them to decide." she said looking down and rubbing her fingers through the rabbit fur she was sitting on.

"And you? What did you do in your village?" She asked after a moment, brushing her hair aside and wiping a tear in the process.

She drew in a heavy breath and looked away into the fire at his oracle statement. Her wine forgotten in her hands. She watched the flames carefully as he uttered amazement and asked her if she had anymore visions.

"Thank you..." She responded softly, humbly, then fell into a studied silence.

Visions or curses? Apparitions of beyond the veil, dreams, or perhaps memories that were not her own? Visions of the possible, the impossible, the incoming, the never will be, or perhaps... What might actually come to pass? She had been alone so long she had lost sight of reality in some cases. She frequently felt like she stood with one foot across the threshold cavorting with ghosts and fairies. In one case more than just cavorting. But had she had true visions since then? She couldn't comfortably say with any enthusiasm or certainty, or how much she should reveal.

Cautiously, she looked away from the fire before she could be entranced, and rested her rich emerald gaze on his kind face. She roved her spirited gaze over his beard, noting how carefully braided and clean it was. His ruddy aged skin blasted by many a harsh winter and hot summer. His kind and honest eyes were shrewd, though they had seen much of life they hadn't truly experienced and settled in it yet. She could tell his life was about to turn, to grow, to get much bigger than he had ever dreamed imaginable. It was not just chance that they had run into each other.

He matched the size and energy of a figure that had started to appear in her dreams lately. Hence why she had thought he was an apparition at first. But she couldn't say she was expecting him, because she hadn't been. Her dreams had been cloudy, and it had never really worked like clear visions of the future. Maybe she could explain a little how it did work.

She took a sip of her wine, remembering it again, drew in a deep and knowing breath and leaned forward, "Today at the brook where you found me, I asked if I would survive the winter if I stayed. The water was deathly cold when I touched it, when it should have held some of summers warmth still in its waters. I then asked what paths lay ahead of me, looking at options. I dove my hand in and I pulled this up." She said bringing out the white and clear rock, the same size and shape as a chicken egg but had striations and places of clarity like a quartz gemstone, she handed it to him to take a closer look at it. "Then, you, Agar, appeared behind me."

She leaned back and waited to see what his response was.

The woman couldn't help the bright smile that creased her lips as he deduced her line of reasoning. She drank the rest of her cup. She loved his enthusiasm. It was infectious and she felt truly light for the first time in years. Hope sparked in her chest and it ached against her ribs.

She stirred the meal in the pot as he made a decision for them both to set out. She quickly glanced around silently taking stock of what she had on hand to travel with when he then paused and readjusted for space to put in her two cents!

"M-me...?" She unconsciously placed a hand to her breast, shocked that he had actually deferred to her and asked for her opinion. Not even Neo had treated her as such, though he had certainly been no humble gentleman to begin with. She had never dreamed there being a day where someone would take her seriously enough, respect her enough to ask her opinion, let alone a fully grown man twice her size with enough years on him to give him silver streaks!

Her body shuddered as a response, she had no idea how to respond. She crossed her arms over her chest in a protective pose. The wooden spoon still in one hand. She faced him and still clutching her arm with the other she pointed the spoon at him and looked at him mischievously, "You are someone very special, Agar." She shot back at him with a smile, harking back to his own statement about her.

She shook her head in disbelief, still smiling and not answering him properly yet, as she turned back to the pumpkin in the pot, a lightness and almost dancelike movement in her steps now, and served it up in an old wooden bowl. She didn't know what to do, she had been here in this musty old cottage and they both said they needed to move. The idea that he had just deferred to her though had filled her with a giddiness she couldn't quite comprehend. It felt powerful, a different power that she had never truly tasted before. And it spoke volumes of the man before her.

She gave him the bowl and sat back down with one her self. A roasted and spiced pumpkin with steamed greens and herbs.
"I think it is a sound suggestion." She said leaning back and spooning the meal with her hand. She had run out of ingredients to make bread, no grain silo here or small cats to keep out the mice, or large mill to work the grain into enough fine flour without being at work for days by herself.

"I think..." She continued, turning her gaze to her meal, tilting her head to the side, "We could potentially make... fine partners." She said, bringing her meal to her mouth and liking her fingers suggestively, bringing her eyes back up with a question in them.

Rivian turned away suddenly shy, smiling nervously as he turned her down. She watched him from the side as he earnestly gestured and replied stating somehow how unworthy he was of her. She couldn't help but shake her head and let out a incredulous nervous laugh, high with shame.

"I fear it may be an impossible task, Agar." She said finishing her meal as she had continued to eat in silence when he went on, "You are far more worthy than you your self believe. I won't for a second believe I am some special oracle sent from the ether. I just want to live a humble life. I have been led to dream of nobility and wealth before, only to have it fall and rot at my feet as he left me here. I don't want to make anything more of myself than what I am." She started. She got up to clean her bowl with a stone and some warm water from a pot in the coals.

"I am a healer. I don't care if I have fairy blood or visions-" She continued, a tone rising in her voice, "- maybe the stars aligned in some special way at the moment of my birth, maybe I have some ability, but I no longer care." Her moods and emotions would build and sway like the tides and currents of the ocean, "I just want a life with someone. I want a village, I want to help people mend their disputes, I want to watch children grow. I want to trade and sing and dance again!" She said getting rougher with the stone and bowl. The bowl was so old and worn that suddenly it cracked in two, spilling the water from her hands. Like a falling wave crashing on the coastal rocks she threw a piece of the bowl into the fire and crumpled onto the ground. She wrapped her arms about her legs and silently stared into the fire. The flames made her cheeks glisten as silent tears fell. She thought she had grown past this calamity, beyond the desperation, but one could only grow so much when you only have yourself to talk to.

She brought a hand to her face, leaning into the pressure and closing her eyes to the fire. It was telling her lies again.
"Don't promise me anything you yourself can't deliver, Agar. Not even to make me happy. Either help me find a better life than this-" She pulled her hand back and turned her gaze back to him, a serious tone and a challenge on her lips, "- or help me build it." If he didn't like those options then he could leave her here to die alone...

She pulled her sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes as he told her he was on her team. She looked up as he stood, his demand of stay put shot an arrow of all too familiar words through her heart and made her freeze. He left on whatever task he had his mind to and she turned her gaze to the fire again.

It was telling her lies. It had to be. The shapes and flickers within the flames was telling her he was coming soon. To be ready or to run for an arrival or upheaval. She just shook her head, yeah, ok, they were setting up to leave soon. But she had seen hide nor tail of her fairy husband in over a year. He could not be coming back anytime soon, and possibly if he did, hopefully she would be long gone already.

Agar came back and kneeled down next to her, placing a pine cone and an acorn in her hands. Her body involuntarily shivered as he went on about finding new people and adding new seeds to represent them, and singing a song. New tears filled her emerald eyes as he cupped his hand over hers, her body shuddering with hope, and joy and a jumble of emotions she couldn't quite comprehend.

"And vhen hand is full, if you really still vant pinecone most, den ve date." He said in his warm accent, a sob broke through and she leaned her head into him, shaking with the release of tension. This, this, this. This was something she could grasp, it wasn't imaginary castles, promises of fine dining and jewelry. No fancy words of how special and precious she was. This was something tangible.

"Thank you." She wispered holding the seeds close to her.