The Wintering
At last, seventeen days after the first snows, the edges of the herds began to reach their winter pastures far north of Turia, approaching the equator from the south. Here the snow was little more than a frost that melted in the afternoon sun, and the grass was live and nourishing. Still farther north, another hundred pasangs, there was no snow and the peoples began to sing and once more dance about their fires of bosk dung. (Nomads of Gor)
Considering it is near the first of the year, as they are counted from the First Snow to the First Snow, resolutions are bound to fall into place. Sometimes you don't even have to think or plan for them, and they just fall right in to place.
Sakmeta ran right over, dropping her argument across the camp to solicit a blue-haired slave's announcement that Sakmeta was a great cook. I was so compelled to touch the woman's blue hair, that I failed to really hear what she was saying? Cook? Hmm? Oh... right.
The Bead Maker was shouting again, something about the pot was hers. She'd given it to me, and by rights it was she who ought to cook in it. But knowing her, she is likely to boil up some kaiila excrement in piss, and try to serve it to me. I do not trust her after all the things she has said and done in recent hands.
"Will you cook a supper for me?" It was Aiyana I asked, giving her my attention again.
Strangely... and for reasons I cannot fathom... this seemed to make Sakmeta even more exasperated. You'd think...she would have been secretly glad to palm me off on her worst enemy. I have no idea whether she and the Weaver are enemies, though the Bead Maker did have some trite words to riddle the other woman with.
"But I want to cook for you. It's what I want."
Odd, for just the other day she'd been trying to force the cooking pot on me. When I told her just exactly what I wanted. For her to do what I told her to do, when I told her to do it. And to stop arguing with me! Her reply? "I could care less what you want, Kazhuye! You can rot for all I care!"
And now... as I turned back to Aiyana, Sakmeta was grabbing my arm, wailing and in tears, "Don't ignore me, Kazhuye! I want your attention. I want... I want... I want... me me me... myself myself myself...and I!"
"I haven't ignored you, Bead Maker. You just don't listen." She didn't listen then. And she wasn't listening now.
"Tomorrow then, Aiyana?" The Weaver had gone silent during the Bead Maker's entire scene, yet she finally found her voice again.
"Yes, Kazhuye. Tomorrow."
