If it was so important that the child watch after the parent’s achievement, then why had Pnkg been allowed to mate with a man whose interests lay completely outside agriculture? A very rich merchant, was Oltre; very rich indeed. It would be fair to say that Pnkg’s allowance was sufficient to keep her sister happy, along with the whole rest of the Daephod family. Even if every last trace of their considerable wealth vanished before tomorrow, Oltre wasn’t a heartless man. They wouldn’t end up paupered unless Taralngegeshet’s dread and unholy disfavor fell upon them, so that they were brought to wrack and ruin in a day and a night.
No, it was vanity that had tied Ktsn to Cursog Lmrk Entpat; the vanity of her father and mother. They wanted their own blood watching after the farm and keeping it strong. Grafting a new branch onto their own family tree, as well as transitioning control of their assets to Ktsn and Cursog, was the opposite of easy in most respects. If Ktsn weren’t able to devote it the full of her attention for quite a long time, the transition would become a capsizing.
“I have an interest in settling down and pursuing the upkeep of our family’s good fortune, in good time,” she’d said. “First, though, I wish to learn. I wish to pass on that learning.”
She’d waved the digest of her botanical findings, and father and mother had turned… disappointed.
“I do not want to forgo the opportunity to cement bonds with the Entpat clan,” she’d tried to mollify them. Truth; she actually found the farmer chosen as her arranged-mate more than a little charming, and a very handsome creature indeed. It was in the bearing of his stance, and the way his head turned when he was thinking. “I simply know that it will be more difficult, if not impossible, to see my experiments to fruition and also deal with such profound responsibilities. This is important. I do not ask exemption, only a period of deference on my actual joining with Cursog.”
Father had had the nerve to briefly soliloquize the importance of timeliness in one’s life decisions - lest they be gone before the next dawn. Ignore that putting the decision off for a little while yet would harm nobody. Mother… she had patronized her daughter with placations aimed at Father. Wdondf hadn’t been placated.
“It will take me perhaps a quarter of a year to finish these studies, I am certain of it!” Ktsn had defended, her claws scraping at the air as she began to feel anxious. “I will need to spend a year at Drolmak defending and fleshing out my findings to give them acceptable substance, yes, but-”
It was simply unacceptable. The two who had raised her, who had put considerable time and effort into raising her with proper education and proper speech, evidently didn’t want her to put those talents to the best use.
Ktsn remembered her rage, her flight, a vow that she would complete her work and scribe a treatise on the subject of her “good air bad air” theory - brief, perhaps, yet one of her own devising. She’d read other vaguely similar studies done by the minds of the university at Drolmak, but this little achievement would be hers.
If it meant she’d have to find a mate other than Cursog in the fullness of time, then she’d be distressed on that day… but so be it.
Eventually, Ktsn came up to the western side of the village, careful to keep herself in full view of the person stationed at the gate. Unlike larger settlements, Goskec Tktl’s size discouraged any sort of dedicated guard force. In fact, the village staffed its gates with hunters far more frequently than those having militia experience. The positive aspects of such a scheme, of course, included keeping costs down to a reasonable level for a community whose major worries were usually rowdy wildlife, and maybe bandits once every two to three years.
The negative aspects included a tendency to provide those providing the service with a moderate paranoia, impatience when dealing with people whose friend-or-foe status wasn’t immediately clear, and very, very good aim.
“Ktsn Wdondf Daephod,” announced the approaching farmer, as she saw the person standing watch start contemplating her with sling at the ready. “I am here for a bit of trading, and intend to leave before sundown.”
The visible eye blinked.
“Ktsn? Didn’t recognize you.”
A slow, laconic rumble trickled from the sentinel, lips pressing against her outer teeth with each syllable. Old Drlkt, possibly the meanest creature on four legs when her dander was up. Her head bobbed a little bit, and her rise to the fullest height of her highlegs cut short as her sling went slack, bullet expertly brought to a waiting palm.
“Would’ve expected you with your father.”
Drlkt looked Ktsn over once, producing a subliminal urge to flip over onto fastlegs just so she could get by more quickly.
“You finish with your flowers thing?” the hunter asked, head askance as she gestured Ktsn inside. “Would’ve also expected you to have your writing.”
“I have not,” said Ktsn. She didn’t resent Drlkt; the hunter was, by her own admission, not the brightest or the best with scroll-learning. The woman really didn’t understand how important the written medium actually was. She would have liked to find someone else in her immediate circle of acquaintances who also enjoyed such learning pursuits.
“Ah. Well, best of fortune, then.”
“Gegaunli uplift your bones,” Ktsn replied, and hurried toward the mercantile square.
The next hours flailed by in a blur, with the central focus being an internal debate on actually getting a whole new pickax. Her main concern was the uncertain science of gauging the difference in lifespan between her current tool and that of the expensive steel laid out in the metalworking stall. Toughness was far less a factor when comparing steel to well-husbanded iron, at least for her purposes. She slipped through the crowd several times, never actually approaching the stall herself, and made an effort to avoid looking like she was considering business. The last thing she wanted was to be solicited by the nice-looking man tending the wares; besides the prospect of having things pointedly sold at her, a bit of commotion might attract unwanted hypothetical filial attention.
Rolling the thought over in her head, she detoured over to a stall with very large earthenware. The decision to buy or pass by her new pickax, she calmly decided, would hinge on whether she spent additional funds on a new pithos. After a bit of fierce haggling, she worked the price of the huge vessel down to something manageable, mentally surrendering the unsullied steel pickax to the void of someone-else’s-purchase.
It was as she was conducting this bit of business, strapping the new pithos to the side of her rucksack with new rope, that she caught sight of Rlgts.
To call the lapidary one of Ktsn’s least favorite people was to call the Western Sea an unpleasant lake. If the woman who’d considered Cursog to be “hers” (independent of arrangement by family or reciprocation of the feeling by her intended victim) died, the world would be a better place. The hussy didn’t even have the decency to be subtle about it.
This line of charitable thinking cut off as the gemcutter also noticed Ktsn, and her conversation with a grocer became drastically shortened.
The phrase “anywhere else but here” is a beautiful thing.
Ktsn decided she’d come back later to get her pickax honed, when she wasn’t sitting on a stomach roiling with two very distinct but related flavors of unpleasantness. Rlgts wasn’t making a scene, and neither was she, so maybe Ktsn could avoid escalating things any further.
It so happened that she was beginning to plan her egress from the budding drama, when the sky ripped open in every direction and revealed an apparition. A horribly strange image accreted, repeating from horizon to horizon, just before a horribly strange voice began speaking from everywhere.
And the words that it spoke turned her whole world on its head.
“Dear people, we greet you, and wish not to cause you any alarm. Unfortunately, we have some very peculiar news. You see, there is a place called Rhaagm, and you are now part of it. Exactly what that means, and how that is possible, are legitimate worries which will be explained in due course. For the moment, though…”
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