Ursula’s heavy opaque and ornate parasol reminded Helena of one heavy rain cloud in a sky of cerulean and translucency. They descend down the mountain in rings that trace the same path of Ursula’s dirt road. Though not well defined, with a trail that seemed to transition into the mulch and muddy floor of the forest.

She had proposed calling a carriage but Helena urged them to take the stroll down to the main square of Vakar instead. It was not everyday the skies were so bright Helena could almost see her ivory hair in the reflection of the clouds.

“Do you come down the mountain and to the main square often?”

“No, not often.” She confesses, “There is no reason when I have everything I shall ever need at my fingertips in my castle.”

“So then, pray tell why have you accompanied me on my short journey today?”

“When strange company beckons…” Her sharp chin tipped upwards.

Helena laughed, something that mimicked the sun rays streaming through the trees today. “Might I point out that only one in the pair of us carries a parasol with them on this strikingly blue day?”

Bluebells. “I did not know Taranqar had bluebells.”

“Bluebells?” Ursula arched her sculpted brow, “Ah, here we call them Threek.”

“What do they mean here?”

“Mean? Nothing but good luck in the New Year I suppose.”

“Ah.”

“Why do you ask?” She pushed forwards.

“In the Goodlands, we give Bluebells as signs of love and patience. Though often romantic love they can be given for familial love also,” Her hands were animated as she spoke. Ursula watching her hands as they’re thrown around, mouth as it moves. Helena gave a slight chuckle before continuing, “I remember when I was just a child my father would give me bluebell petals because they reminded him of the colour of my eyes.

Ursula’s velvet cloak shifted with the breaths of the wind. In the distance and between the brush of the trees Helena was able to spot the rickety edges of Vakar.

Mud puddles with peekings of cobblestone interspliced for decoration. The pair of them passes by wide-eyed citizens as they shovel and pitch bales of hay or fill their buckets with water. Working on the stoops of their frosty windowed and wooden homes.

She entered the first bookstore she noticed along the lines of shops and homes. It held the sweet smell of books of old as though they were in a tight embrace together.

“Ms! You are here!” The elderly woman fixed her apron and rounded the counter to near Helena.

“I am! It is a fine day, is it not?” Helena answers excitedly, she had been worried about interacting with other Taranqians than Ms. Ursula Athanasia. Luckily, this woman spoke her language.

Though now, Helena made a mental note to query Ursula about more practice lessons with her in the coming days. It was a fascinating language, in the core of its being; how it addressed gender or descriptions or the names in which they called each other. It was so utterly opposite to the language Helena had been raised with.

“What I mean is that you are here, before me, away from her.” Her voice dropped nearing the end of her sentence, approaching a vehement whisper. The folded tip of her red headscarf flapped against her smoke and pearl hair.

“Ursula? Yes, she’s outside.” Helena’s scans over Ursula as she stands beyond the window panes. The shade of the parasol draping over her slender and upright form.

The woman looked confused for a moment at Helena’s words when her gaze is dragged back. Shaking her head, she snatched Helena’s palms and held them tightly. “She is a Gdari! A Gdari!”

“I do apologize but I do not quite follow I-” Her gaze flitted with fear back to the soot-dotted window in search of her subject but Ursula had disappeared.

Helena sighed and nodded to the woman in an attempt to diffuse the situation and allow her palms to slip from the woman’s calloused fingers. She was obviously elderly, perhaps her age was simply getting to her on this day. “As you say.”

With her soft voice like daisies and bluebells, the woman’s anxiety seemed to diminish. Though, she held her stare. Burrowing like that of a starving animal with more shaking white than colour beneath her short eyelashes.

Helena patted her on the shoulder, slipping her hands from the old woman's before making her way out of the confines of the bookstore.

She quickly spotted the towering and conflicting form of Ursula Athanasia. Speaking to a man as he worked, they seemed to be in idle and peaceful conversation.

His clothes are heavy with sweat and mud. His rounded back straightened, his shaggy hair moving like petals in the wind as his eyes met hers.

“Helena, this is Dmitri.”

“It is my pleasure.” Putting forward a hand for him to take, Dmitri instead stood still for a few moments. Eyes shifting between my fingertips and Ursula.

Catching the slightest hint of a smile on Ursula’s pallid visage, Helena lowered her hand, unsure if she was missing something from this conversation without words.

They speak for a few moments in Varanqian before Ursula turns to Helena; translating their conversation, “He says a storm will be rolling through. A hefty one, most likely in the next coming nights.”

“Good day Dmitri.” Ursula stated in a bespoke way. Once again they began their ascent.

Despite how she could estimate the reactions of her peers back in the Goodlands. There was something undeniable in the air of Vakar. Perhaps it was in the way each person carried themselves. Or the way every little detail of the village fascinated her in a way the Goodlands never had. They were open with themselves, like an open wound as people worked only for what they needed.

Helena’s head tipped upwards to meet Ursula’s onyx eyes before asking, “May I ask, why did Dmitri seem so befuddled by my actions earlier? I must say it was quite peculiar.”

“It is not customary to shake hands here. We instead embrace. To shake hands is to essentially say that perhaps the other is too dirty or too messy to embrace and is therefore beneath you.” Ursula revealed with a sly smile.

“Oh no!” Helena gasps, covering her mouth with shock. Her cheeks flaming with embarrassment, “It was not my intention to offend! Oh how rude of me!”

“It is alright, Dmitri understood. Foreigners are rare in our lands, miscommunication is therefore easy to come by.”

“I still feel horrible, there is not much documentation about the customs and culture of Taranqar back in the Goodlands. I came here knowing much less about your lands than I hoped.”

“I understand perfectly, no explanation nor anxiety is needed.”

Still cringing she asked, “Might you still extend my apologies to Dmitri?”

“As you wish.”

Her finger drew circles in the fabric of her dress, rolling it around her fingertip, “Despite my time here, I still feel as though I am navigating with a blindfold on, as though I am only understanding half of the conversation.”

“We shall have to remedy that soon then, will we not?” Ursula declared. Comfortable steps in the pattering and clicking of their stroll back up the mountain.