COUNTRY ROADS, TAKE ME HOME
Sequel to A Little White LieMi casa es tu casa.
Winter is slow to release its grip, this year. Hochtar began with sleet and torrential rain, stymying the waxing sun’s efforts to see in warmer days, budding trees, sprouting grass, and colours of swelling life. Even now towards the month’s end, with an almost clear blue sky above, a chill sits heavy in the air, and everything is… more still than it should be, like the world hasn’t yet dared to rouse from its hibernation through the darkest days.
That air moves softly down here in a valley. Up high against the skyline are the dark suggestions of moorland, but lower as the land dips — the two-tone blend of tan and green as heavy turf struggles to awake through last year’s casualties, cut through here and there revealing brown limestone deposits underneath, limestone which has been stacked into drystone walls wending and weaving along and across the slopes. Alders, solitary or in lonely little huddles, their grey boughs still mostly bare, form the odd road or boundary marker along this cultivated valley.
And a river flows through here. Not large, certainly not like the mighty Wesend further east to which this one is a tributary, but still deep and wide enough to be worth a watermill or two. Especially now with the heavy downpours’ influence still in effect upon it, plus the first hints of icemelt off the Mhearas westward of here. Up on the moorland, you can see those majestic white peaks rising to the horizon. But down here on the path which winds along beside the waterway, the steep dale walls hide them from view.
Osytha crouches at the rushing river’s bank, hand dipped in to fill her canteen while beside her, Forbítter guzzles greedily of those frigid waters. Not a good idea to sup here were these the first rains after a parched summer, no, but now the rivers should be well-purged and safe enough to risk. For a while.
“We should reach Corndon mid-afternoon,” she announces to her travelling companion. Her other travelling companion besides the horse, that is: a lilac-hued devahni, standing slightly taller than the other woman and at least as well-muscled. That wind gently lifts strands of her auburn hair and drags them against the ram’s horns which curl beside her head. “It’s a pretty small place, but there’s a coachin’ inn there that’s comfortable enough. They do a fairly decent rye beer, and all.”
Syr Badger straightens up, shaking cold droplets off her hand with a few flicks of the wrist. She looks back over her shoulder at Xenovia as she fixes her canteen back to her belt, and gives her a small grin.
“How’re you holdin’ up?” she asks. “Missin’ Addie’s chowder yet?”
