I had been avoiding going out into it all for as long as I could. I simply didn't want to slip slide through the slick grass, fight for my feet with the sucking mud, wipe my wet face with a wet arm and try to keep my hair from sticking to everything. I had reasonable explanations for laying in the soft cocoon of blankets around my shoulders and cushioning my back. I had already collected a wagon load of damp dung, and adding more to the gooey mess wouldn't help anyone. Grooming rain wet bosk was a tangled mess affair, and wouldn't make much of a difference. In fact, not much of what I 'could' do, would make much difference. I told myself.
I must have fallen asleep, falling victim to the drowsy effects of the weather, for suddenly I realized there was noise around me and I stood up very quickly. Stumbling forward, the sudden position change left me light headed and off balance, practically falling out the flaps of the wagon onto the platform.
The sky was orange! Everything was...orange. This golden orange color that washed every single place it touched with the particular color. A slow moving sunset reflected off thousands of misty water droplets, turning wagons, paint, grass, bosk, people...everything...the same unbelievable color. Ooohs and ahhhs roamed around the wagons in a collective sigh of stunned admiration and I was not alone in my delight wrapped in an eerie awe struck feeling. We ...the whole world...seemed rooted to the ground as the Central Fire bled onto everything, whispering a victory with a smug smile over the rain.
I half ran, half waltzed toward the fields beyond the living quarters of the Tuchuk, wanting to see the very last of the phenomenon and imprint it upon my mind. We stood there, many of us, staring, until brown, then navy, then black painted the sky and the moons lent a twinkling beacon to follow back home.
I followed another on the way back.
Several birds that have visited from time to time, claiming the winds and air around the colorful wagons. They were a conundrum to me. A...puzzle. Several families of birds had kept their home near mine back on the ranch. Warblers and finches and stunning glossy winged predators. But they had brush and scraggly trees to roost and next in. We had none of that in our world.
This airborne puzzle had wings of oddly speckled colors. Not of the type that disappeared into the brush of wheat tinted grasses, but more as if someone had splattered paint from a distance. Or...perhaps like the vacillating colors of ripples that roamed over the turbulent surface of a creek muddied and churned up from a recent storm. I always wondered where it came from. Did it soar pasangs through the skies each day just to come here? Did it burrow into the folds of canvas and hitch a ride with us? Did it carefully plait and weave wild grass into a next high on top of a wagon where I couldn't see?
In the dark he was a mere shadow against the dark sky, but even still...I knew who he was. He was the one that watched Mistress Sev. Irrationally sometimes I thought it was a spy sent to keep track of her. Maybe...to keep track of all of us. It seemed silly, but more rational explanations were just as...silly. We parted ways at our respective wagons, and as he disappeared into the darker places, I ducked into my hastily vacated nest.
I patted around in the darkness for a corner of my blanket. I couldn't find it, and muttering a few curses I crept inside further. My knee slid against something on the floor board and I broke a nail in the process, still searching in the dark for the edge of my beaded blessings amulet pillow, the roll of fur, the soft fluff of my woven blanket. Finally, in desperation, I flung open the canvas flaps at my back and struggled to see in the moonlight....struggled to see all the...
emptiness...
that I could find.
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