Rain and Rumination

Greyriver Steading

Ekero and Voah sat out on the veranda of the lodge watching the evening rain, enjoying a mug of hard mulled cider, which they had heated up from a batch left by the farm hands, along with other crops from the years harvest. She had organized the larder and the two of them made dinner together. It was a mix of basic Helian farm and wild Arcadian cuisine, for they lacked the correct herbs and spices to make either of the traditional dishes of their homelands.

Voah ponders aloud as she leans over the railing of the lodges veranda, “It’s a hard rain… relentless. Cambena’s telling us something…”

She looked at the little man, his feet up on a stool. He smiled curiously, a little buzzed from the mulled cider.

“How silly of me. You have no idea what I’m saying.” She tried in her limited Ozainae. “Rain. Not stop.” She chuckled somewhat bitterly to herself. “Like life, nnn?”

He nodded and spoke in easy sentences so that she might understand, “Yes. Rain. Life like water. Like river. Always flow, always change.”

“Were … like leaves in water…” Voah picked up a leaf from the railing and let it fall slowly into the garden that ran along the lodge, illustrating her point that the leaf is fated on a course.

Ekero pointed to the leaf and then to themselves. “Aye. Leaves… but also river. Life shape us, we shape life.”

Voah considered the thought,”Destiny… we make or find?” She looked at him with a contemplative expression.

He stroked his blonde beard, “Mmm… both maybe.” He stood and wandered slowly into the pouring rain with his mug looking g for a stick but couldn’t find one. Instead he drew a zig zag in the mud with his boot, suggesting a journey with many turns. “Make path, find destiny.”

She took a sip of the sweet-spicey draught, “Fear, hope… same path walk.” She balanced her hand, palm down, mimicking a scale that tips back and forth.

“Like night and day. Always follow.” He alternated his hands in a rising and falling motion to depict the cyclical nature of day and night. He paused, thinking of something else. “…Like you Sun-hair. And your friend… Star-eyes. Gaw-nee-all?”

Night and day indeed. She sighed with a hopeful smile, her eyes somewhere far off, wishing she could see those stars again.

‘The things you can learn from a drunken talk with a stranger.’ She stepped down from the veranda and deliberately jumped into the muddy drawing, quashing out the ideas of fate and destiny for the moment. Then they both laughed. Eyes closed, Voah’s head tilted back, and the world with it, or so it felt, allowing herself to be fully bathed by the torrent of cool autumn rain. She knew the fire inside would feel all the sweeter afterwards.