[P] best to keep things in the shallow end

[Ruth]

☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"the absent woman / the transparent woman / the absinthe woman / the woman absorbed, the woman under tyranny / the contemporary woman / the mocking woman / the artist dreaming inside her house."

I left the hospital early today.

I left the hospital early today, and I spent what felt like an hour attempting to scrub all the scent of it off my coat; the blood, and the sick, and the cleaning fluids. I don’t know if it worked or not. I feel like I can still smell it – I feel like I can still taste it on my tongue, as though I never actually left. If there is one thing that I can say about my work, it is that it follows me home like a starving dog after scraps.

I left the hospital early today because I needed to search for herbs in Terrastella, and it is a decent walk between the Day Court and the swamps of Terrastella. Ishak grumbled about it a bit, but he followed me in the end, as always – he phrased it as a failure to comprehend why I was tasked with the grunt work of collecting herbs, but I know that the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t like leaving the desert during the winter. (He has never built up any tolerance for the cold.) Nearly as soon as dawn broke over the edge of the horizon, we were off across the Mors, towards the Eleutheria; it is almost pointlessly dangerous to cross the mountains during the winter, and Ishak has already complained enough about our seasonal pilgrimage to Veneror.

It is mid-afternoon when we finally arrive in Terrastella, and that means that we will be staying the night in the court. (I had already expected that, but Ishak does look unhappy about it; I suppose he’s finally decided that he prefers my family to the cold.) I make for the swamp almost immediately. Even in the winter, there are certain rare, hardy herbs growing within it, if you are willing to brave the murky, muddy, and often fog-covered heart of it to find them. I am, fortunately – or unfortunately, if you believe my guard -, not easily cowed. When I proceed down the narrow, winding, Ilati-worn paths that run through the wooded depths of the swamp like a spiral of ants, it is without caution or hesitation.

(If part of that is because I know that Ishak will keep me from getting lost, that is beside the point.)

When I finally settle to collect a patch of wild ginger roots I’ve found growing around the trunk of a half-decayed tree, I am largely alone. Ishak is – somewhere. Close enough to hear me if I scream, at any rate. (There are stories of creatures that live in Terrastella that can kill you before you even have the chance to react, but I have never been whimsical enough to believe them.) I scrape at the muddy earth with my hooves; in the wet soil, it is enough to uncover the pale shape of the roots, which I pull out by my teeth.

They don’t smell like the hospital. Out here, I can nearly forget the scent of antiseptic – and maybe that is why I always volunteer to collect herbs, even though I don’t need to.

I am always between one sterile birdcage and another.

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@Saphira || our first thread.....in Thirty years... || anne waldman, "fast talking woman"

[Saphira]

Saphira we are magic talking to itself

She is practicing turning things to salt when she hears the shuffle of hooves in the undergrowth. An assortment of leaf- and twig-shaped salt sculptures, as well as ambiguously crumbled salt-piles, form a ring around the azure mare. Hastily, she gets up and kicks them down, retreating into the shadows to listen for the strangers’ passing. She still isn’t sure what to think about this magic - what others think about this magic. To hide it is habit; she never had the privilege before and now she obsesses over proper solitude. The unpredictable nature of her new magic has only sent her further into hiding; she wishes only to avoid the market - even if she does want to turn some of those snotty girls into salt. 

Saphira watches from the trees as the couple disperse, the stallion going off elsewhere as the dark mare finds her way to a patch of plants. The mare digs at the soil with her hooves and pulls a bunch of roots at with her teeth. Saphira isn’t familiar with the plant; she has made some effort in learning about what edible plants grew in her court, but to this one she can only say it looks, maybe, familiar. If it had been at market, she hadn’t been able to afford it. So, she approaches the stranger, slowly, and stops a few feet behind her. “What is that?” she asks. 


"Speaking."

@Ruth | this is kinda doo doo sorry

🐚

[Ruth]

☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"the absent woman / the transparent woman / the absinthe woman / the woman absorbed, the woman under tyranny / the contemporary woman / the mocking woman / the artist dreaming inside her house."

The ginger does not come out of the ground easily.

It is always a pain to pull roots out of the ground without tools; I should have brought something with me, but what I’m looking for in the swamp isn’t technically ginger. (That is merely what some might call a “happy coincidence,” and what I might call pragmatism.) Still, I finally manage to tug the milk-white roots free of the muddy soil, and I hold them suspended in mid-air alongside me; I can taste them in my mouth, even smell them. I’ve never much liked the taste of ginger, but it is too functional (and, perhaps, valuable) as an herb to ignore.

At first, when I hear a disturbance among the undergrowth, I expect that it is Ishak. I correct that almost immediately – if it were Ishak, I would never hear him until he wanted to be heard, and I cannot imagine that he would want to be heard traipsing through the swamp. No, half of the time I don’t know that Ishak is at my side until he opens his mouth, half-smirking, and throws me some witty remark. I’ve long passed the point of being startled when he sneaks up on me.

The woman who appears from the swamp is distinctly not Ishak. Her coat is a bright, blueish green. I might have batted an eyelash at the color, but it is nothing unusual at the color; what is more surprising to me is the thick texture of it. (I don’t leave the desert often enough to see many winter coats.) We are almost identical in height, though she is stockier – and probably stronger – than I am in build, and in all ways more striking, from the sharp blue of her eyes to the foam white-coils of her mane and tail, which fall behind her in enviously thick waves. I raise my head to examine her, my stare unblinking, and I do not move an inch at her question.

(I have forgotten my courtesies again.)

“It’s wild ginger,” I say, simply, and extend one of the roots to her – an offer, as it were, to examine it, or perhaps to take it. “It helps with digestion, and nausea, and it can be used to treat some common viruses, like colds.” I pause, considering her, and tilt my head. “Are you out looking for herbs, too?” If she is, two sets of eyes are better than one; we can split what we find at the end of our search.

(I am not entirely immune to working well with others, regardless of what Ishak says.)

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@Saphira || <3 || anne waldman, "fast talking woman"