The day had been spent around their wagons taking care of the small things that, in some ways she had been neglecting. It was time to start making preparations for the move again, and that meant getting the damage that naturally happens to the wagons repaired. She had spent the previous day at the Aaralyn wagons with her family, visiting, watching Tug play with his cousins and just spending time with her family there. That was where she had noticed that they were already making repairs.
Rook had announced that he was going hunting and had the intention of taking Tug with him. At first, she had balked, but had relented. There was this little voice in the back of her head that was shouting......No, He is too young! But there was another that said..........let go, you cannot hold him forever. If nothing else, she knew that the elder warrior and the child would enjoy the ride and the time together.
In the food storage wagon, she began arranging the jars of dried meats, spices, honey, sugars, flours and salts, taking inventory of what they had left. Before starting this journey, they had all worked like a swarm of little bees gathering up all that she thought they would need. It had been much different than what she had done before, because in times before she had only been putting up stores for herself, then just for her and Tayco. This had been the first time she had to plan for a group, for her family. Two grown warriors, herself, Tug, who ate constantly and the two slaves. In doing her inventory, she realized that she had not planned all that well and stores were a bit thinner than she would have liked. They would make it, but they would have to ration things carefully, and next season, she would start sooner and put away more.
While doing this, she was stacking the jars of honey, her mind wandering to a few nights earlier. She had known that Fonce was a bit off-kilter from their talk, and had decided it was honey time. If that man had a weakness, it was honey. She had seen him more than once, sit with a jar of the sweet, sticky treat, running his fingers in it and getting a look of pure, unbridled joy on his face as he sucked it from his fingers. This was one of the reasons, that from time to time, she would have one of her girls drop off a jar of it at his wagons, or a basket of honey cakes, or maybe a bag of her honeyed nuts. Simply because she knew he enjoyed them. Everyone needed to be spoiled from time to time, even the big, tough, Ubar.
She should have sent kasra to deliver it, but no, she had thought to just drop it off on her way to the fires. In her mind, she figured that he would be in the herds, or with his men, or doing what it was he did, but she had been wrong. When she had turned that corner, she had stopped dead in her tracks seeing him there. Not only him, but a small crowd with him. She had started to slowly step backwards, looking for a slave to give the jar to, when he spied her and spoke. Now why she was dumbstruck, she was not exactly sure. Maybe it was from him being there when she had not expected it, perhaps it was the look of joy on the drummers face, or the look of mingled happiness and confusion on the leather workers face. It seems that she had walked up on Sahli offereing a bride price for Jaella. A wonderful thing indeed. She suddenly realized that it was a good match. Not one that she had been expecting, but a good one just the same.
Or maybe her shock had come from seeing the singer sitting on the platform of his wagon wearing nothing but a tunic, boots and a smile. She had heard the gossip, but had not put much stock in it, but here it was, no longer gossip but the truth. And shock, yes that is what it was. Every free woman has this compartment in her that fears the collar, or so she had always thought, and to see someone that had once been a peer of sorts, collared and almost naked was a shock. The rumor had been that he had not forced the situation, but that the young singer had begged it from him. This too made her mind reel a bit. But, in that whirl of thoughts that came to her, something had taken on a clarity that it had not had before.
A few days earlier, he had come to the pens to tell her of Leonette, and that talk had turned to something else. A discussion of slaves and him having a personal slave. At the time, she had thought he was speaking of someone else, but after that night at his wagons, she realized that her assumption had been so far wrong, that it was not even funny. Thinking back on it all now, she should have known. But perhaps in her mind, she held that denial that any woman that had her freedom would wish to surrender it freely to a man.
What of her family? Did she not realize that her actions not only changed her life, but that of her family. Even if they were riding the skies, how did they feel, when they looked down to see that moment of surrender and submission? And what of her family at the first fires, how were they to think seeing her at his side in that way? Was a slave at his side bothersome? No, in fact it was just pretty much the norm, they had always been there. But to see one that had sat on the other side of the fires there, in some ways, was embarrassing It was a reminder of what could happen to them all. It would take some getting accustomed to.
She and Leonette had spoken on it later at the fires, and the woman allowed that it was easy to become enmeshed by his charisma. Charisma? He had charisma? She had to think long on this one, for she had never seen that? Was she missing something? Something that it seemed most of the other women saw in him? She had to shake her head on that one. She saw him as a man, a friend, sometimes a lost little boy in man's clothing, but charisma? Not there for her.
Was there something wrong with her? She found herself laughing a bit at this. The man did not make her world spin off its' axis, and maybe she should be thankful for that. He made her feel good, just in the fact that he was a friend, one she could talk to, one that listened, one she could tease a bit. Now Holo? That beast had charisma! She found herself laughing out loud at this, only to be interrupted by juneau poking her head into the wagon telling her that the Old Master and young Tug had returned.
Coming out of that wagon, she stood on the platform watching that child that held her heart so firmly in his pudgy little grip. Everything about him made her smile, made her heart quicken. Now.........that was charisma.
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