Today had been special. Against the face of a roughly built table Kolda had collapsed, fully dressed down to her leatherworked boots, tools still resting against calloused fingers. The feral locks of her hair were splayed wildly around her, mostly unraveled from the messy braid they’d been trapped in. The wood dust of her machinations had fluttered away from her parted lips, warm breath brushing over a freshly made sea of carvings. Beveled or gemmed eyes watched from the multitudinous faces, observers of her fall to exhaustion, of the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. They had been worked on for many restless nights, borne of passionate meticulation, of intense servitude to the craft, for in three nights, there was to be a bright, golden hunter’s moon. It was a time when merchants and those with skill to offer would travel for days to a city beyond the mountains, drink into the morning, and prepare their massive festival for the following week. It was a glorious, prosperous time, and every massive block of time before the approach of the hunter’s moon, Kolda wrang herself dry, for though she left her home with cartloads of her creations, she returned with nothing but a fat pouch of …show more content…
They put some things in the wild waves of her brown hair, like hyssops, or some of the dried sage they’d bled from her stores; she was pretty sure she’d spotted a dirty weed that a child passed to his mother from the ground had been added to the fray. A young man, one who had fancied her - and all girls in the village - stuffed one of her smaller figurines into her pocket, though she had not seen which, before he openly professed his undying admiration and sulked away like he the victim. After their senseless gibbery had been spilled, the throng took their leave, walking back through the field, onto the road, and down the hills into Vree, where they undoubtedly return to inn, tavern, and homes to celebrate the results of their consummate