|| Lenia ||

|| Lenia ||

She must have been exhausted. Furiously she scrubbed her eyebrows encrusted with muck. If that did not work, she would have to resort to using spit; not that it was above her now, of course. That let out a hollow laugh.

Sleeping in midden.

She cringed. Eighteen winters past her nameday and, and – midden! Refuse! Some drunken ass had probably excused himself right over her hair to prove that he could do it. She should pinched her eyes open just to pose as a spirit, dull eyes flashing in the dark, haunting the local pile of shit. Her laughter quickly came to screech as she realized the corners of her mouth were flaky with muck as well.

Eighteen winters, now. As of today. This was probably her greatest one yet.

Hobbling onto her feet – it took quite an effort, even needing to scratch for crevices in the brick wall to hoist herself up – she cleared her throat. Well, whatever obscenities she might have done yesterday, no one would recognise her anyway.

Not when she was reeking of waste and wearing four coats to buffer the insufferable cold. And she would have to walk down to the river today, to relieve this… humiliation she had dropped face first into.

Fingers softly caressed her face.

No. . . No one would recognise her with this face.

Time to make tracks.

She was glad that she was no longer in a city. A town fit her fine. The noise levels should have told her she was in a city, but dialect convinced her otherwise. All that slurring and drawling, no decent city dweller would be dribbling spit in their mouths like that. Even brutish, beer-chugged tongues slobbered more than usual. Drinking in the early morning! Maybe this town was not so great after all. Men. What sob of a wife would let her husband plaster himself when the sun was barely yawning?

A crackle and a hiss leapt out of her mouth. Glass. She had inadvertently taken the alleyways. Her shoes had been lost sometime yesterday, and despite the loss she preferred not to remember how. Well, unlike her face she had not shoved her legs in yesterday night’s bed. Her foot would not be rotting anytime soon. Crouching down, she rubbed the injured foot with the back of her other. Low quality glass ground to dust by the brushing. Peasants. Why pretend to be rich when it was so painfully obvious they were not?

Now all she had to do was toe her way through. Whichever hare-brained moron decided to break a window over this alley, she would claim his neck first.

Outside, finally. A fresh squall of morning air caressed her bones, but she managed a grin. She hastily wiped it away. People would flinch at that. If there were people prancing in the river in this time of the day.

She bared her teeth like a maniac.

Slowly, carefully dipping into the smooth current, wriggling her toes, finally she began to relax. Easing into eddies, her mirth multiplied, patting herself mentally on the back for remembering which side of the river was warm. It was an odd river truly – one side would ice her fingertips while another would, if it had no current, remind her of basking in the sun. Yet she had not eavesdropped on any in town mentioning such a wondrous, completely boastable feature to tourists. Perhaps it was a secret. Her secret too, now. She giggled.

Spinning, whirling left and right, jumping out and down like a frolicking fairy. A very glorious fairy, sodden in dung. When faced with the fact that she was tainting the river, convenient forgetting came to the fore; she was just enjoying herself in being clean. To her, that was sound argument enough. The river was a public – no, her resource, since nobody talked of this warm pool.

For probably an hour she leisured in the water. For probably an hour she planned to spend lying outside, drying. Disappearance of the odious odour whisked away, replaced by grass and, what she would like to call a “fishy smell” – not that she remembered the scent of fish, yet, the river water left a distinct tingle to her nostrils, she simply decided it was so. It was a pleasant prod to the nose that dived down straight to the stomach. Not yet, she would chastise and slap her belly. She could not earn food walking into town looking like God had showered her with a single raincloud. Coupled with this face, she would alarm attention by hordes.

Hands reached to her face.

Yes, God had pissed on her, once.

She fell asleep in spite of herself.

And awoke, stood up, collected herself. The sun felt warm on her back. It was still a few hours to set; she had slept through Zenith! Trouble did not touch her, but disappointment did – Zenith was a prime time to knock on doors for food. True, she had not much luck in this town, but a few windows creaked to be merciful. Memories of onion soup and bread from one particularly loveable house softened her dry tongue with saliva. One memory that provoked her to lap like a dog at the edge of the river.

Soft slithers on grass blades piqued her ears, and deliberately slow, she straightened. A boy by the light footfalls, cautious and coming from behind.

- You are…

A surprisingly deep voice for a boy, at that. Wonderings of what he looked like rose bubbles in her mind. Images of dashing, striking faces were spun inside them. She snapped to. It was just a boy. Good; she still had her back turned towards him.

- A witch! It- it’s a witch!

The shout was shoved onto her face like thrown pie.

Shit.

She bit her lip until it bled;

the cycle had begun again.