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 Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2016 7:39 pm
a f f i n i t y . s o l o
He hadn't come back. She wasn't sure exactly why that bothered her.
No, no, that was a lie. She knew exactly why it bothered her. He was a friend. He was one of her only friends. And he was gone.
Comfort had to be found. Theriar had been one of very few people she would invite to her house for fun and not out of politeness or attempts to make friends or move the business. He had visited twice, but he hadn't come back. He might not be gone forever, no, but Trelenwy had the feeling that he was gone for at least a while. People left. It was what they did. People were terrible. Theriar wasn't terrible, but he was still a person.
There was, however, one sort of living thing that never left. Oysters. They lived peacefully wrapped around the poles she had stuck in the ocean floor. They patiently waited to be harvested, patiently waited to be imbued with the ability to create pearls, and patiently waited for their pearls to be taken away. They were respectful. Of course the oysters didn't really have a choice once they were in a comfortable place, but she found the fact that they found her comfortable comforting. When they had grown beyond the age of producing pearls, she would let them be. They could live on the ocean floor and in the rocks for the rest of their days, and their shells could be crushed and shaped once they passed into the base of pearls for future generations. It was a poetic sort of life cycle. It was beautiful, just like the pearls it produced. All of it was beautiful.
Trelenwy sighed as she strapped her belt on and made sure the pouches were the right side in. She scooped some tiny rounded shell-bits from the clay bowl she kept them in. If she had wanted to, she could have scooped a whole handful. There were that many bits. It wasn't this time, though. Her farm was still very small. She still had very few oysters.
As she went out into the water, she was humming to herself. It was a lot of hard work, but there was no desire to give up. Even with her farming so slow at this stage and the monetary difficulties, she couldn't imagine stopping. The oysters, nameless though they were (save Green Irridium) were like family to her. The only families she had known in the past were abuse, or fellow slaves, and the latter had all broken up and gone their separate ways. So now she had the oysters.
She lifted one out of the water and was surprised to catch herself continuing singing, not just to herself but to the shellfish. She smiled and laughed, and then continued her little nonsense song. She tutted and tried to soothe the creature as she placed its shell bead.
How could they trust her, when she pried them open and made them sick? Her smile turned to a frown. That was what she was doing, after all. Making them sick. Did they not move just because they couldn't? She'd always just assumed that they would shoot around like clams, but what if they didn't? What if they were her prisoners? She stroked the oyster's shell and held it to her cheek. The poor things. Did it even feel good when she took our their pearls? She was no better than--
No. No, she definitely was. With her brow furrowed and her mouth a firm line, she decided that she was better than her old owners. They had hurt her. They had used her. She was a person. Oysters, though they fought against being opened, didn't feel pain. They didn't really care. They couldn't. They didn't even have brains! She knew, because she'd checked... oh, she felt bad to eat them, but everyone had to eat! Matori didn't have as much vegetation as it sounded like Jauhar did. She and they oysters, they had a special relationship. She would care for them and be sure they were healthy and robust and they would provide her with their pretty little gastric disturbances. They would survive together, the few dozen of them; the oysters and her. They had to be in it together. That was how society worked.
Her song changed. It was slower, almost soothing. She stroked the oyster again, feeling the bumpy, rock-like texture of the outer shell and the rough clinging barnacles. They were alive too, and so was the algae. The shrimp. The bacteria. She was harboring a whole ecosystem here, just living on the poles in her stretch of the ocean. They could depend on one another, all of the creatures in the water, and so could she. Her smile returned. She gently placed the oyster back in its place and moved on to its neighbor.
She would continue to do this. Yes, she would go out harvesting oysters later in the week and carry them home in her bucket, and they would live in their great empire of oysters, giving only their pearls in return. Oysters didn't need pearls any more than she needed a shell. They would support her, and she would keep them kindly.
Yes, she would continue doing this. She would continue her farming and grow her flock. She would continue with this peaceful, beautiful, wonderful, repetitive work. Yes, this was where her heart was. After all of this time, she had found her calling.(916 words)
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 11:35 am
c l a s s . q u e s t
The oysters did not require constant upkeep, but Trelenwy liked to give them a little bit of attention a day at least. She didn't imagine that it made any difference in their pearl production, but maybe they liked it. Oysters in the wild didn't get cleanings, of course, or pettings, or gentle talkings-to and they did fine, but these oysters were special. They were her livelihood. They deserved a little extra care if nothing else.
Of course, barnacles didn't tend to cling so close to shore with the water going in and out and the algae barely had the grip to stay. Irridium's shell seemed to be green by nature, or else he wasn't getting rid of his little friends. Here and again she'd find a straggler or two, but she never picked them off. other sea creatures were just as welcome so long as they didn't make anyone else sick.
It was out in the sea with her oysters that Trelenwy was now. She was singing softly to herself and, she supposed, partially to the oysters while she worked. She checked them for new damage or signs of illness and checked their netting and tethers to be sure nobody was going to float away. She was bare-footed, and her toes grazed the sand on the sea floor. She wore the same bottoms as usual for her farming, and her top was pulled up high. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.
Her home sat open on the beach, as per usual. There was very little need for doors in a community so small and so tight-knit. Most of the Matori out here had been slaves at some point, so it was generally understood that they were all among family. Generally.
She did not see the children enter her house. They hadn't made a sound as they clapped their hands over their mouths and sneaked inside. They had heard that the pearl-vendor lived here, and they had also heard that she was old and magical, or maybe she was young and deformed? It was hard to track down the truth when all of your friends saw the lady a different way! What they were really after was a good scare, but if they could sneak in and nab some pearls, all the better for it! When they reached the proper stretch of beach they peered out to the water and saw a slender shape with long black hair. How odd to have black hair! They sneaked into here shack quickly so she wouldn't see and disappeared beyond the door frame.
It was as they left that Trenelwy spotted them, or more aptly that she heard them. The two children, neither of which she recognized with any familiarity, came giggling and shrieking from her shack. They held something in their hands that she couldn't see, grasped in tiny fists. For a moment she just watched them, shocked. What had they been doing in her home? She'd decided to walk over to confront them and perhaps find their parents when the realization struck as to what they were absconding with. There was nothing else so small in her house, and nothing so valuable. Children didn't understand, she thought, but they understood enough to know what stealing was. Her blood ran like ice and she took high, loping strides in the water.
"Stop!" she shouted. "STOP!"
One of the children turned to regard her with its wide yellow eyes, but it was still grinning. At least it was for the moment. When the realization of their situation hit home, the child frowned and picked up the pace. It was likely not so much about the pearls any more as it was about getting away from a shrieking stranger. Their hands still clutched their treasure, though.
Trelenwy's feet met sand with a bit of a physical shock. She stumbled for a moment and then began making longer strides across the beach toward the children. "Stop!"
"We gotta go!" she heard the one ahead yell, and it dropped its handfuls of pearls in the sand. The other turned to her again and kept on running. She was upon them before they were able to make it back into town and grabbed the one in back, the one who still had her pearls, by the shirt. She didn't want to hurt him, she just wanted her pearls back, but she was horrified to discover that she did want to hurt him because she wanted her pearls back. Who was this child, privileged to have a childhood, to have never felt the sting of a master's flog? What made them think that they could break into a person's home and take their belongings? Had it been so long?! Had the world forgotten?!
The child immediately burst into shrieking sobs and dropped the pearls in shock. Trelenwy watched them tumble into the sand, immediately disappearing beneath the surface for their own weight. She let the child go without the shove her body urged her to give and the pair went off bawling, one now well ahead of the other.
For a moment Trelenwy just stood there as her faculties returned. She felt a pain in her foot, but didn't have the will to check it for a few moments more. She found that she had done a number on her feet, running blindly through the ocean and up across the shells on the beach. There wasn't much blood, but it ached. Still, she found herself more annoyed than pained. More angry than pained. She drew an X where she stood, went inside for some first aid, washed her feet in the ocean, and applied bandages to the scrapes. Then it was inside fro a sifter while she pulled through the sand in search of her fallen pearls. She was still searching when the parents' children came, and continued searching as they accused her of being unkind.
"Your kids tried to steal my livlihood," she'd responded, "and you can feel free to pay if I end up missing some." Then it was back to work. She didn't care what those parents did. Obviously they hadn't raised their children correctly if they were running into strangers' homes and stealing their pearls. At least they'd seemed angry with the little goblins.
In the end, two were damaged, and one never found. The damage was unfortunately done to a black pearl, the rarest. The two missing were predictably cream in color, one rather smaller than the other. She didn't want to calculate how much money she had lost, at least not today. Tomorrow, maybe. Maybe she'd go back out and search again, but the wind and water would have worked their magic by then.
Clearly the sense of community was draining out of Matori.
[ Trelenwy is unfortunately losing faith in her community, which will alter her treatment of them in the future. She will view others of her own kind more questioningly. She needed to experience some bad with her good. ]
(1,137 words)
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