West Street, Zeltiva: 3rd Day of Spring 412 AV
So this was it. Omid glanced around the room, his scant belongings folded into two neatly-packed crates in the center. Was he forgetting anything? Even the bed had been stripped bare so that its netted rope showed like the ancient bones of a long-rotted carcass. Crouching, he reached underneath the net to see his old child's loom, dusty with disuse, a bare wooden frame: nothing really, even less than his bed.
And yet . . .
Southern Nyka: 63rd Day of Winter 399 AV
Omid squinted in the dusty light at the slender warp of his loom. The undyed yarn seemed to glow softly, the way pale things will in the shadow, and he guided the warp thread through these taut columns with deft hand.
"Not so tight, Omi," Ma-mi's gentle fingers soon reinforced her reprimand, as she spread the half-made cloth a little more loosely in its frame. "You don't want it to bunch--see how I do it?"
He snorted his frustration and clambered into her lap to watch her weave. The graceful rhythm and the shuck-shuck-shuck of the peddle soothed him, the nascent cloth a vibrant play of colors next to his dull work. She was still near the bottom of the loom, and when she finished, she'd be standing on a stool to reach the uppermost portions high above his head. Then he would work the peddle for her, and he loved the power of it when he did--more than that, he loved the unity of their two bodies, mother and child, her shuttle slowing to match his hesitant gait.
"Now try again, more gently." she said, pushing him off to his own humble child's loom.
For a moment he hesitated, head to one side. Nearby, Gula pulled happily at her raw wool, and little clouds went up as she worked to card the wool with her sharp-toothed little brushes. He watched for a moment as the hard metal pins flashed in the fire's half-light, so near to her soft baby-fingers. His own hands bore several small scars where he'd torn the skin open on those pins, but Gula did not seem at all aware of the danger and had never so much as pricked her finger while at work.
"Ma-mi," Omid whined, tired of trying and failing to weave to his mother's satisfaction. "Ma-mi I'm bored. Can I spin some instead? I'm tired."
"Which is it, Omi?" she asked, smiling slyly. "Bored or tired?"
"Mmm . . ." he nestled into her side, hiding his dark curls in the bright folds of her robes. "Both."
"Finish ten more rows, Omi."
Groaning, he plumped himself down in front of his loom and glared at its inoffensive fibers. Ten rows seemed like an eternity but he knew better than to argue where his mother had set down her foot. It would take all the gods' combined efforts to change her mind now.
"Ten more rows," he grumbled, shifting the heddles at the head of his loom by hand to switch the weft: now the low threads rose above the high and the high sunk low . . . his mother called it shedding, but he didn't know why, so he didn't. "Switching" made more sense.
"Ten more rows," he sighed, making sure his mother could hear him as he threaded the pick on its shuttle through the gap formed by the raised and lowered weft. He watched from the corner of his eye as his mother continued to pass her shuttle with swift ease from one side to the other, shedding the heddles with the quick rhythmic tap of her toe.
"Ten." he snorted as derisively as a seven year old knows how. "Ten whole rows." Now he battened it down, his favorite part, where he got to smoosh and smooth the lumpy yarn to the bottom of the loom. It was also the part where his mother always looked over to see what he'd done so far and usually decided he hadn't done it well enough.
"Omid, be gentle! Not so vicious. Firm, but gentle. Like how you handle a lamb."
He scowled, arms folded over his chest, and dropped the beater at her feet.
"You do it."
"C'mon, Omi. Such a grimace! Nuits would see your face and die of fright," she laughed, enveloping his stubborn frame in a tight hug. Unable to maintain his fearsome composure for long, he relaxed and let her comfort him instead. "Ah, my little prince--"
"Me too!" his sister burbled, scrambling into her arms as well.
"And my little princess, of course," she smiled, kissing them each in turn. Shifting to better accommodate them both, she sat them each on one knee and began to pick apart Omid's weaving. Now she took his hand in hers and began the process all over again, taking care to show him how to pull the pick more gently so as not to squeeze the warp, then battened the thread with light, brusque movements--like a cat's paw, Omid thought. Soon she let her hands fall away and only watched as her son repeated the movements on his own, more slowly, but more surely than he had before. Gula fidgeted for a while before falling asleep in the crook of her mother's arm.
The three of them sat like that for a long time, and the moment stuck and settled in his mind, swaddled in the warm must of their home and the sour smell of fleece. Careful minutes sifted through his hands as they wove and battened, shed and wove. He hardly dared breathe as his creation grew beneath his concentrations like rising water, and instead timed his movements to his mother's slow inhalations. Every once in a while, she'd interject a finger to correct a wayward thread or gentle his eager motions. Neither of them spoke, content to let Gula dream between them until the rapping of his father's knotted sandals woke her and the moment broke.
"Gula! Omi! Look what the Wheymakers gave us . . ."
As one, brother and sister scrambled to their feet, stretching and jumping for attention. Ava followed more slowly, rubbing her aching back and feeling that familiar flutter of motion in her belly. Holding the wedge of white cheese out of his children's reach, Etienne leaned in for a kiss.
"What have you got there, you naughty husband!"
"Just something to spice up our lunch," he laughed, pressing the prize into her waiting fingers.
"Is this your little game with Olaf again?"
Omid let out a little roar and pounced on his father's knees, soon followed by the giggling Gula.
"Oi, you little wretches!" Etienne chuckled, lifting his now much-heavier feet one at a time with a feeble effort to shake them off. "What are we raising here, Ava, children or savages?"
"Children, Etienne, and don't dodge the question. I don't like your game--I know you're only teasing each other, but--"
"But you worry too much, dear! You'll sour the milk."
She sighed, and Omid looked solemnly up at her from his seat on Papa's foot. She smiled at him.
"Omi, why don't you show Papa what you made this morning?"
"Yeah! Papa, come look--"
And so he pulled his father away from Ma-mi's worried eyes to show him his lumpy, raw weaving: a cloth just big enough to make a washcloth, and Papa said so, to Omid's righteous outrage.
West Street, Zeltiva: 3rd Day of Spring, 412 AV
Omid smiled at the wooden frame, basking in a half-forgotten heat. He had not thought of his mother, his Ma-mi, in much too long. Nor of Gula, nor of Papa. Somehow it seemed the busy days were eating away at his memories . . . he shuddered and offered silent praise to Qalaya. Perhaps, he thought, shouldering the loom, perhaps it would be wise to find some wool again, and find out exactly how much he had forgotten.
Besides, he could probably do with a washcloth.
by Omid Shepsen on March 7th, 2013, 7:02 pm 
