Fall the 37th, 520 AV
For most of her life, Hiberna had spent the first half of the day stomping down trails from one location to the next through the freshly fallen snow, but for the last couple years that hadn’t been necessary. Instead, they faced new problems. There was no new snow, because it was too warm for new snow. In fact, it had been warm enough they’d been having the opposite problem. All the old snow was melting, and that meant the paths were now littered with spots where the ground was showing through, spots that were now mud. The mud was just one more reminder that Morwen was gone. For some, sinking into a foot of mud was just an inconvenience. Maybe their socks would get wet. Maybe they’d lose a boot. But for those who were carrying a heavy load, these mud pits halted them in their tracks, slowing down or completely stopping whatever work there was to be done. Which was why Hiberna was back with her old hold, Snowsong, trying to come up with a solution. Though she wasn’t a carpenter or woodworker, she did understand their work and knew where their supplies and tools were, and that made her useful there, at least more useful than she was to Iceglaze, the hold she’d married in to. Three years of living with them, and Hiberna still felt as useless as the day she had arrived.
That’s why she was out in her full winter get up with her fur-lined boots and parka and her heavy mittens. It wasn’t cold, at least nor as cold as it had been before. In fact, this was probably the warmest Avanthal had ever seen, certainly since its Goddess had made it Her home. The temperatures hovered around freezing, sometimes frozen things thawing and sometimes melted things freezing again. But this cold felt different, foreign. Hiberna rubbed her left hand over the back of her right, pawing at the mark of Morwen she knew was underneath, the mark that she knew was still gray and dull and lifeless. Everyone who was marked had felt it the moment Morwen had left. Hiberna suspected that even the Vantha who weren’t marked still felt their Goddess leave. Now, though, the marks and this new, empty cold were just a few more reminders that Morwen was still missing.
She and her Snowsong companion, Parrsni, stared down at the mud pit that was a short way from the Snowsong Arvinta.
“What do you reckon we could do about these?”
Parrsni shrugged. “Dunno. You have any bright ideas?”
Hiberna shrugged back and stared a little while longer. “What if we filled it in?”
“With what?”
“Sawdust?” Hiberna shrugged. It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was the best she had. “That’ll absorb some of the water, right?”
Parrsni nodded. “Yes, it would.” Then he shook his head. “But not enough. Not when you have a foot of mud to slush through. Not to mention, what happens if more snow melts?”
If. Everyone always spoke that way, as if it wasn’t a sure thing, as if the world wouldn’t continue to just warm up around them, and Hiberna couldn’t blame them for thinking that way. She had a hard enough time not thinking that way herself. After all, that had been all her people had ever known. The world was frozen, as far as they were concerned, and that was something that was never going to change. Except it had. The world was changing around them, and the Vantha couldn’t seem to come to grips with that. It was always if, not when.
She nodded at his statement though, because he was right. “Yeah, I shoulda thought of that, I reckon.”
Parrsni nodded, then shrugged. “So if not that, then what?”
Hiberna glared at him as her eyes turned red. Facial expressions were a bad habit she’d picked up from Solemn, her adopted brother and bondmate. Vantha generally let their eyes do the talking, the unique color change alerting others to shifts in their emotion. Hiberna had learned to communicate with both, and sometimes it bought her odd stares from her fellow Vantha. “Hey, you’re supposed to the expert here. I’m just here to lend a hand.”
Parrsni nodded. “You’re probably right.” He looked back at the mud and shrugged again.
Both stared at it for a while, several chimes passing before Hiberna opened her mouth with what she was sure was another bad idea. “Well, if we can’t fill them up, we can always go around them, but eventually, the new trails will just get the same problem. So if we can’t fill them in and can’t go around them, then I guess we gotta go over them. But how?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Hiberna took that to mean he didn’t have any thoughts of his own, and that suspicion just seemed to be confirmed when he went quiet again for nearly a chime. Sighing, she put her mind to work and spoke when she had another thought. “Well, I suppose they gave this job to Snowsong for a reason. We’re the best carpenters.”
“We?”
Hiberna smiled, her eyes shifting to a brilliant violet as she thought lovingly and longingly of her home hold. “I’ll ever not be.”
His eyes shifted, blue indicating happiness. “Isn’t that the truth?”
They both nodded, their eyes never leaving the mud pit.
“So what can we do?”
“Don’t look at me.” Parrsni shook his head. “I’m not building a bridge over every single one of these we find.”
“Not a bridge. Just something we can walk across without getting wet.”
“So… a bridge?”
Hiberna burst out laughing at that, and Parrsni joined in. When they finally had the breath again, Hiberna put words to what she was thinking. “Just something to walk across, like a plank, but something that’s a little broader, a little more substantial, something that someone with an armful of something heavy wouldn’t have to think twice about walking across.”
Parrsni’s eyes lit up. “Now you’re on to something. Come on. Let’s get back to the arvinta. I’ll show you what I’m thinking when we get there.”
WC=1,028