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Yes, I came from a very dysfunctional family,” Jasmine began telling Rufio, “I don’t mind sharing at all. My past has shaped my future with all of you. As I told Azmere many seasons ago, I stand behind my actions right or wrong it does not matter.”
As Rufio set the bucket down to reach for a Syna-baked, crumbling patty of dung, she was struck by the openness and courage with which Jasmine was telling Rufio about herself. Quietly, with respect, her posture leaned into listening.
As Jasmine spoke, Rufio weaved herself this way and that, following the faecal treasures that her goats left behind. Every now and then she came near a doe, she pressed her hands into their warm sides and brushed her fingers through their thickening Fall coats to dislodge a tuft of grasses or a few stones tangled in dried dirt, before pushing the goat off and reaching for the fire-fuel under its feet.
Jasmine spoke of her childhood, the kinds of tensions a child should not need to bear, and Rufio felt sad for her past. An ankal should be strong, and fair, someone his family could trust and confide in. When Jasmine spoke of her coming into womanhood, and bonding with a strider, and the violence that was wrought into her ankal, Rufio resisted the signs that wanted to lash into her hands, kept them working, collecting.
Her nose wrinkled, tugging on her freckles, though, and her gaze prickled with her disapproval. Her hands gathered the dung, while she worked out the knots that were tangling in her stomach. Where came the ankal’s hate for a child in his pavilion? Rufio wondered. Children were the future of the Drykas.
As she searched the grasses for a patty, she glanced at Jasmine periodically, watching her golden locks and Syna-kissed face as she spoke.
“It was as if the very sight of me just enraged him.” Her pavilion-sister said, and Rufio made a disapproving noise, hands breaking from their work, she could not resist a spat of anger for Jasmine’s past muttered under her breath. “A man who cannot control his anger or his jealousy is not worthy of leading.” Weak hearted, ill spirit.
“I found out the truth behind his anger. Maximus was furious with my hair color and eye color because it proved I wasn’t his child.” Jasmine went on to reveal the secret of her birth, and Rufio paused, straightening up with surprise in the shape of her hands. Her heart felt conflicted as she wondered how she might have felt if she had been in Maximus’ boots.
The feelings tugged in her gut tugged this way and that, before her hands shaped love “All children, no matter where they come from, should be loved.” Children are sacred. Even as she spoke and signed her thoughts, Rufio felt their uncertainty solidify in her hands. Yes, children were sacred, and an ankal that beat a child that didn’t invite punishment was a coward.
“Maximus never touched my mother the way he did me. I was glad if it meant she and my siblings weren’t in pain; I could learn to live with it.” Jasmine might not have meant to, but she spoke to Rufio of her selflessness. It drew a gentle smile into the fortune-teller’s freckles under a sadness that had settled there. She wondered at the woman she was living with.
“You were strong...strong for your mother,” Rufio praised her, pride glowing in her hands and in her posture proud to know you, “Now you have a home that you don’t need to sacrifice yourself for us,” live for yourself, “we can be strong for each other.” true family.
As Rufio heard her shiber-tinged voice shape the words and her hands convey her meaning, and was surprised by how much she meant it.
Jasmine had shared so openly with her, so much more than she had thought her asking would draw. Jasmine was the kind of brave that wasn’t in how much weight she could carry, or how deadly she was with a bow or a blade, or how loud she could roar over a challenger in a fury. It was in the quiet, iron-strength of feminine compassion and self-sacrifice. Rufio was reminded of Ixzo, and her fierceness, of Taurina and her soul-deep empathy, of Haena and her warmth in raising two children alone.
Rufio felt something in herself waken to it.
A chime of quiet settled over them comfortably. She gathered up the last lot of dung she could see about the small pavilion, before signing good work, finished, before asking Jasmine to help her with the bucket.
As they hefted the bucket in between them and began back towards the fire-pit, Rufio’s thoughts turned towards the Stormbloods, and Azmere, and the ways this family of strangers had a different spirit to Jasmine’s Maximus, or even her own line of Wildmane ankals.
“Stormblood is a fortunate name.” luck, strength, honesty, honour, Rufio grinned and light-hearted laughter tumbled off her lips into the Fall warmth.
