Bless This Morning Year

Shepherd’s End
1015–1017

Slowly, life settled down into a routine. The sheep and alpaca required tending and shearing and lambing, driving the sheep out into the hills when the grasses nearby were grazed too much, culling and butchering the sickly ones for their meat. Ropes and barns and fences would need fixing, and wool needed washing and delivering to the Fabricators.

Mama visited once or twice a year, and her children would go to meet her in town while Papa and the Cadnes stayed behind. She was always full of stories, just as she had been in the before times; Yevhetsek clung to her every word, and Zakhal would listen wordlessly, fascinated by this echoing giant that he barely remembered, and Xalati listened and wondered if the creatures slain this time had been like the big one. After the visits she would dream of it, sometimes, ramming a harpoon into thick blubbery flesh that spanned from horizon to horizon. The blood would spray, the wound gaping wide until it gained teeth and swallowed her, and the dream would plunge into waves and water and suffocation. Sometimes she would wake from the suffocation part and find one of the neighborhood snakes curled up on her chest for warmth.

There was one who showed up more often than the others, a simple leaf-nosed snake that made his den underneath the back step of the main house. When it first moved in, Old Man Kostas wanted to drive him off, fearing that it might bite the newborn Aster, but Papa persuaded him that the snake wasn’t interested. Over time, even those without the inherent affinity to serpents that Ximal and Xalati shared became used to Cedar’s presence, as he became known. He in turn became used to them, though he showed up the most for Xalati.

The sheep were too dumb and the alpacas too mild-mannered to react much to the increased snake presence. The llamas were both aggressive and intelligent enough to object to the snakes that the ranch now drew. Xalati spent at least half her time watching the herds to make sure angry llamas didn’t kill visiting serpents. The other half of the time she watched to ensure the sheep didn’t fall off a cliff and break their necks.

Gradually, she and Ember softened toward each other. Simple exposure did much; while they could avoid each other to some degree, living in the same space made it impossible to do so fully. The addition of baby Aster and Amaru to the ranch erased a few more steps in their distance. The fact that Xalati refrained from teasing him about his crush on Kibeth, even while the two year-mates were dating, went a long way.

He found her at the cliffs on the anniversary of Ixtalan’s death. They didn’t talk, but she didn’t shoo him away while she talked to Tala. He sat down behind her and listened while she apologized to her twin for being almost content without her. It was the first time she could recall making him weep; he was an unabashed crier, but had never been so open with her before. But then, she supposed, she’d never been open with him either. She mildly envied him the ability to weep so freely; she’d never been able to, after that day with Ava.

The next year, both he and Ash came with her to the cliffs. The year after that, she stopped apologizing, and started simply telling Tala that she was missed.

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Bless This Morning Year