She brushed her fingers along the backs of the sapling’s leaves, their thigh-high bodies leaning into her with the ardor of an old cat. The sweet scent of the cherry laurel’s flowering boughs overhead heralded the coming of spring.
The land was a wild tangle of unshaven crowngrass and scrub. Sparsely sprinkled in the undergrowth were speckles of color, which came from a variety of small-bodied plants. Some would call them weeds. Those who knew better called them wildflowers.
The tines of forked weedlings swayed in tandem as a breath of warm air tumbled through the glade.
There was a tranquility there that few came to know. Few looked for it in the years they lingered in that land, and so only caught glances of its majesty. Fewer still stayed long enough to recognize it at all. They rarely plumbed the depths of such a seemingly inhospitable place, and so never came to witness the starkness of its beauty.
Perhaps that was why they abandoned their camps so quickly, leaving so many of their belongings behind.
The bones of an unattended campsite lay at the fringe of the clearing, various pieces of pottery and clothing haphazardly discarded in the grass.
The cackling call of a hollow hound echoed in the dense thicket beyond the clearing. Namiri stilled, allowing herself to relax only after the howl was answered some mile away. She drew a breath, her fingers clutching clumsily around the haft of her staff.
A monsoon was coming, and the wilds celebrated in a chorus of sound. Birds chatted with each other in excited voices, quickly flitting from tree to tree. The unseen feet of tree-squirrels danced in branches high overhead. Namiri even saw a laksi turn its snout up to greet a passing breeze, no doubt tasting the air for the telling scent of stormrain.
People feared the beasts that roamed there, for there were many of them, unfettered and wonderful and strange. They knew the wilds better than any domid did, or perhaps could, and had adapted to live life in tandem with the rains. Scute or scale, fur or feather, hoof or claw; all found their means of survival in that delicate ecosystem. The rains often brought the promise of fish and frogs, the staple for all manner of creatures in those swamps.
It was no surprise, then, that a red-footed egret alighted on an oak bough nearby. Namiri watched its feathers fold expertly into place. It quickly made about preening itself, turning its long beak into its wing. Nerves tingled in her gut. When nature spoke, wise women listened. She had the energy and desire to carry on a while longer. There was a rich deposit left to scavenge. Yet all the animals advertised impending rain. Namiri had made the mistake of denying the signs before. She had paid the price then. She would not this time.
The storm must be close. I should start heading back.
