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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Delemental" data-source="post: 4655390" data-attributes="member: 5203">Blossom in the SnowMany in the village remarked at how the young children in the village were working harder and faster than ever before in order to get their chores done early enough to be able to gather at the home of the wise woman and her strange husband.  But no one raised a voice in protest; the work was getting done, after all, and the children were getting more of an education from the old man’s stories than they would have received otherwise.  And the parents, who of course dream of a better life for their children, held secret hopes that their own children might rise beyond the life of a simple farmer or herder.    Thus the adults watched in amusement as children from all over the village ran through the streets in the hot afternoon sun, making their way to the tiny dwelling at the edge of town.  The children gathered expectantly in the dirt outside Grandfather and Grandmother’s house, whispering excitedly to each other as they jostled for the best seats.    Eventually, the door creaked open, and Grandfather shuffled out.  He was draped in a heavy shawl, and a cap made of wool perched on his head.  “Spirits above!” he exclaimed.  “Why aren’t you dressed properly?  You’ll catch your death of cold!”    The children looked at each other.  The day had been hot, though not oppressively so since summer was coming to a close.  Most of them were dressed in simple linen tunics and sported bare feet.    “Why, didn’t anyone tell you?” Grandfather continued.  “Today we are journeying to the fabled North, where it is always winter, and there is nothing but ice and snow as far as the eye can see.  Why, even the cities are built from ice.”    The children’s eyes grew wide.  “Will we meet another one of the heroes you’ve been telling us about?” asked one.    “Indeed we will,” Grandfather replied.  “But first, who wants some hot tea?"☼    ☼    ☼This was, quite possibly, the farthest south Berta had ever been.  She understood that the caravan was headed toward a town called Rubylak, but she had no concept of how long that would take.  The wagon she huddled in, surrounded by other girls and boys of varying attractiveness, was desperately uncomfortable.  She took scant comfort from the fact that she was the prettiest of the lot, as tired and haggard as they all were.  Berta was vain, but the caravan overseers had repeated this opinion over and over, with leers and unveiled longing in their eyes.  She shuddered thinking about it and inched closer to the boy that she had decided was attractive enough to complement but not compete with her own beauty.  So far no harm had come to her or the others, for her verbal skills had been enchanting enough to keep the worst of the Terrestrial guards away from them.  When she wasn't so miserable that she couldn't think straight, she tried to keep them all distracted by telling stories and rallying their flagging spirits.  None of them had any delusions about their eventual fates, but Berta was able to keep them from dwelling on it.      The wagons were, at present, quiet, save for the sounds of wind and occasional whimpers of her fellow occupants.  Berta could hear the jingle of harness, creaking leather and low swearing from the Dragon-bloods. She made out occasional words – there was a disagreement, concern over the speed of their journey against worries about raiders, and about a lion, of all things. It was past midnight, but she was unable to sleep.  Most of the others in the wagon were sleeping fitfully, but no one was talking, at least.  Berta let her mind drift back to a time when life still held promise...when Matre had been the one telling the stories."You were the most beautiful baby the tribe had ever seen."  The fire crackled in their hearthroom of their home, glowing on the faces gathered around it.  Matre sat in the chair of honor against the pile of furs and hides, furthest from the entrance.  Berta was three seats away, after Oomatre and Tante.  Her younger sister Jonustra sat after her, with the men forming the other side of the circle: Patre, Vadre and Broedst, the only male child and the youngest in the family.  Berta thought that her whole family was handsome, but even at the age of eight, she was developing a vanity that told her Matre was right.  She was the prettiest girl in the tribe.  Jonu, at 6 was a sweet child with the more traditional black hair of most of the tribe members, and Brodi, at 4, was a dark haired boy with dark eyes that sparkled with his toddler's sense of humor.  Both of the younger children were sturdier built than Berta, though Berta had no trouble keeping them in line when she chose.      Tante coughed softly, bringing Berta's wandering attention back to Matre's story.  "Many of the oldest women of the tribe, the hearthmothers, told me that you were too fragile to survive our way of life.  They advised me to leave you as a sacrifice to the Mother Goddess of Childbearing and plead with them for a stronger child next time around."  Matre paused.  Jonu and Brodi had their eyes fixed on Berta, as if they couldn't believe her good luck at still being alive.  She was a very delicate-looking girl, sometimes called 'frost flower' by others of the tribe's adults.  "But I was unable to do so after you were placed in my arms and our eyes met for the first time."  Taking a swallow of her tea, Matre continued.  "There was something in your eyes even then, and I knew that I would find a way to keep you with me and make you useful to the tribe.  I knew you would never hunt, like some of our women do, nor would you do any of the excavating or the other outdoor chores - the freezing winds would have stripped you of life even though  I had not offered it up."    "What did you do, Matti?" asked Brodi, even though he knew the answer.  He shared a family tendency to fill silent pauses with his own voice, even if it was only to ask questions he knew the answers to.    "Yes Matti, what?"  Not content to let Brodi have his moment, Jonu chipped in.  She was usually a quiet girl, but if Brodi spoke first, she had to as well.    Tante and Oomatre chuckled under their mammoth wool mufflers.  Matre smiled.  "Why I taught her to be as useful at indoor tasks as she was decorative to indoor surroundings, mi kindres."  And she had done just that.  While Berta still had much to learn, she was able to make a simple hearthfire, prepare simple items for meals, play the small flute that was common to her people ,and she had a charming talent for conversing with anyone.  When she was old enough, she had been put in charge of her two younger siblings, and frequently visited others in their campsite.  Even at the tender age of eight, she was often asked to look after not only younger children, but to keep company those who were too old or unwell to hunt or help the excavation.    Berta smiled at Matre.  "Thank you for the story," she remarked, with the perfect amount of respect and humility such personal stories deserved.  "Who will tell the next?"  And so the evenings passed most nights in her family's yurt.  The older adults would take turns with the telling of tales, and each night as the youngsters were nearing bedtime, Berta would be given permission to tell the final tale of the evening.  She made up stories and so practiced her skills which proved useful outside her family group.  When the fire was banked for the night and the elders had lit their pipes, Berta would crawl under the pile of hides and furs she shared with her siblings and fall asleep listening to the sound of the icy northern winds.  The wagons rumbled along the road as Berta reminisced.  She took stock, again, of the other captives - mostly blond, like her, and none of them with the stocky build of the heartiest northerners. She wondered if the others had been told that they were the prettiest children in their tribes as she had been.  If so, did they wonder now that life would be better had they not been quite so beautiful?  What would they do if they had a second chance against the Guild bastards that had bargained for their lives?  Berta refused to cry, though she squirmed into a more comfortable position and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.  Berta switched her thoughts to the ridiculousness of the Immaculate Philosophies and the idea that the Dragon-Blooded were the only ones with the keys to perfection.  As a storyteller, she knew that what passed for perfection often masked deep flaws which troubled every hero, and from the Terrestrials she had observed in the camps, they could hardly have been the mighty heroes that had overthrown the Anathema.  As a storyteller, she also knew that there were two sides to every story, yet every tale regarding the Terrestrials was blatantly one-sided and weighted heavily in their favor.  The Iselsi monks were persistent, Berta had to admit.  Until they had shown up the year she had turned fourteen, the archaeologists had paid only very sketchy obeisance to the Immaculate Philosophies.  With the monks came the Noble Insights and the Diligent Practices; with their arrival, the Dragon-Bloods had suddenly remembered that they had other obligations in addition to unearthing the First Age city which lay buried somewhere in the near-permafrost of the mountain.  Suddenly, the tribesfolk were admonished to cut the traditional gifts to the local gods and spirits that had kept them safe for so many generations.  Attendance at the monthly readings of the Immaculate Texts were mandatory; although there were generally four readings a month, attendance was required only at one.  The tribesfolk who attended more frequently found bonuses and perks not offered to others, who may have performed harder at their duties.    The children, whom had mostly been left to the hearthmothers and a few young women like Berta, were encouraged to attend storytelling hours held by the monks.  These story hours were filled with stories glorifying the ancient Dragon-Blooded and the Scarlet Empress especially.  The hearthmothers were allowed to stay with the children until they felt safe leaving them with the monks, since the monks were well aware of how long it could take to get the "barbaric northerners” to trust them.     The cold on the road to Rubylak, if you could even call it a road, was harsher than she remembered the weather being even as far north as Crystal was.  As far as she was concerned, the slavers had dressed them scandalously, probably out of a perverted sense of humor.  Luckily for the lot of them, Berta had been able to talk the Terrestrials out of a few extra blankets and convince them to leave the wagon flaps closed unless they were stopped.  With only slippers for footwear and weak wine for sustenance, not a single captive was even able to think of running away, let alone accomplish an escape.    She should have seen it coming, she told herself.  She should have seen how the will of the people began to weaken in the face of the constant barrage of indoctrination.  How they came to accept the Immaculate Philosophy as truth, and began to see their Terrestrial overseers as divinely mandated.  How they meekly accepted demands that they worker harder and longer, and that they pay more and more in taxes and tribute.  But then Patre was killed in an accident during the excavation, and young Brodi, barely a man himself, was forced to take his place.  Soon Matre and Jonu were also in the pits, while Oomatre and Vadre, too old to work, were isolated with the other elders, discarded and forgotten.  Berta was spared the work in the excavation, but now she told her stories for men and women from the Realm, and only the stories they allowed.  Secretly, however, she would tell the old stories to her kin late at night.    Soon the demand for tribute grew so great that none could meet it, no matter how many seals and snow bears were hunted.  That was when the people from the Guild started to come, and when people began to go missing.  No one had any delusions about what had happened, but none dared speak out.  There were whispers that their masters risked much by trading slaves with the Guild instead of their own Empire, but this was small comfort to those whose relatives went missing.  Berta was not surprised the day they came for her – she had expected it for some time, though she had held out hope she might be overlooked.  After all, slaves were used to work, and she was ill-suited for manual labor.  It was a lie she told herself so that she would not be reminded of what else slaves were made to do.    The argument among the slavers had ceased, and they now rolled on, the bumps and jostles telling her that they were on a road much less frequently traveled.  She risked a peek outside through a tear in the thin fabric covering their wagon, and saw that the sky above was illuminated with the colored lights that she had heard could only be seen in the North.  Legends state that the lights were a reflection of the colored lanterns lit in Yu-Shan to celebrate whenever a god rose to the top of the ranking in the Games of Divinity, and that the fact that they could only be seen in the North was proof that their land and their people were closer to Heaven than all others.  Crawling back under her blankets, Berta decided she hardly felt close to the gods right now.    Suddenly, the wagon stopped, and there were shouts all around.  Panic rose among the slaves in the wagon as they heard the sounds of bowstrings, and then the clash of  steel on steel.  They saw a lurid orange glow through the fabric cover overhead as the wagon behind them caught fire.  They heard the screams and shouts of the people they knew were shackled inside that cart.  Soon the noise diminished.  Voices were shouting all around, voices they did not recognize.  They heard a man being dragged on the ground, pleading – Berta recognized his voice as the caravan master.    “House Cynis sends its regards,” someone said, and then there was the sound of a blade slicing, and the caravan master’s pleas were silenced.  “Take inventory,” the man said.  “But keep the damage to the stock minimal.”    Soon an Imperial soldier appeared in their wagon, followed by another.  “Looks like we picked the right wagon to inventory,” said one with a leer.    “Remember what the Captain said,” warned the other.  “Best only take one.”    Berta saw the men grab the young boy sitting next to her, the one she had chosen to complement but not compete with her own looks.  Obviously, these men knew they would be punished if they chose the best of the lot for themselves, so they’d chosen the one that was comparatively less desirable.  As they began to pull at what little clothing he was wearing, she suddenly felt a strange warmth, and the terror in her heart subsided.  Her gaze went to the open flap of the wagon, and it seemed to her as though the Northern lights suddenly rushed into the wagon and surrounded her in a protective cocoon.    “Stop!” she shouted.  To her surprise, both men immediately drew back.    “Tell your captain that no one in this caravan is to be harmed,” she told them.  She had no idea where the audacity to order these men around had come from, but to her surprise both soldiers nodded and exited the wagon.  All around her, everyone was shrinking back, pressing their backs against the walls of the wagon… but they were all looking at her, not at the soldiers.    “What is wrong?” she asked.  “They will leave us alone now.  Why are you afraid?”  Then she looked down, and saw that she was surrounded by a corona of light, which had unfolded around her like a rainbow-colored cascade of geometric shapes, opening like a flower.☼    ☼    ☼    “Goodness!” Grandfather said, shrugging off his shawl.  “When did it get so hot out here?” He mopped his head with his woolen cap as he stood.  “Well, children, we’ll see you again next time.  You should be heading home for dinner.”    “But wait, Grandfather!” one of the girls cried out.  “What happened to Berta?  Did she escape?  Did she free the others?  Did the Dragon-Blooded get her?”    “That part of the tale will have to wait,” he said with a wink.</blockquote>

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