Words spoken are words ignored36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa3goUzae3j
yet silences born are silences undone36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF0Ye9OLl0H
A world above that’s filled in lies36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaAw0KPjFMp
meets a world below that’s plated with honesty36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3gpZWXkUuq
and yet neither bear the necessity of history
Myla slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle the giggles that bubble up form her heart. Audric sneezes once again, this time shaking the straw out of his hair instead of dumping it over his head.
The chill of the air has a hold on his lungs, not yet turning into a sickness but still causing disruption to his usual steady work. When the last of the yellowed strands settle into stillness once more, the boy finally lifts his gaze to gran her a distinct sort of displeasure. He holds still when she drifts closes and brushes the rest of his hair free of them dry hay like he always does whenever Myla fixes his appearance.
(She only ever does it when they’re heading into the village proper for trading days, but this time will save her from hearing his grumbles about the itchiness the straw always leaves him with.)
“I hope you’ll think to remember the jacket tomorrow,” she tells him once she’s done.
“Why should I bother?”
“Because your health-”
“I am fine, My.”
“-is important to me, Audric.”
That draws him up short, leaving him blinking blandly at her.
It draws her up short as well, the weight of truth beneath the words surprising her. It leaves them both blinking at one another for a few long minutes. The tension comes and goes naturally, rolling through them before settling down into nothing as if acknowledgment is all it needs to be pleased.
What she accepts is nebulous enough that it’s hard to pin if he accepts the exact same.
He turns away before she can try picking the answer out of his gaze.
Myla moves on to the next sack and packs it full of the old excess that’s too broken down and muddy to be much more than potential repairing material for the thatched roofs throughout Milna. It’s a material that’s in high demand as the rainy season creeps closer, many holes made throughout the rest of the year needing to be patched closed.
Audric steps before her, piling new layers of hay down and piling the old to the side to ease packing them away. This is Myla’s second time going through this, so there’s very little conversation passing between her and Audric. She knows how to pack away the detritus to be mixed with the thin clay-like mixture that will allow it to keep water out of homes.
Two months, it seems, grants her a new routine that also brings new information. Both Audric and his father, Audric Sir, have taken to granting her access to such in these last several weeks. (Audric more than his father, since the man doesn’t seem to have much in way of patience.) The routine of farm life in a small boarder village like Milna drowns out the voice that’s been guiding her through the barely-present pathways of her missing memories. The only nudges that seem worth listening to, anyways, is what grants her the ability to read the silent words Audric Sir and his son seem to have a lot of over spoken comments.
Audric Sir, that voice tells her, doesn’t bother trying to hide his sharper edges because he feels there no need to. As an adult, he’s earned his cold words and sharp tongue. He’s always so coldly amused when she guesses right his meaning when he manages to double speak with common language structure, like it’s another piece of proof to some horrible part of Myla.
Audric, though, just accepts that it’s something about Myla that she cannot do away with easily.
Maybe that’s why, when he wishes to keep the reasons behind his reactions to himself, all he does it turn away from her. She doesn’t question it either way, nor does she ask about why his father purposefully turns towards her.
Some secrets just aren’t for her to pick apart, no matter how curious she is about their truth.
“Are these going to the Koppens or the Hollers?”
“Hollers.”
Myla drags a finger across the fabric tote to leave behind the image of a canine – Austia’s Hollers are a legendary animal that many families are named after due to their roots coming from one bastard or another, Myla’s learned. Milna, unlike other villages and cities across the country, is the only place where all Hollers consider one another family. It’s a curious practice that Audric Sir derides every chance he gets, sober or drunk. (Especially drunk, though.) That derision is partly why Myla holds her own comments in, not wanting to sound anything like the angry man towards who, apparently, are a rather gentle folk.
(Audric, in turn, likes them for their “fuck you” to the nobles that ignored their births. Like they’ve taken the ruins of their mother’s honor and turned it into the means to survive and thrive on their own. Myla rather enjoys that view, even if she herself doesn’t quite believe it yet herself.)
“Next ones, the Koppens,” Audric continues as if Myla getting lost in her head is nothing important. “Then the Graffers.”
He snorts at the grimace the last family draws out of her, the wet snick of the pitchfork landing in the drying mud echoing after it. The ever growing amusement in him over the steady rivalry between her and the Overseer’s family is the only reason she holds her tongue. Getting any reaction beyond annoyance or bland acceptance from the young man before her is hard, and harder still for it to even be related to laughter of any kind.
“Graffers,” he says again.
Myla, expecting it, lifts her gaze up from the sack she’s tying closed to give him a singular second of her wrinkling her nose.
“What is it about them that–”
“Every time I try to answer that, you stop listening halfway through.”
“Fair enough.”
Really, though, all of her attempts boil down to etiquette. A vicious beast all of its own that Myla doesn’t understand how she knows even a bit of it, let alone finds the highest ranking member of the village and his family lacking in entirety despite their attempts.
Audric only notices her disgust of their actions and words because he’s stuck to her side since she woke, she knows. Audric Sir doesn’t bother to head in for trade days unless what they’ve got to offer is one of their aging pigs and has, thankfully, missed every little nuance behind the growing tension between his ward and his governing family. Myla doesn’t even want to imagine what his response could be to an explanation. He seems to dislike her well enough without her trying to explain the proper way to act when one has power.
The rest of their task takes no time at all after their brief conversational break. Audric has since shucked free of his shirt, the work edging into a heated afternoon drawing nothing but sweat from him that he prefers letting dry in the air instead of leaving trapped beneath cloth. He rolls her eyes at her admonishing frown at the further risk to his health and then smirks at her when she twists her hair up from her neck and back from her face. It’s the only method of cooling down she’s comfortable with without taking away some of her own layers.
What’s left for them until the evening mucking in the pig and horse stalls is to make lunch. Audric Sir has long since stopped giving them a glance when he steps inside after them to clean himself up; the sight of Audric at the oven and Myla chopping away at meat and vegetables has long grown normal since that first meal. This, and the meal that follows, is the quietest the man is during any moment he’s around either of them due to the energy drain working during midday forces them all to deal with.
This, and the meals that follows, is the only time Myla doesn’t have the urge to stab the man in the throat.
A fact that terrifies that little voice of hers. It doesn’t say anything in its place within her thoughts, but it’s there and insistent that violence isn’t normal for her.
After, Audric Sir speaks only to tell them any additional chores he expects them to finish up before the next morning. Today holds no such differences and Myla finds herself spending time in the front garden among the herbs they sell between animal purchases or other produce sales. There isn’t much excess to sell just yet, but a few bundles is better than nothing to tide them over until the end of the month.
Her hands ache even through the gloves Audric made her. Twisting the stems of each herb together to save on string is the main culprit, but she can’t discount using the nearly too-large shears Audric Sir gave her to slip at the stems without rendering the roots incapable of regrowing the harvest.
When she’s done gathering the harvestable herbs, she takes a moment to just sit in the sun surrounded by growth and silence. She lifts her head and breaths in the warmth of the day, with closed eyes, basking in the underlying chill the stings at her lungs.
As the heat tips towards uncomfortable, she returns to her task, picking up the bundles to bring them inside for doling out between the rest of the month before the next pig is old and fat enough for selling. Audric Sir glances up from where he’s carving at a piece of wood the size of his forearm; what the herbs won’t cover, the carving from him or the dyes Audric makes from wildflowers and wildberries will.
They turn away from each other to finish their respective tasks, though Myla does quietly hum the little ditty Audric came up with to help her space out what herbs she has in hand into market days under her breath as she works.
“You planning on weaving anything?”
“I’m still in the middle of something, but it won’t be ready until the end of the month at the earliest,” she details, not looking up from the bundles.
He hums, displeased, before carving away a few quick lines. The sharp whisper of the sharp blade slicing through the semi-soft wood is almost the perfect sound to pair with the chill that rolls down her spine.
“Thought you were keeping to simple designs.”
“I am. I’m waiting for Audric to make some yellow dye so I can portion out what I need correctly.”
“When’s that?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” she breathes. “Think he still has a batch of blue and green before he gets to yellow, but that was week before last.”
He grunts and begins clapping at his clothes to get the flyaway chips into the bucket filled with the larger pieces shaved from the main one he still holds in hand. Myla finishes tying the last portion of herbs together with a silent grimace at the cramp that’ building up her forearms.
“How many?”
“Stretching it, four.”
“I’ve got enough carving to last us six.”
“Ten,” she mutters. Biting her lips as she thinks that over. Ten market days would put them halfway into next month. “Audric’s dyes should be ready to fill that out further, and I should be done with the weaving sooner than that…”
“So, where does that put us?”
“Up to the grunt sale,” a new voice pitches in.
Audric goes to shove his hair back before pausing at Myla’s sharp hiss. He rolls his eyes and continues inside to clean his hands up from the mud that’s made their way upon them from mucking out the barn pens.
His father’s amusement is a little less mean; just too humored by the short interaction to really show any other type of emotion.
“Yes, up to the next hog sale,” Myla returns to the topic. “So we’re ahead for the month.”
Audric Sir grunts and moves away to his own room, leaving her to put the bundles into the storage space set up for them.
The two children share a long stare born of chilly repetition on the adult’s end. Myla rights her skirt and tips her head towards the kitchen, wondering if Audric will join her in preparing dinner.
“I am honestly scared to ask,” Audric says, “but how do you always manage to keep your hair clean?”
Myla side eyes him. “I wash it.”
“I mean when we’re dealing with mud.”
“Grace.”
Her simple answer gains her a scoff and an eyeroll. Dark curls slip over Audric’s eyes when he tilts his head down to stare at her; their usual difference in height would have caused the same shift, but with Myla crouching down amid the garden lines and him standing upright to keep the metal lattice straight, the current difference leads his hair to deepening the shadows of his face.
Clenching her jaw, she pushes the heat pricking beneath his skin to the side to focus on winding the twine around the grid to keep the herbs in place as the raining season rolls in in full and turns the usually sturdy ground into an ever-shifting muck.
“Keeping in mind where my head is and where my hair ends,” she answers gently when she’s shuffling down to the next section of the garden. “And not using my dirty hands on my face.”
“So you act prissy.”
“Better than acting like a mongrel.”
Audric huffs out another close-laugh.
It’s easy to fall into silence after that, the work pulling at their attention when Audric has to grab the next section of the lattice and nearly drops it on her head. Not that the silence lingers long. The near-tumble is chaotic enough that Myla’s subconscious awareness of where her hair is in relation to the ground is non-existent just long enough for the mud to cling to the ends. Audric spends the rest of their work time intermittently teasing her for having dirty hair.
It’s easy enough to shrug off. It’s hard to believe he means any of his comments meanly when he’s also complimenting her in the same breath, unable to leave his words hanging without the sweetness of them. Even easier to fall into a few seconds of bickering, as well, since Myla is unable to hold her tongue with the older boy.
When they’re done getting the garden set for the season’s weather, there’s only slight teasing towards her need to clean immediately. Audric Sir adds in a few comments of a more acerbic quality between his son’s, but overall just contents himself with watching her march off to the room Audric’s given up for her to have a space of her own.
“How?”
Myla’s balletic smile gains twin scoffs from father and son, her hands finishing the bow tying her hair away from her face. As she and Audric switch places – he steps in the room to clean up himself and she crosses over to the kitchen to look over what they have to make – Audric Sir cleans up the mess his carving created. The little shelf above the cabinets the herbs and dye fill has gained two more carvings since she last checked and will gain a third by the time they leave to sell what they have set for this weekend’s market day.
There’s no true theme to what the man makes out of the pieces of wood she and Audric find for him out in the woods surrounding the farm. Very rarely is there a repeat. Even of the twenty sitting on the shelf, separated into groups for upcoming weekends like the herbs and dyes in the cabinets, Myla can only find two ravens as the only duplicating subject. One is sitting on a fence and the other is mid dive, so even through the repeating subjects, the poses are different.
Audric Sir is quick to set his tools inside his room before he, and his son, joins her in the kitchen to pull their weight in making dinner.
“Do I need to worry about any injuries popping up in either of you?”
“Maybe My’s head.”
“Audric’s knee.”
The man grunts and shifts away from the duo as they shove at each other in offense. Myla catches sight of the eyeroll he gives at their reaction to the reciprocated care but merely open-handedly smacks Audric’s shoulder with a sniff when he laughs at her.
“Damn,” he states. “Ow.”
Picking up the knife and chopping the potatoes placed in front of her is the only response she gives the pouting remark.
ns216.73.216.158da2
will be deducted 
and then Add to home screen.