Soap and Sorrow - Part II

Played by:
AelKennyr Rhiano
Belenos Stormchaser

Leaning over a little more, the old woman allowed her hands to remain submerged in the hot water, the warmth easing the arthritic knuckles of her hands. She closes her eyes a moment, and gives a sigh of relief.  She opens them, and her sharp eyes rest upon the back of the young woman huddled in the tub. If the girl stays through to the autumn and even winter, perhaps she can take baths like this herself, with the daft child's help.  She reaches down and chases the soap for a moment, until her fingers close firmly about the bar.  Just think!  A tub bath instead of filling the wash basin with lukewarm water and trying to spot bath.  Bringing the soap out of the water, she reaches down for the brush, which she had dropped on the floor beside her.  "Now, girl," she says, her voice soft and gentle, like it used to be when she was bathing her man, in his latter days.  "You take that hair of yours and pull it off your back. Tonight we will get you all scrubbed up," she stops to rub the soap against the bristles of the  brush, and drops the bar back in the water,"and now tomorrow, tomorrow, I have that soft soap. You know, the one that is for your hair. Well, girl, tomorrow, we will be brushing that hair out, 100 strokes of the brush, and then we can go down to the little river, down by the waterfall, and we will wash it proper. Now that soap is for hair.  Won't clog it with oils and fat, don't ye know.  And then, and then we will rinse it out proper like." 

"..Tonight we will get you all scrubbed up."

She applies the brush to the young woman's back and starts to scrub, one hand clutching the brush and the other hand steadying her by grasping the end of the tub.  She eyes the hair and then asks the young woman, "Now, now, you be telling me true, you ain't put some kind of lightener to your hair, girl? Something that done faded or washed out now?  I knows some men looks for honey gold hair, but if you get any of that concoction from that old gabby gammer in town hard by the thread dyers.....well, she is a might proud, TOO proud, if you ask me. And her wares have been known to cause hair to fall out." She nods and dips the brush in the water.

 "Ock, aye, I remember the mayor's wife..real proud of her red hair, which tweren't red, you know, unless it came from a bottle. Well, one time, she bought some of that fair brass color from that old...old..." she turns her head and spits at the memory of the woman who always looked down upon her and her man.  "And next thing you know, her head was shinier than a silver mirror."  She gives a little chuckle.  "I don't know if it ever growed out."

Yavanna lifts a wet hand to draw the heavy fall of her hair clear of her back as instructed. Tucking it forward over one shoulder, she lifts a lock and stares at it as the old woman talks about soaps, turning it this way and that with her long finely shaped fingers. The hair glints red and gold from the nearby fire and she blinks at it as though seeing it for the first time. It WAS darker than before. It wasn't dirty, she knew, for, despite the crone's concerns she did wash it daily when she made her way to the small riverlet nearby. But it was definitely darker and.. more limp, heavy. She remembers as she stares at it, a time when it danced around her shoulders, seemingly with a life of its own. She remembers how much he used to love it, tangling his fingers in it as they made love. She remembers..

Yavanna shakes her head as again her mind takes that painful path.  The movement causes the hair to slip from her grasp and she lets it fall to lie with the rest, heavy and damp upon her shoulder.  Searching for a distraction from her thoughts, she turns her head and looks back at Arianna a moment as she asks, "You have mentioned a husband?  Where is he now? Is he off hunting or trading?"

The old woman meets Yavanna's eyes for a moment and then wrenches her gaze away, her eyes glittering with a sudden spring of tears. "Na, na, he twasn't one much for hunting.  He'd do it, doncha know, when we needs meat, and to fill the smokehouse, but by Aule's nose hairs and Manwe's spit, he'd come home all sad-eyed and just be list about the place.  Didn't hold much for killing things, you know."  She stopped, and dropped the brush into the water, resting an aged, spotted hand upon Yavanna's shoulder.  "Tis the way with a good man. He does what he needs, despite the twist to his heart." she says softly.  "Shore, shore, in those days, I be handier with a bow, but he twasn't about to let me into the forest on my own.  'Woman,' he would says, 'My job is to feeds my family.'  'Oh, is that so?' I would sass back...I was a mite proud in them days. 'And what you think my garden does..hmmm?' And he would just scoop me up in them big arms of his, kiss me firmly, and I would forget all about what started me fussing."

..her eyes glittering with a sudden spring of tears.

Her eyes see again the shoulder she holds, the tub, the warm quarters of the house she and her man built a long, long time ago.  "One day, child, pretty thing you are, you going to have a man look at you that way. Melts your heart, it does, and makes your knees go all weak and your body tingles. That be what a good man does."

Yavanna closes her eyes and listens as Arianna begins to answer her question, relaxing into the warm water, grateful that her mind has something else to focus upon.  She inhales deeply, her nostrils filling with the fragrant steam from the bath. "...by Aule's nose hairs..." the other woman says and her eyes fly open as she gasps aloud.  A pain tears though her, starting deep in her chest and forcing itself through her flesh as though determined to leave her rent asunder. Water splashes unheeded upon the floor as her hands grasp the side of the tub, holding white-knuckled as though to keep from being swept away by the torrent of abysmal pain that surges through her.

...her eyes fly open...

Arianna jerks her hand back and leans back on her heels, her other hand grasping, white-knuckled the wooden side of the tub, driving a splinter into one of her fingers, but she felt it not.  Her eyes flew wide open in panic and surprise at Yavanna's reaction.  "W-wha..." she starts to say, her mouth forming a wide "o."  What is wrong with the child? Her mind races.  Is she falling into some sort of distempered fit?

The water sloshes over the side, some landing on her dress, soaking it, but again, it is noticed not.  "Calm, calm down, child!" She calls out in a sharp voice, her panic making her voice shrill.  "What has a hold on you?" She barks out, and with her own hand, she pulls herself forward, resting her stomach against the worn wood as her hand again grasps Yavana's shoulder, this time forcefully, shaking her.  "What , what, child, has some god or other cursed you?" she asks. 

"Calm, calm down, child!"

Gods!  Gods of the elves, Gods of men, the one God her man held to and taught her about. The Valar, the gods of a million races.  Which one has cursed this child, the crone thinks, and a cold harsh stab of fear chills her to the bone. What if this be one of the god-accursed?  What has she brought into her home?

Yavanna takes a sudden breath as Arianna touches her shoulder, not realizing until then she had been holding it. What had gotten into her? Drawing in slow deep breathes, she fights to steady her racing pulse. Slowly she forces her fingers to let go their death grip on the side of the tug and turns to smile a wobbly uncertain smile at the old woman, her mind racing for an explanation that would not leave the other thinking her totally out of her mind. "I.. I had a cramp," she murmurs at last before turning to again wrap her arms around her knees. 

Yavanna's mind is racing and skittering like a horse spooked by the wind.  Every time she approaches it to look for the cause of her pain it jibs and shies away, panic-stricken.  Confused, still breathing hard despite her efforts to calm, she leans her chin on her knees.  Maybe she was mad.  Maybe that's why she had been abandoned in the forest.  Maybe Arianna would do the same if she knew. Maybe.. Sighing, exhausted, but unwilling to risk abandonment she tries again to reassure the old woman, her voice firmer now. "I.. I'm sorry I alarmed you.  It.. it just caught me by surprise."

Maybe she was mad.

The old woman watches her, hand still upon the younger's shoulder, watches the rapid rise and fall of the younger woman's breath.  Narrowing her eyes, she clicks her tongue against her upper teeth, and sucks in air to make a harsh noise.  "Now, you be thinking me a fool, girl," she says, her voice still harsh with fear.  Looking down she leans forward and peers at the area of the back she had just scrubbed. Red it was, to be sure, but the overall tone of the skin was just as gray as when the older woman started.

The water, too, was sudsy, but there was no trace of grime, nor was the water dirty in the least.  Frowning, the old woman stared again at the back, lifting her hand to lightly trace over the intricate leaves and vines inked upon the girl's skin. Is that fading, as the days go by, or is my eyes failing me, Arianna asks herself, and that, too, causes a different stab of fear. Alone, all alone in this cottage hard by the forest, she has only her wits, her strength and her senses, and now, now, she sucks in a breath,  Blessed Eru in whom her man believed, what be her fate if all fail her at once? 

Her hand shakes as she lightly brushes her pruned fingers across the younger's back.  Could it be the ink was fresh when first the girl came?  And now it fades as it should?  She takes a deep breath and nods.  It must be so. It must surely be so. But then...then...how should it be the daft creature's very skin grow all dusky?  She bites her bottom lip, concentrating. 

You be a strange one, girl," she says aloud.  "A mystery."  She shifts her weight and is rewarded with the sharp stab, like needles, from legs that have fallen asleep.  "Oh!" she calls out and clutches the tub. "Oh!" she calls again, the pain sharp. "Vaire take my old bones," she mutters.  "And Yavanna be cursed for letting this old woman get so old." She feels tears well up, a mixture of fear and aches and pains combining to undo her steely resolve.

"..Yavanna be cursed.."

Yavanna's whole body flinches and she barely manages to stifle another gasp as Arianna utters the name of Yavanna.  What was wrong with her?  And who were these people the old woman spoke of?  Why did she react so strongly to their names?  Questions sprang fast and furious through her mind, yet her tongue refuses to give voice to them, instead choosing to stay heavy as lead and unresponsive in her mouth. Casting around frantically for a means to end what had become a very uncomfortable conversation, she seizes upon the old woman's complaints. "You are weary and .. and the water is growing cold.  Perhaps we should finish for tonight?"

The woman rocks back forth, hissing as the needles of pain stab up and down her legs. What, is the girl so daft that she can't see me all hobbled with pain? Arianna thinks, but then she looks again at the younger woman.  Her expression in her eyes...so at a lost, so distant.  It is not that the girl appears unfeeling, the older woman decides, seeing the tightness about the younger's eyes, the lines about her mouth.  She reaches out a hand, fingers curled in a claw. "Well, girl, don't sit there in the cold water like a frog on a stump, with your mouth just flapping.  Stand up, stand up. Can't you see I'm all ..." she stops and sucks in her breath as the muscles of her left leg cramps.  "Dark Lord take us both, git up and help me!" she said, sharply, and then reaches down to claw at the leg, unable to ease the cramp.  "Wits, girl, wits, wits, use them!"  Helpless, she crouches there, not quite sitting, not quite kneeling.  "Git me up."