Played by:
AelKennyr Rhiano
Slowly she straightened up and put a hand against the small of her back, pressing in as her vertebra popped, and she felt a moment's relief. Sighing, Arianna closed here eyes a moment and tilted her head up, like a flower turning to the watery warmth of the autumn sunlight. The damp smell of leaves, fallen to ground to compost into thick rich dirt mingled with the smells of wood burning, and she opened bird bright eyes to watch the smoke rise lazily from her chimney, a thick black mass against the grey sky. Rain, soon. She can smell. Rain again, and as she lowers her gaze back to her vegetable before her, she bends down slowly to her basket and feels her bad hip catch. Her finger splay and then curl into claws as the pain laces through her body, and she grits her teeth so hard her jaw aches.
Moments that feel like eternities pass, and she gasps and pants as the pain finally eases. Her fingers uncurl, and a hand goes to rest protectively over the hip. "That be a bad one," she whispers to herself. Breathing nosily through her nose, she shuffles about in a half circle until she is able to walk with some balance, and the light headedness that comes with the pain fades. Then she comes back to her basket and with great care, reaches down for the handles, picking it up. She runs her gaze across the last of her vegetables and a soft groan escapes her.
In the basket is a pathetic harvest. She picked all the tomatoes, even the green ones for those that are red are shrivelled aged with the cold nights and harsh wind. She would lay the green ones out in the window, in hopes they would turn, thankful that her wise man had long ago taught her the value of this fruit where so many in the town shunned it as poison. The onions were fair enough to eat, she suspected, but their pungant smell warned well how they would flavor food, and given her small bounty, she may well be driven to eat them whole and uncooked before the winter was done. The potatoes are half rotted and soft, and the corn that did not rot from rains is wormy and hard. The beans, zucchini, and rhubarb were all dead, black, slimy to the touch. There is no more to be gleamed from the plants here now, the old woman knows. If she is lucky, and there is no rain over the next few days, she may be able to lay in a winter garden of cabbage, cardoons, lamb's lettuce, endive, garlic, and peas. Turning away with a heavy sigh, she walked slowly and painfully to the house.
Behind her, in the barn, the cow lows its complaint for fresh hay. "You git hay, bossy old thing when I gets to it, " She calls over her shoulder. The cow snorts and stamps a hoof against the floor before dipping her head down to nose among the lose straw. As she reaches her cottage, Arianna shoves the basket onto the work table, by the bucket of used soapy water, and the urn of clear water that Yavanna had drawn this morning. Pausing there, the crone draws in a heavy breath before continuing on into the house. The wind rose as she opens the door, whispering of cold winter and promising more rain, the damp leaves on the ground making a feeble attempt to rise and dance once more. The warmth of the fire rushes up to kiss her aged face as the door shut. Crossing the room, her sharp eyes rest upon the worktable that long ago her man built for her. There, turned upside down on a kitchen towel are a collection of crockery, jars in which she had preserved jams, jellies and pickled vegetables the summer past, before the strange young woman appeared upon her door. This morning after the young woman left to take the wash down, Arianna went to check her stores, and was greeted with the overripe smell of spoilt food. The crockery seems sound, but the wax had collapsed upon itself, mottled yellow and brown.
Clucking to herself, the old woman crossed the room and dropped into her rocker, her bones creaking in tandem with the old wood. "I must done something wrong," she says aloud. "That paraffin I always made it the same way, from my vegetable oil." She shook her head. She tried to recall her methods, the steps she took, but the memory slips and slides around the corners of her thoughts and escapes her. The end result is the same, she grimly realizes.
She sighs and rocks, closing her eyes. Immediately, the image of the other, much younger woman rises before her. How odd she is, Arianna thinks, and odder still how her appearance has changed during her time with the old woman. She looks, now, as wilted and as sucked of life, as some of the plants in the vegetable garden. Her skin is now dusky, and her hair dull and lifeless, and in the younger woman's eyes, to Arianna, is a sadness that is as cold and as lonely as the winter wind on a moonless night. For some time now, as the old woman has watched the younger, she has asked herself if some god or other laid a curse upon her, and that was the cause for the change in the girl, for the way green things seem to wilt at her touch. At night, in bed, when her hip seizes up or in the early morning, when her arthritic joints refuse to move, she has felt more than once an anger and jealousy shake her: anger and fear that somehow, she is wilting from being in close quarters with the girl. Jealousy at the younger woman's health, vigor, vim, life. She has yet to live years that I already have, Arianna thought in those hard and mean moments. I want my years back!
And as she sits, wrapping her thin arms around her thick waist, she draws in a breath and admits to herself she does not want those years back. She does not want the stretch of decades of life. Her arms ache for the child she lost. Her heart aches for the man she loved.
The old woman opens her eyes and looks over at the spot where she bathed Yavanna that night, and her heart squeezes tight. The memory of how Yavanna sat in the bath water, so trusting, so innocent, so lovely and fresh catches her up. Her arms ache to hold a person who does not exist, the adult her own child never became.
But this daft woman is not her child, the woman tells herself, and I've not enough to feed two through this year's end. The pedlars who normally traded with the old woman have not come as expected, and while her wax did not hold true for her spoiled food, it was good enough to produce her scented candles, for which she would have traded items needed for the harsh season ahead. "That girl must have someone looking for her, " She said aloud, and her voice was sandy, rusty with emotions she refuses to vent. I cannot feed her, she admits to herself silently. I cannot feed us both this winter. Sitting now in the silence of her house, she can wrap herself in memories of times past, of love past. Sitting now, she can admit that she moves slower, does less, sits more....and dreams of the laughter and smiles that once filled her life.
She stops rocking and sighs. "I have to tell that child tonight," she whispers, and the fire beside her answers with pops and crackles. "I can send her down to the village with some warm clothes, a coin or two, and there they will find her people. I give her my old fancy clothes, do up her hair, paint her cheeks. She look like a lady, and they will fall over themselves finding her people. We make think they be getting gold, and they will fall over themselves serving her."
Outside the wind whips up again, and Arianna painfully pushes herself up from her rocking chair and turns to the fire, flexing stiff fingers. "She be right enough," she whispers. "She be right enough."