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The Butcher

Knife cleaning was such a tedious process. Coriander, the butcher of the small town of Kittrosk, where Jasper and Sapphire had been born, and where Coriander herself had been born and raised two children who were now outside in the great pasture they'd cleared themselves, taking on the task of building a place for sheep to graze - She was a little sad that the old ways of doing things, namely hunting the great mule deer and trapping grouse were to be done, but glad that her little ones were finding a way to still be a part of her life as a butcher, even though they'd always been a bit squeamish about blood... well, they were going to find out about how much blood went into foaling, calving, and lambing. Coriander chuckled to herself as she wiped the blade.

From outside came a shadow across the broad front window. Hers was one of the only shops that had a glass-paned window. She was very proud of the window, but also constantly frightened that it would get broken. Most shops in town made do with wooden slats, and had open air brushing through, but when Parsley and Lavender had become adults, and had begun to contribute financially, well she'd found irresistible the opportunity to be a window-owning shopkeeper. She'd heard that even in Morraw that had shops that couldn't afford glass panes. She didn't want to live in Morraw, but to believe that she could? Well, that was something special.

Coriander didn't notice the shadow, and she didn't hear the slight woman walk past her shop. She cleaned her knives, and thought fondly of her children. Swipe, swipe went the blade against the cloth - deft. She thought to herself I am deft. These blades are keen. I could have been an adventurer and wielded a knife. She enjoyed imagining the lives she could have lived. It made her feel a little sweetly sad, but not in a bad way. She was thrilled with the life she had led. Contentment is harder to come by than most folks realize, even as they suffer discontentment. They always wonder why they are discontent, and seek out some new, bigger way to achieve their dreams. Coriander knew how difficult contentment could be to come by. She'd grown up with two grandparents who had traveled the world, and had scoffed when each of their children had settled into life in Kittrosk. They had never seemed content, and they had often judged her family for their contentment. That was the greatest lesson her mother had learned and had passed on to her, that feeling that the world could be enough for you if you chose it to be.

Nevertheless, Coriander felt contentment even moreso when she imagined the world that could have been, because in the imagining of it, she lived it.

---

The Wasps

Jani was acting on instinct. Her mind had had one conscious thought an hour earlier, and now she was plunging forward. She had grown so tired of feeling hopeless, of feeling indecisive. She had grown tired of just feeling. She was ready for action. She always had been, and she knew if she just started stumbling forward her mind would clear and she'd come out the other side with a plan. She hadn't gotten to the real plan stage yet, but she did have a swarm of wasps following her, and that seemed like a start.

Jani had looked up at that mesmerizing wasp nest. She'd been drawn to it like some sort of artist to their muse. Her feet hat placed themselves against the bark and she'd begun climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing. She reached the top of the tree, above the wasp nest and looked out. This tree was not the tallest in the forest, but she was close enough to the edge, that there were unobfuscated holes through which she could glimpse the town of Kittrosk. She had never been inside that town, but even from this great distance, she felt sure that she could pinpoint exactly where those metal monstrosities had come from. Where the forest ended there was an open field. Sheep munched at the highest point of a very shallow hill. Just beyond, some tannery that lay unused. There had probably been an active tanner once for this village, but the stench would not have been welcome, and as the town grew, it would have come to lay less on the outskirts of town. And so it had shut down, and these folks either wore wool, as the sheep suggested, or imported leather. But there it was, a lye pit empty of lye and a few tanned hides as roofs. Beyond that, small homes, built of logs from the forest, large buildings with actual stone, quarried perhaps from the lands near Morraw. The forest would have that memory, but Jani didn't. There a larger building with a chimney, perhaps even an inn, and there almost on the other side of the town, a manse, built of some white stone that was not from anywhere near here, nor even Morraw, though Jani had been to Morraw and had also seen these white stone edifices there.

That manse. That was where she would find the murderers and their lackeys. Did this town belong entirely in the pocket of those few? What had their wealth made them? Was every denizen of this town an enemy? Should she raze it?

Jani climbed down to the branch with the most beautiful wasp nest she had ever seen. She laid her hands on the outside of the buzzing, vibrating paper mass. The buzzing entered her mind, and she felt along her arms the zzzzz of wngs and the tiny climbing of feet. Eyes still closed, she knew that the wasps had covered every inch of her.

She didn't have a plan, but she wanted to know if the wasps could help her. The queen buzzed with activity. There was no thought like she thought of thought, but there was some attunement, perhaps in the communication somehow somehow somehow she began to feel that this colony of wasps had really outgrown its nest. That it was time for a new queen to take part of the nest... this was not how wasps behave but it was now how wasps behave somehow somehow somehow the wasp's vibration and the vibration of her own c-waves or something filled in the part of Jani's mind that had read both pseudoscientific theories and real neuroscience texts but hadn't retained what wasn't useful... somehow these vibrations had made it so Jani would get what she wanted, which was a swarm of wasps that would help her.

---

The Shepherd

Lavender chewed a long spear of grass, some timothy, that the sheep had let grow. Nestled in the midst of these long spears of grass were three rocks. Perhaps they had impeded the sheep's cropping ability, or maybe the sheep had left the grass just for her, knowing that she liked a long spear of grass to munch on while she watched them crop it all close to the earth. Lavender liked thinking that these sheep knew her and liked her. She tried not to thing too much about which ones of them would become mutton and which would have lambs that would become lamb for her mother. She liked imagining that they were all for wool and milk. Her mother would not have been content with that, though. Her mother would want her to be able to participate in her family's butchering. Her father, may his roots grow deep, would have understood, she thought. Now he was one of the trees, she thought. She wasn't really sure if she believed they became trees when they died, but they certainly fed trees- that was undeniable. An oak sapling had been planted so that when it grew and reached down into where his body was, he'd be a part of it. He'd always loved the color oak leaves turned in the fall, and would bear no one pointing out to him the colors of the other trees as just as lovely. He'd known he'd want to be an oak when he was a little boy. Dad had loved all living things, but he'd also loved mom's meat. Well, she could see that little sapling now from where she stood, and she could think about him. He seemed to wave at her. Still a baby to her, his baby. He waved very vigorously, and then a face popped out from behind him, and past him came, thank goodness not one of those metal monstrosities from the Gem clan, but an elf face. There had never been an elf in Kittrosk that she knew of, and there, she was seeing one now. She wasn't entirely sure she knew what to do.

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"Apologies if I do not speak your tongue!" Lavender called out from where she stood. Letting the long stem of the grass in her mouth bob with each syllable from the corner of her mouth.

Jani stopped and stood very still. Her mind was still buzzing like a wasp, and she had not marked this young human. Was this someone to overwhelm with the wasps? Kill them all, one by one? Were they all a threat to the territory? No... she needed to wait. Wasps had only so much venom, and also, she now had to start a new colony of wasps. She couldn't fail them. She wasn't a queen, though, how could she give birth to wasps? Cross that bridge when we come to it thought the part of Jani that knew that idiom from another place, and yet that idiom made so much sense to all of Jani. She started to fall in love with the other place. She buzzed her head back and forth and gather her heads... head.

"I understand you." Jani spoke quietly and stepped toward the young human. The wasps flew from behind her, a shadow that cast its own shadow. A single wasp from the bunch landed on the tip of the grass in Lavender's mouth.

Lavender crossed her eyes to see it. She stopped munching, smiled, and gently thrust her jaw out to tilt the stem and bring the wasp closer to her eyeline. The wasp climbed so that it stood horizontally on the now vertical stem. Lavender took the grass from her mouth. "Beautiful, mesmerizing, intricate. Do all elves travel with a bundle of wasps? I love their nests, don't you?"

Lavender felt like she was part of an adventure, and her tongue was loose. She felt almost drunk with the vibrations of the wasp wings buzzing in the air. The elf had a dozen or so wasps clinging to her. Lavender wanted to be a part of this horde of single-mindedness, like she was one with the flock of sheep. The flock of sheep! Lavender looked out and saw that all the sheep but one were still grazing, and that one was looking at the newcomer, too, trying to decide, perhaps if the newcomer was a wolf, a puma, or just another person who might offer it a handful of grain.

Lavender thought about the last time there had been a wolf from the forest. It had taken just one sheep, and she hadn't really tried to stop it. It had been hungry, she could tell, and there had been a whole pack. How had she been able to tell that it had been hungry? Well, because it had left the safety of the forest to find a sheep, and it had taken the sheep, and then had shared that sheep with its pack. This had been months ago, when stompers and trompers from Morraw had come just in front of a caravan carrying metals from quarries a thousand kilometers away.

Jani's face was impassive. She kept her attention on the wasp at the end of the stem that Lavender held, but a voice from inside her was listening.