[ She leaves early in the morning, while the hyenas are still asleep. It is easier that way, to avoid their complaints and demands and insinuations. They have grown brazen under Haran's watch, thinking they belong in the House, thinking that Qetzi is somehow indebted for her continued survival. She is not their servant, and what cleaning she does within the House is for her own satisfaction, not theirs.
She leaves early in the morning after another night of ghosts and whispers. She is used to it by now, and perhaps in a way looks forward to the familiar voices of her sisters, even if they come in wails and screams now. She knows what they want from her, but there are other calls which much be answered. The call to preserve their blood, the call to escape. The two conflict, and never so stridently as when she is in the House itself. And so she leaves, early in the morning.
She takes no path on her way into the woods, looks for no markers amongst the mist. The trees will open the way for her as they see fit. Past the river where her mother had once walked in the night, past the abandoned coal mines where once strangers had thought to find fortunes and instead found death, past the little unconsecrated cemetery where the first settlers of the Hill lay. And then the flowers are before her, wild and brambling, sprawling in every direction, clawing their way up trees and strangling the life from them. A secret place that she had found as a child, and now returns to as a woman for the solace it provides. No demon will find her here.
She spends the afternoon tending to her wildflowers. Coaxing the stems of smothered flowers up into the light, up around branches to receive more sun. She scatters cinnamon and coffee at the roots to keep slugs and infections away. She pricks her finger on the stem of a blackberry and shares her blood with the fruit. Once there had been such a patch by the House, tended to and beloved by her grandmother, long since torn up now. When the sun becomes to hot for such a night-born creature, she takes to the shade of one grand Elder Tree untouched by the invasion of wildflower. Its mossy boss is comfortable and she sleeps there for a time, she dreams of dancing and soft kisses and she awakes with purple wisteria braided into her hair. As the sun begins to set, she clips a few flowers to take back to the House, collects a small satchel's worth of berries. ]
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[ She leaves early in the morning, while the hyenas are still asleep. It is easier that way, to avoid their complaints and demands and insinuations. They have grown brazen under Haran's watch, thinking they belong in the House, thinking that Qetzi is somehow indebted for her continued survival. She is not their servant, and what cleaning she does within the House is for her own satisfaction, not theirs.
She leaves early in the morning after another night of ghosts and whispers. She is used to it by now, and perhaps in a way looks forward to the familiar voices of her sisters, even if they come in wails and screams now. She knows what they want from her, but there are other calls which much be answered. The call to preserve their blood, the call to escape. The two conflict, and never so stridently as when she is in the House itself. And so she leaves, early in the morning.
She takes no path on her way into the woods, looks for no markers amongst the mist. The trees will open the way for her as they see fit. Past the river where her mother had once walked in the night, past the abandoned coal mines where once strangers had thought to find fortunes and instead found death, past the little unconsecrated cemetery where the first settlers of the Hill lay. And then the flowers are before her, wild and brambling, sprawling in every direction, clawing their way up trees and strangling the life from them. A secret place that she had found as a child, and now returns to as a woman for the solace it provides. No demon will find her here.
She spends the afternoon tending to her wildflowers. Coaxing the stems of smothered flowers up into the light, up around branches to receive more sun. She scatters cinnamon and coffee at the roots to keep slugs and infections away. She pricks her finger on the stem of a blackberry and shares her blood with the fruit. Once there had been such a patch by the House, tended to and beloved by her grandmother, long since torn up now. When the sun becomes to hot for such a night-born creature, she takes to the shade of one grand Elder Tree untouched by the invasion of wildflower. Its mossy boss is comfortable and she sleeps there for a time, she dreams of dancing and soft kisses and she awakes with purple wisteria braided into her hair. As the sun begins to set, she clips a few flowers to take back to the House, collects a small satchel's worth of berries. ]