103rd of Nemulum, 336 EA
Ishikar, Athal
In the depths of another evening Belmaia stirred the pot, chopped the vegetables, and tended the fire underneath it all. She moved with a pretensive intention, the sorts of movements a body makes when the mind is unwilling to remain as preoccupied as it really is.
“This stew, it smells very good.” Svaljna offered helpfully, sat at the table on the other side of the low wall partitioning the kitchen from the dining front.
Mepka grunted her agreement, however begrudging it was, from Svaljna’s side.
“I’m glad to be cooking it for you.” Belmaia ran through her practiced hospitality, “It’s good for the hands, and for the spirit, to be cooking.”
“Much spirit to you, then?” Mepka took a tone with just a hint of a bite to it, undercut only slightly by her state unease.
Belmaia thought on the question, pushing a smile up to her face to buy herself time. “I do believe so. Do you have faith, Mepka?”
“I do not.” Mepka held that sharpness. “In my time I have found dogmatism to be a prospect for pain.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but glad to know that we can still be friends. You’ll find no dogma here, only community.” Belmaia was glad to see Mepka’s surprise, that tension she had built up at the question initially dissipating into confusion at the unexpectedly amicable response. “I have met many clerics of many faiths, but the Stria Intranscendent teaches us that the world’s way is to move, and there is no truer tragedy than to resist the concept of that movement.”
“How is it then that you find yourself all alone here?” Svaljna looked to Belmaia with a piercing directness. “You speak of community, but there are none here to be with you?”
The food finished under Belmaia’s hands. She poured out into bowls, feeling her chipper facade slipping with the completion of the task. “Yes, that is the case. There are those that have spent seasons in my life, a girl called Livia most recently, but I have not seen her since you all have arrived.”
“Will she be back?” Svaljna asked thoughtfully.
“No,” Belmaia sighed, “I don’t expect that she will. It’s rare that they do.”
“She’s not the first?” Mepka asked with a softer tone now.
Belmaia let herself feel the sadness, a rare luxury to her. “Not the first, no.”
“What was she like?” Mepka took bowls and sat them for herself and for Svaljna.
“Livia? We were each mothers to each other, at different times.” Belmaia smiled again, this time with a more earnest melancholy. “She was older than me, but I brought her into the faith. I showed her those way, and watched her grow into her spirit in a way few ever manage.”
There was a flicker then, in her speech, a minute pause as she shifted in her chair with an equivocating discomfort. “She grew past this place though, her time was ready to take her elsewhere.”
Mepka and Svaljna looked meaningfully to one another.
“Have you ever thought about leaving yourself?” Svaljna posed the question with a gentleness belying hesitancy.
“So keen to get me out, are you?” Belmaia laughed, “No, I mean I don’t expect so. My place is here.”
With everyone else served, she finally settled down to begin eating herself.
The Etra Anthology 