Table Manners (February 3010) - [Mithrellas]

Cardis wasn’t asleep, but she had yet to rise. Once again, she’d slept through the night, and while she had awoken at dawn, she had yet to summon the strength to push herself up from the bed. Instead, she lay there, staring into the distance, listing off the tasks of the day ahead. Fortunately, no repairs awaited her, but quite a number of bows and crossbows were needed, as well as the arrows required for both weapons. And yet, knowing that, it didn’t instil in her the desire to move, to shift where she lay. The days were getting shorter under the growing shadow to the east, and she felt her energy shorten in supply in turn for the first time in a thousand years of living.

She was weary, but it wasn’t comparable to the weariness she’d experienced centuries before. Then, she wanted to depart, but now, she was holding on. ‘Sleeping’ aided her in that, but she needed more of it. Sharp ears didn’t permit her that this morning, as the market beyond the walls of her workshop came to life, and she was forced to relinquish her hold on the dreams, on the flickering sights and sounds of a place that someone else remembered. They seemed too bright, too quiet to be found within the streams of her own mind, and as always, there was someone there. Cardis was unable to determine who. All she could make out was tendrils of golden hair. Everything else remained clouded. But she knew.

She knew who it was, she just couldn’t remember, not anymore. Her face had faded, had become lost to time, and there was no reclaiming it. Finally, Cardis’ hands found the sheets beneath her. She didn’t sleep under them, she didn’t feel the cold, not yet, but she imagined it was only a matter of time before she could, and the warmth would abandon her too. Sleep wasn’t the only unusual phenomenon she experienced, the feeling of her own weight was too, and she felt it as she left the bed, as she slipped over the edge and touched the floor beneath her. One thing did happen that she was accustomed to; she staggered, out of the bedroom, and into the workshop.

It seemed that the solid ground beneath her wasn’t something she would get used to anytime soon, as her fingertips fluttered along the edge of her worktop, prepared to reach for it if necessary, not that she would stumble. She simply required something to steady herself against the steady floor beneath her. “Good morning!” stormy grey eyes were immediately drawn to the youthful voice that stretched beyond the door, and stilled, focussed on its source, as if it were a rodent that had entered the field of vision of a hawk. Cardis surveyed everyone in such a manner, but upon registering the form of a female, her gaze stirred, and she released her visual hold on the girl. Two girls, she soon realised.

It was an unusual sight, women in the carpentry, as unusual as she herself had once been, still was standing behind the worktop. It was no less welcome, and Cardis experienced the unfamiliar sensation of her nerves and muscles both relaxing, as her frozen posture, and predatorial stance unravelled. Something that she often found herself doing in the realms of men was staring at each and every one of them, searching them for any traces of familiarity. Sometimes she forgot, forgot exactly how much time had passed, that neither Gilmith, nor Galador could be found in the faces of anyone she encountered. Though they had been half hers, they were also half his, predominantly his, as evidenced by the traits they had exhibited as infants.

They were dead, long gone from this world, but traces of them remained, remained in the eyes of their descendants. Her descendants. However, the women before her could not be counted among them. She could not see the steel in their eyes, the glint that belonged to her and them. “Good morning” she greeted the pair, sisters, or so she assumed. There was a resemblance, “Furniture, is it?” she questioned. Furniture was the primary reason women ventured into the carpentry, she had experienced quite enough of the realms of men to know that their counterparts remained restricted in the pursuit of arms, “or… something else?” her eyes stilled again, focussed on the eldest of the two, set and fixed on her hands, her fingers in particular.

“I do believe we have a musician in our midst?” Cardis knew, only too well, the digits of a harpist.