Not about leafy greens

It started with a petition to the Prince. At least that's how Hayel retells it. She tells the story as grubs, though we all know it was spiders. But she was at the Castle because there were grubs in her greens and she wanted to scare them off. She'd heard of planting herbs from up north could scare off the grubs, even if the herbs were a weed down here, and could put everything out of balance. But she'd lose her greens to the grubs and then what would she trade at market? Her good looks?   Now I was at my tea shop at the time, a pod dangling from one of the new gantries that hang off the cliff that holds the castle, frying up some fish I had bought at market. My claw pendant dangled at my throat as I watched Hayel approach, overheated and determined, and a little angry, like a whisperling without a pack, just a few feet taller and much more beautiful. She was overdressed in thick felted fabrics, and I ushered her down to a seat, letting the fish to its own devices on the fire-blossom as I raced to get her a beverage of squeezed water-reach. There is something luminous about Hayel, the hint of the fructine tattoo hidden beneath her collar, her rich amber eyes, those full and bite-able lips. I had to look away before my regulars noticed my too long gaze.   Hayel says my attraction was obvious in the flush that stained my throat, taking it from deep green to a thick brown-red, but that would indicate she was looking there to notice the change. Her story says that she was noticing the scars that laced my body, wondering what marks would make themselves known on the skin of a delicate teahouse owner. But one look would have had her notice the heat burns across my thin fingers, the callouses across my wrist, and known that the scars were from an adventure writ long ago.  

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Hayel stayed at the teahouse until sunset that first time, taking one of the carts back to her village after she had emptied the tales from the regulars and my wrists had grown tired from refilling her cup. She promised to bring something to pay me back next time, but left me with a chewed flower from her greens to rest behind my ear against my bare scalp until she returned. I cannot say I was not smitten.   I wore a goldweave shawl for the next month, loosely knitted, and shining like Morticia incase Hayel made the trip back north and I could catch her eye. But she did not, and it was the wet months again before she shadowed the membrane to my shop. She arrived sopping wet, her thin outfit soaked through and I brought her inside to sit by the fire-blossom while I hunted for something that would not swim on her smaller form. She claimed the grubs had kept her busy, but I felt at the time that I had just been a daytime distraction, a place she had gone after her meeting with the king and then be gone with it. But here she was in a yellow dress, her frizzy bun wringing out into a bowl, waiting for the sky to settle its drama with the plains of flowers.   We talked, its true, about her garden and my shop. About the bio-workings on my breastbone, and the tattoo on her hip. And long before the rest of the city had turned off their circuits and dimmed their bio-vines, I had pulled my blinds, wrapped in the arms of my sweet Hayel. Unfortunately for me, the spiders continued.   I did suggest she come to the capital, to stay with me, but she had to return - it was where she grew up and it held special memories to her, could I not understand memories, and of course she would be back to woo me. My smile was too sweet to let go, she said. I had spent the next week walking to the coast to clear my nerves, it is not wise to leave agitation simmering within you and my life thrummed to have Hayel within it.

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"What brings a soft-sole this far from home?" The old salty woman asked me when my feet finally stopped on the rocky crags of Waverly Point. I had no answer for her so I just shrugged, wrapped in a greshire dry-bone, watching the spray from the cliffs spatter us both.   "You're not going to jump, are ya?" The woman continued, watching me, and to that I knew was a hard no. Nothing about the strumming in my heart had me willing or ready to end the growing of my life, but the glimmer echoing off me would be red were I to let myself feel in that moment. That I knew.   So the older woman led me back to her house near the sound-tower, and told me all about how she met her wife. She gave me a good lecture on patience and young love and how you have to let life come to you sometimes instead of needing it now and still as I sat there with warm tea, listening to this woman and the waves crashing the shore, my free hand clutched the claw pendant at my neck as my emotions ran wild.  

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  Eventually I went back to my teahouse, the place overrun with spiders in my absence, and I had to scurry them to the garden outside and the flowers and cliff below, letting them have their own space and home away from mine. I spent the next week cleaning and trying to stop myself from clawing the walls, and I definitely drunk way too much of the herbal tea I stock from the witches. But calm eventually took me. I ate my fish and tried to get on with my life.   Which is why it was a surprise to both Hayel and I when I arrived at her village. Hayel will tell you I arrived like a crazy woman, spiderwebs in my hair, new scars on my arms, my scalp covered in a weird frizzy stubble. It was also a surprise to Hayel's wife. Not to say that I have opinions about triads or multiples, just that I was the kind of woman that at the time was a one woman show. So in my haste I was quite taken aback. Furbenin was amused after the shock wore off - lovely woman, we still chat from time to time - and she helped me to a room and proceeded to be perfectly charming to the crazy woman who had arrived at her doorstep to seduce her wife. She told me that one should not always follow one's wild nature, that sometimes a beautiful sunset is just a beautiful sunset.   I'd come to visit that farm often over the next few years, and I found out that I had much more a friendship with Furbenin than I did with Hayel, but it was slowly, over those visits to the village that I met my own wife, a lovely brewer woman, makes the most delicious fig-mead. And it wasn't quick, and it wasn't passionate, but she makes me smile and she is warmer than any sunrise.