Her Numbers to Ten

Suza knew her numbers to ten and had a pretty good idea how to get to twenty after that.  She could sing the whole alphabet though she only knew A, B, C, S (for Suza), and W for unknown reasons.  Suza knew all the colors most people needed to know except her darks and lights.  For Suza, blue was just blue whether in her sky or in her jeans.

“Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy, can I go ou’side?” she asked.

“Daddy, can I go ouTside?” her Father repeated back to her.  He’d been doing this more and more lately.  At first Suza thought he was asking her the question which confused her because she knew she wasn’t ‘Daddy’, but she usually told him yes anyway or whatever answer she wanted.  He explained to her that he wanted her to correct how she asked the question.  She should just say what he said the way he’d said it.

“Can I go oudside?”

“Yes, Sweetie.  You can go ouTside.”

Her Father almost never said no to going outside so it seemed like an awful lot of work just to get out the door, but once Suza swung into the sky on her swing it was worth the effort.

“Will you come swing me?” she asked before closing the door all the way—another important thing to do.

“Yes but in a minute.  I need to finish reading this letter.”

“OK.”

Day 373

A Few More Flowers

From way back when.

Kraite stroked the ridge of fur back from the corner of his mouth and twisted the thin braid at the end.  He disliked the style, but the braids appealed to Mallen.  Repeating the action made him feel thoughtful.

He was not thoughtful.  At least not anymore.

The bush in Qwain, especially here at the headwaters of the Drenfennelen river, smelled clean even a bit spicy.  The warming morning air brought with it the earth’s aroma…

The dark green foliage dropped below him in a static sort of fall.  Earlier in the morning light he’d tried to imagine the tops of the trees as sort of river of plants to match the one in water hidden below.  The trick wouldn’t go.  He couldn’t think of them as anything but what they were.  Now he was left to waiting.

Most hunts he wouldn’t get such a prime vantage point.  Normally he’d be half hung in a tree or crouched behind a too-small rock waiting in the rain for armed quarry.  This juicy gig allowed him a relaxed demeanor and he was taking full [measure of the sun and view].

Kraite listened again for the monk’s approach.  The human girl was below the clearing  by a switchback or two.  He pushed a bit of limestone from his perch to mark the moment.  The [stone] dropped out of sight before he heard it chackle across the [ruins and rocks] lining the seasonally dry streambed below.

His perch no longer served as an aqueduct-hadn’t in [a century]…

…when the Chief Administrators in Theeble stopped paying the monks for healing water that didn’t, in fact, heal. The stonework of the arch in which he waited now lined the streambed below (yeah, I know).

Kraite lowered himself into the vines that spilled from the dry waterway. Holding on with one hand he tossed another stone into the rocky path below. The flat stone smacked into the rocks drawing the monk’s attention as she entered the clearing below Kraite. He took that exact moment to drop after it.

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I was going to swap to the monk’s POV but then my brother called. Maybe later.

Follow all of Kraite’s adventures using the ‘qwain‘ tag.

Word count: 107
Day 208