Outlaw Bandit
The snow fell heavily like cinders after the fire has died out, like the remaining droplets after the unending storm. The air was damp, misty flakes sticking to a dark furred cloak in a coat of white, tenebrous hair hidden inside the hood, helping the figure meld into the scenery, disappear into the thick forest, the ivory crystals covering her tracks almost as soon as she'd step off. As if she wasn't there, as if she'd never been.
Deep into the woods she belonged like she'd been born to it. To the rain's delectable nectar, the birds' lullaby, and the wind's loving embrace. Perhaps she had, perhaps only those dreams proved true.
Never had she felt out of place here as she did among people. She'd known solitude all her life, a choice she'd gladly made when a choice had been given, but that she felt most keenly on the midwinter festival. When months of hard labour were rewarded with weeklong festivities before the cold became too biting and the rations too scarce.
She'd never partaken in the celebration, no one had shown her how, certainly no one in the orphanage. But she remembered walking along the village — stealing away once the sisters were asleep — spying through the chilled windows the small trees brought under roofs, the leaves adorning doorways and windowsills, and the hollies and ivies hanging from wooden beams and wrapped around candlesticks. She remembered how people would feast on geese and venison, many cheeses and spirits.
She had longed for it, in the beginning, had asked to be allowed to visit the square and markets, only to receive cruel stings in response.
She hadn't gotten a close enough glance until she'd worked at the palace. And even then, she hadn't been allowed to join the royals and nobles, or even the villagers visiting in the earliest days of the festival when the King's generosity was unwontedly high. But she had seen plenty. Had heard the whisperings of bells, swinging in such ways as to make the most divine sounds, sometimes lulling, sometimes cheering everyone to rise to their feet and start dancing in whichever direction. Had smelt delicious aromas from the kitchen — tantalizingly close to her own quarters — every night something new and unexpected.
She had seen enough of the halls and ballrooms while making sure everything stayed clean and fresh to try and recreate her own winter enchantment even in considerably smaller accommodations.
She would collect berries and tie them up by their branches with leaves and place them on the ceiling, over her cot, over the hearth, some outside the entrance. She'd take pinecones off the ground and sow into them, hang them on the evergreen tree she'd set inside. She would trade wild meat for milk and eggs, and spices from sea merchants, and add something stronger to the warm beverage — sherry was a luxury she'd discovered from Princess Snow, as she had been titled then, but some old rum a captain had been charitable enough to offer would do just as well.
For all the appearance of jubilation, times had been anything but merry.
.
But now, now the festival was a joyous occasion.
On the night of the winter solstice, the men carried an enormous tree in the middle of the camp, on which hung different fruits to last them through the week. An inviting feast of boar, beef, partridges, cheese and bread, wine and ale, as well as her milk punch — a favourite among topers — was set up by the fire. Music played, flutes and mandolins, to which men sung and danced and, in predictable fashion, spilled drinks.
No one fretted over waste or starvation. For a few days, worries were banished.
And she sat, in newly knitted socks, — many others she'd made hidden away from the band — her mug untouched, waiting for the men to exhaust themselves, waiting for him to retreat to their tent, — theirs, no longer just hers — waiting to be in the comfort of silken furs and gentle skin, waiting, though presents were for the first day of the new year, to give him his gift.
A single pair of wee little socks.