Spirit of Nature 2 (EDITED!) - "They say she was insulted, yet did not curse the village."
Ten days had passed, and though it promised to be a beautiful autumn day, the mood in the village was gloomy. She could breathe much easier now, and her wounds didn't easily reopen anymore when she moved too quickly.
The harvest had been put off for the day, as the villagers gathered around Taylor's shrine; she was standing at its entrance, beside the tall stone bust of her. She had not been able to deter Habib or his masons, but had at least managed to avoid the elaborate metal insects they had been about to decorate it with. Habib was standing beside her, dressed in an elaborate robe with a turban, hung with glittering gems. For her part, she was dressed in her costume, with a simple robe thrown over it to keep out the dust and heat. At her feet were some small packs, as heavy as she could reasonably carry, packed with honey, dates, dried meat, some local currency, and skins of water. She had had to decline the offer of a horse and cart, as well as the services of various villagers.
A small bell rang as the sun rose above the mountains, marking the beginning of the ceremony. "Behold we gather today, men and women of Sidon," Habib intoned solemnly, "to witness our goddess Skitter as she sets out on her most holy pilgrimage. For it were selfish and unnatural for mere men to hoard the gifts and the presence of the goddesses." A small, rather sardonic smile crept out past his solemn mien. "Though it cannot be said of us that we did not try."
Skitter smiled, too, sad but resigned; in the time she had spent there, she had grown used to the habits of the villagers of Sidon.
She took a deep breath, and began the speech she had prepared for it. "Good citizens of Sidon, I thank you for your services to me in this time. The locusts will not touch you this year, and the grain in your stores shall not be stolen; the moth shall not devour your cloth, and the nightbacks shall cover your windows." Most of their clothes had patches of Nightback silk by now, which they were wearing with pride. It had started as part of her help in mending their clothes, and had suddenly developed to the point where villagers were deliberately ripping up their clothes so that she would mend them. "Would that I could tarry here until the winter was past, but I must search for my kin." The regret in her voice was real; despite their obeisance towards her and the giant shrine, she had enjoyed being there. They were a helpful people, welcoming and jolly. "Yet I shall not pass from you forever - I shall return, when my journey is complete."
"The promise of the goddess warms our hearts, even as we sorrow for her departure," Habib said. "Hannibal has gone to Heth and made arrangements in advance; surely they will help you in every way that they can.""
She nodded, at least there was no need to throw around bugs and have them pray like the people in Sidon did. She didn't want to leave a trail of shrines behind her everywhere she went, after all.
"May your quest be quick and successful," Habib said, bowing. The villagers did the same.
"May you live in peace, without fear," Taylor muttered, bending down to pick up the packs and sling them onto her back. She headed down the steps of the shrine, the villagers parting to let her through to the exit of the village. "Goodbye."
The children sat around the tutor in a semicircle, with their books out in front of them. He was holding a short rod, which he alternately used to tap them or their books, according to need. His rod landed on Amal's scroll, tapping the passage they were studying that day.
"Recite it, Amal, if you would," said the tutor in tones of infinite patience.
Amal sat up and straightened her back eagerly, opening her mouth and reciting from memory, looking up: "'Fear not, for I am Helel, the spirit of light; and behold I bring the morning sun upon its course.' Thus it is written in the book of Viri the Savant."
"Correct, as usual," said the tutor approvingly, and Amal resumed her previous position with a beam of satisfaction on her face; beside her, unseen by the tutor, Jayhan rolled his eyes. Jayhan had short black hair, kept barely above his ears. It was unkempt, and slightly greasy from avoiding a good bath for a bit too long.
Amal, daughter of Faysal, citizen of Heth, was probably one of the strongest believers of the spirits in Heth. Faysal was a priest at the shrine, and had raised her to fear and honor them. From early childhood, she had learned everything that there was to be known about the spirits; the history of each one, and of the great war they had waged, and about the Sleeping One.
She also had books, and a bookish disposition. Dozens of them, sitting on her table at home, spilling out of shelves and cabinets, sometimes strewn across the tables to the frustration of her mother; she even brought them to the school, to read when she had a break, while the other children would chase each other around and play their games. She read them all from beginning to end, and then read them again - the epic poems that told the stories of the ancient spirits up to the stories of the children of the spirits, and the tyranny of those generations; how the first human king had made a contract with the spirits through prayers and arcane rituals of sacrifice, and for all that had still failed to defeat the Sleeping One.
The only person besides Amal who had shown any interest at all in the old stories had been Iman, her best friend since childhood. They had been born within a few months of each other, and had kept to each other like a shadow to its body. Up to a few years ago, you did not see the one without the other. And despite the fact that they were so different; where Amal spent her nights reading with Faysal, Iman went out running with the boys of the village. It had earned her disapproving looks, and it was the single greatest difference between the two of them.
All that had been shattered beyond repair when the idolaters of Friede had come the last time. Iman had gone to listen to them and read the papers they handed out, and then begun asking questions of the tutor that could not be answered, questions that Amal knew the idolaters had planted in her mind. She had cast aside her prayer-books and stormed out of the class, one day, and the next day she went with the idolaters to Friede: the journey no one ever came back from. Amal still said the prayers for Iman's soul and her return, but… The doubts that Iman had spoken still prickled in her mind. Were there truly limits to the spirits' powers?
Amal smiled despite the pain of the memory flickering at the front of her mind - she had wandered far from the verse the tutor was expounding on, but it didn't matter; she had already read and memorised the scroll in its entirety, and would be able to instantly answer any question the tutor might ask about it.
What would it be like to meet a spirit, she wondered? How would one even summon them? The king in the story had burned entire forests before Shaitan, the spirit of fire had even come to speak its first word to him, but after that the communications had come fast and thick - up until they stopped, many hundreds of years back, with the advent of the Sleeping One. It was no surprise why the Idolaters of Friede had found such easy targets in the villages around them - even in the capital, there were those who were weak in the faith.
She dreamed of the spirits, sometimes. Of the legendary figures, lost spirits who had left, never returning to face the earth again when the Sleeping One appeared.
Iblis, the goddess of the moon, wife to Helel of the morning sun. They said her beauty was so great that men who saw her could love neither wife, nor child, nor home again, and would pine away for another glimpse - so, in her mercy, she only came out of her home in the skies at the new moon, when her presence was invisible.
Shaitan, the god of flames; the first of the spirits to forge the contracts between spirit and men, he who was said to have forged Eshmun's sword with Besi, from the foundries of the world. The hundred-named sword, which never dulled and could cut so finely that you might walk a hundred miles before you realised you were dead.
But of all the gods, the spirits of the farms were the ones that everyone knew: the ones whose names were never far from anyone's lips, whether in prayers for the sowing or in pleas for a bountiful reaping. They ate of their fruit and lived off of their spawn - the moon was beautiful and the flames bright, but in the end the people needed to eat, to live.
Her father's voice called for her, interrupting the lesson. Her tutor looked up, his eyebrows drawn together at the disturbance, but Amal had already rolled up her scroll, babbled the customary phrase of thanks to him, and run away as best she could in her robes. She knew what it meant; the man from Sidon had come to give the word some days ago!
"A spirit, as in the days of old!" he had proclaimed to the priests at the shrines. "Benevolent and powerful, who stopped the locusts and flushed out the rats from our storehouses. You will know the spirit by the glorious train of insects and this -" And Hannibal of Sidon had shown them the patch of cloth, stronger and smoother than any they could ever weave, made of the silk of spiders. "The spirit's entire raiment is made of such!"
Amal's heart sped up as she hurried to join her father at the gates of Heth. In the distance she could see a figure. It was indistinct, impossible to make out truly; it seemed to be a dark cloud, taller and broader than the largest of the men of Heth, coming towards them at a walking pace.
Had her prayers finally been heard?
Had the gods finally decided to answer the questions of this devout follower?
Elamia was really beautiful, in a perfect unspoiled way. Taylor hadn't seen such beautiful scenery for years- and ever since Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay there wasn't much beauty remaining. It wasn't like Brockton Bay was a very beautiful city to start, but it was her home.
Sidon had fallen rapidly into the distance behind her as she strode out past the wheat fields. She passed by the cut stalks of harvested wheat and then the sea of golden-ripe wheat, still waiting to be harvested in the last few weeks of autumn. It seemed almost endless when she passed the first field, but gave way soon enough to a plain of flat grass in front of her. It wasn't truly flat of course; flowering shrubs, weeds, and herbs dotted the grass, waving in the wind and glowing vibrant under the morning sun. Behind her the view stretched out to the mountains that marked the border between the known and the unknown, before her it seemed to stretch out to the horizon and beyond. She picked up her pace a little, as she only had enough food on her for a few days' travel and had to make Heth before it ran out. In the distance were herds of grazing animals - wild or tame, she wasn't sure and couldn't truly tell.
If she ever found a way home - a sobering thought, amidst the intoxicating beauty around her -, she would definitely ask for a way back one day. Surely Labyrinth and Scrub could build a portal here...
She camped for the night under the shelter of a vast sprawling tree, an outcrop of a nearby forest that she didn't want to venture into, and ate and drank before she leaned back, closing her eyes and letting her senses fan out through her bugs. It was striking how this world was filled with so many bugs; she was gathering thousands with every minute she travelled! She had abandoned the slower, crawling bugs early on, keeping only the flying ones, but even so the entire volume of her range had quickly filled up. From afar, she probably looked like a travelling dome, dense with the buzzing black insects. There were so many that she was almost having trouble feeding them, and she certainly had not had the time to identify many of the new species other than the most rudimentary glance at their abilities - poisons, silks, mandibles, alarmingly large wings…
The last thought to cross her mind, before sleep claimed her, was: How safe it is in Elamia.
There was no need to sleep with one eye open.
She woke early the next morning, before the sun was up, and continued her travels, using the landmarks from the day before to guide her; she had a smaller copy of Habib's map but had not been able to familiarise herself with the landmarks enough to use them for navigation. Accustomed to the beauty of the pastoral view around her, she made good time that day.
On the third day, the landscape began changing. Signs of human interaction with the environment began cropping up: spent arrows, the remains of a camp, and a drained water-skin. Spires of smoke trailed into the sky from far-off fires, and she began walking faster. It was almost midday when the village's buildings began to loom in the vision of her airborne bugs, and shortly after she could see it with her own eyes. She began compacting the bugs around herself, calling some of them down to perch on her coat and clothing until it was completely covered with a glittering chitinous layer; the rest of them, she kept aloft in a swirling swarm around her.
Taking out some water, she took off her mask- the town was still quite a distance away- before taking a drink and finishing the last leg of her journey. Putting on her mask again, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Hopefully this would go well.
She broke out into a jog, and soon was within shouting distance of Heth. The description fit - and many people were standing at the entrance, waiting for her. Sidon sent word, they said, so they must be expecting her arrival…
Amal smiled, her heart racing in anticipation. Her father stood stiffly at her side, with all the priests of Heth, dressed in their ceremonial finery, and she had given herself time to throw on her best shawl as well before hurrying out to the entrance. In the distance, uncountably many insects swirled in the winds around the walking figure - like a wave approaching. It was true then! A spirit had come to Earth and was travelling, coming to them - just as in the days of old!
She muttered a quick prayer of thanks to Adamkadmon; what a joyous day this would be! The wave of bugs reached them, then, and broke over them, filling the air with buzzing and some alarmed cries from the younger children and more fastidious villagers. Amal merely drew her head covering more tightly about her face, and withstood it in joyful silence. Beside her, the priests too drew their veils about their faces, looking out...
"Hello?" someone called. While the swarm of insects had pulled the attention of the crowd every which way, the spirit had arrived at their gates and was standing at the entrance. Amal's eyes - she couldn't help it - roamed all over his body.
The spirit was standing in front of the village, just outside the gate; his shape and size and posture were obscured by the swarms that crawled, flew, hopped, or skipped over him, though none of that elicited any response from him. His face was entirely covered by a mask, and what they could see of the clothing he wore was dark-coloured, evidently the same material as that which Hannibal had presented to them. His hair hung around his shoulders, long, untamed, and wild. Some of the children took a step back, instinctively, fearful, but the priests did not.
Nor did she. To Amal, this was the culmination of months of prayer and years of longing to see the stories in the scrolls. She was looking beyond the physical shape of the spirit - did not even the old legends tell of how Iblis came to Helel in the shape of a hag? - and saw perfection, glory, and wonders. The times had finally changed, and the spirits were once more walking amongst common men.
She felt her father tense up slightly, and then he broke ranks and stepped forwards with a dignified stride. It had been so long since the spirits had come down, that nobody quite knew how to carry out the old rituals anymore; it had simply devolved to Faysal, through the luck of the draw, to be the first representative of Heth towards the god Skitter. As far as Amal was concerned, this was simply another blessing of Adamkadmon upon her house; Faysal had told her of the outcome and what the house of Faysal must sacrifice to him, and she had joyfully agreed. To her this was no sacrifice at all.
"This is the year of the favour of the gods," Faysal intoned. "For we have been chosen to harbour the first of the spirits in returning and are honoured." The god looked at him, the bugs lifting up and leaving the villagers to hover in the sky, casting a haze of fast-moving shadows on the ground and the villagers beneath them. "We have no fat calves or precious jewels to offer, for we are a poor and unwealthy people, yet I pray you, let your wrath be turned away from us for we have prepared for you a sacrifice."
This was her cue, and Amal stepped forward, her face deliberately as blank as she could make it. She had to hold back - if she smiled now, what would the god do? Old legends told that some of the spirits would steal faces when you showed emotion. Her veil was tight against her face, and her breath caught in it - she loosened it, to better hide her face, though her cheeks were flaming red and her heart was racing in her chest.
"See, o great spirit, here is my daughter Amal, a true worshipper, young and healthy, offered to your service," Faysal continued. "To do with as you please, to take her in holy union or as sacrifice for your needs..."
The villagers held their breath, waiting for the response from the god. The priests were the most nervous of them all, they knew that the ritual was not being performed the way it was written in the prayer-books. But it had been many centuries since such rituals had been needed, and none of them had the necessary implements or supplies or practice, and Hannibal had said that Skitter was benevolent and merciful. If he had stopped the locusts from destroying all the fields of Sidon, and had spoken gently to the village leader's grandson, they hoped - they hoped that this substitution would be acceptable. History was full of examples where the spirits had not accepted the changes in the ritual...
The bugs swirling in the air abruptly stopped moving, simply hovering in the air or flying in little circles. "What." said the god in a low and completely un-masculine tone, and - gods help them all - the cloud of bugs above them said it too.
Faysal paled beneath his veil, and nearly took a step backwards. "Are you offering me a slave?!" Skitter shouted in tandem with her bugs, her voice rising rapidly with each word and almost breaking on the last. Amal too, went absolutely white, eyes widened at the anger in the voice, and actually took a step backwards. The spirit took one deliberate step forwards, and now that her hands were outside her cape and she was so close, she looked surprisingly feminine.
The god gathered her wild bushy hair up in one hand, and the bugs buzzed overhead, speaking every word in tandem with her. As she spoke, she was shooing yet more insects off of her. There was an audible chorus of taken breaths at that, and a good number of women and children shrank back. "I- No. I'm not dealing with this, too." She deliberately unclenched her hands and the bugs began swirling again.
"You!" said the goddess Skitter, suddenly addressing her.
"Eep," said Amal, and hoped very much that that was not going down in the books.
"What is your name?" Skitter asked her, visibly making an effort to not grab her by the shoulders and shake her.
"Amal, my god… dess," said Amal, relieved to still be alive.
The goddess covered her face with a palm, while the other hand made vague flapping motions at her. "Just… just go home. I have no need for a slave or a wife- I'm a girl, and you!" the spirit pointed at Amal's father, her tone going from exasperation to violent irritation in the space of a pause. "Don't just go around giving your daughters away! And I-I don't condone slaves! Just… can I have something to eat or drink? I've been walking around for some time now."
Faysal made a last-ditch attempt at returning the world to a sane state, where spirits actually took what they were offered. "O goddess, I prostrate myself before your righteous wrath! We are unworthy and unlearned, stained by ignorance! Pray do not cast us into -"
The bugs buzzed loudly again, and Faysal's mouth snapped shut. "Fuck me…" Skitter muttered, apparently having found out about the waiting feast and stalking past Amal into the village. "I just want something to eat."
Amal felt her face warm up as the goddess brushed past her. This… this was everything she asked for - a spirit in front of her, she wanted to ask so many questions! To know everything about their world, about their origins! Did Skitter know Helel and Iblis? Had she once met the fiery gods that made the legendary weapons? Was she truly one of the spirits that created the world around them and governed over all nature?
Skitter stopped mid-stride, not turning to her. "What do you want?"
Amal opened her mouth. None of the questions were voiced as she didn't trust herself to speak. Closing her mouth again, she felt her face become hot with embarrassment, and merely trailed along behind Skitter towards the feast. Behind them, the priests and villagers followed in a kind of parade of shared embarrassment.
Heth, like Sidon, was primarily agricultural. Unlike Sidon, they didn't have acres of wheat. Instead, their people reared small animals for fur and meat, and cultivated a variety of fruit trees - some that bore fruit in the summer, some in the fall, and even some that ripened only in winter. Partly as a result of that, the fruit trees had burst out of their original forest and had established inroads into the village, growing wherever a seed had been spat and inadvertently taken root. Trees grew everywhere: by the sides of streets, in the middles of alleys, and almost anywhere else that seeds could sprout. Whatever they did, it was working; all the fruit tasted sweet, and the water here had a similar taste imbued into it from the roots in the ground.
The goddess Skitter was exploring the village on foot, walking about and examining every tree intently. While she responded politely enough to Faysal's attempts to speak to her as well as those of the other priests - at least she had started responding after she had eaten her fill at the feast that first, calamitous day -, she had made it clear enough that she didn't want to talk to them more than she had to. It was already the fourth day, and Amal had been skipping class keeping track of the goddess' movements from a distance all the time, to her tutor's dismay. (His dismay was only compounded by Faysal's nonchalant approval of Amal's behaviour.) At this point, though, Amal was convinced that the goddess Skitter saw things… differently from what the prayer-books had said, and decided to take the risk.
As the goddess Skitter rounded a corner, Amal was waiting for her, bowed down on the ground with her forehead resting on her hands in a pose of utter supplication. She heard the footsteps slow, then stop entirely, right in front of her.
There was a period of time in which everything in Amal's world went silent and dark, apart from the sensations of the pressure of her head on her hands, and the blood rushing through her ears, and the bugs, everywhere - there was a prickling on her leg. An ant? She could take it no longer. "My goddess -"
"You -" said the goddess at the same time.
They both stopped talking, and then Amal held her peace until the goddess spoke again.
"You don't need to wear that veil," spoke the goddess.
A command! Amal hurried to obey, pushing herself up to a kneeling position and unpinning her veil, not even stopping to brush her hands off first. When she looked up at the goddess, however, her eyes widened and tears came into her eyes. She began to tremble, not daring to move even to pin the veil back on. The goddess was staring at her, absolutely still, like the calm before a storm breaks...
Taylor didn't trust herself to speak right then. Fuck it. Fuck it. Stranded so far from Brockton Bay, in this village that she just couldn't feel at ease in, not the way that she had in Sidon, she had just wanted to be alone. And then along came this girl, tailing her everywhere she went even though she'd told the girl to go away - why was she even doing that?
And it was ironic, too, the way it was happening. The first familiar face she'd seen in weeks, and it was Madison's. One of the three girls that had bullied her in school, that had made her trigger. Sure, she sounded different, her tone was softer and more hesitant, and she was trying to be friendly - but that face was all too familiar even if the expression on it wasn't. Is she only trying to get on my side because I'm powerful, the way Madison joined Sophia and Emma?
It's not like she was already convinced that this place was too far from home. It could be just some unmapped island for all she knew. But one of them?
She only realised that her fists were clenched, her bugs buzzing slightly, when the tears spilled out of Amal's eyes and the girl flinched away from her. To Amal's credit, she hadn't broken her posture much: though she was trembling and the veil in her hands was growing damp and cold, she remained kneeling before her goddess.
She stopped short. Had she really come so far just to do this? This girl had committed none of Madison's sins, and she had been on the brink of attack. It was almost something only the trio might do. She sighed, dropping her hands back down in a neutral gesture and dispersing her gathered swarm.
She bent over, one hand on her knees and stretching the other one out towards Amal. "Don't worry," she told Amal. "You reminded me of someone - but you are not her."
Amal's shaking stopped when the buzzing ended, but she was still staring frightened at Taylor's hand, as if it might kill her if she touched it.
"Oh, for - come here," Taylor said, sitting down and patting the ground in front of her. Amal obediently scooted forwards without a word, her gaze still not leaving the floor. "I won't hurt you. I need some help."
Taylor took out the map she got from Habib, spreading it out on the ground and pointing at where Heth was marked on it. Amal leaned forwards to look at it as well; the bugs on her told Taylor that she was still trembling.
"I'm planning to go to the capital before winter to find my friends," said Taylor bluntly. She'd told Habib and Hannibal, too, but she was having serious doubts about Hannibal's communication skills. How did anybody forget to mention that the person arriving would be a girl?! "But I'll need some food and water for the journey, and transport. Are there any carriages nearby?"
There were no automobiles in this world; she'd seen people on horseback, but she didn't have the time to learn it even if she wanted to try it. On the other hand, the journey to the capital would be impractical without a carriage - nobody could walk that far alone, carrying all their needed supplies.
"Friede," Amal muttered in a trembling voice, and pulled her hands over her mouth almost immediately, looking wide-eyed at Taylor. She hastily made a sign over her mouth.
"Friede?" Taylor questioned, tilting her head. "Habib of Sidon told me that it was the city of idolaters, and to avoid it."
"It's a city," Amal said, her voice still low, but the tremble had gone out of it. "They maintain trade with Qurt, and transport their goods by carriages that come close to the capital." She thought for awhile, doing the math in her head. "The next caravan to Friede leaves in five days… I'm sure my father can arrange for you to travel with it."
"Ah, I see," Taylor said. "Thank you, Amal."
Amal's face broke open in a smile so wide that Taylor thought her head would split in two - and opening her mouth, she started asking questions.
"Where do you come from? What are your comrades like? Do you know Helel and Iblis? Have you ever-? Did you ever-? Will you ever-? Are you going to…?"
And even though she couldn't answer most of those questions, Taylor was glad. Amal was nice - a friendly person. She would need to stay for a few days to rest and gather provisions anyway, so why not meet the locals?
"The teachers said so many things, you know…" Amal sighed, when it was almost dark and she had run out of questions she could think of to ask. It was hard to ask new questions when the answers to almost everything were "I don't know" or "I can't say," though the goddess had been happy enough to expound on her comrades..
"Teachers?" Taylor asked.
"People who come from the capital to teach the villages," she explained. "We learned reading and writing from them, speaking politely too. 'A pure tongue cannot offend a spirit', they said." She paused, looking away; both she and Taylor thought of that disastrous first day. "Maybe they were wrong about that, though."
"Hmm…" said Taylor. "Interesting."
Taylor stood at the entrance, facing the villagers; most of them still looked rather cautious around her, but everybody had come all the same, if for nothing than to avoid her wrath. All the villagers, that is, but Amal, who had gone missing the evening before and simply couldn't be found anywhere.
Behind her, the loaded caravans waited, full of goods covered by canvas and lashed tightly down. There were two other caravans; one for the tradesmen who would go to Friede to sell the goods, and one for Taylor herself and her supplies, which they had separated from everybody else's.
Faysal was nearing the end of his long and rather fancy speech about her holy pilgrimage, which had far too much about destroying the idols and burning down Friede for Taylor's taste, though she bit her lip and held her tongue until he ended. "...may the winds favour you on your journey, until your pilgrimage ends in success" Faysal said eventually, bowing deeply and obsequiously to her; his face veil drooped, and nearly touched the ground. "And may Friede know the consequences of their idol-worship, and turn from it to the true paths of old."
Yeah, right. Whatever. She had more important things on her mind than what people were praying to. Taylor muttered her response in a polite, if clipped, tone. "Thank you for the fruits, and I shall see you again when my journey is complete. Should you see Amal again, convey to her also my thanks.."
"The goddess is benevolent and too kind, to such a poor father as myself," Faysal replied, rising up from his bow. For all her usually sweet and docile nature, Amal had worsened significantly as the day of Taylor's departure approached; she had constantly asked - no, begged - Taylor to delay for another day or week, even after winter. It seemed she hadn't taken Taylor's determination to be gone well at all.
"It's not your fault," she told him. Her father probably hadn't expected her to become a supervillain either. She wondered how he was doing; Lisa must have already told him some comforting lie, unless she were also somewhere on this world. "Goodbye."
She boarded the caravan, settling in for the ride; it would be a week of travelling, with nobody to talk to except the other caravaneers. That was okay. She could handle that; she had her bugs.
When they finally stopped to rest the horses that drew the carts and caravans, Taylor nearly exploded with relief. How had anybody ever gotten through long journeys before phones were invented? She could only weave some stuff for so long before she had to do something else. She had tried sleeping, playing "I Spy" with herself, gathering bugs, categorising the gathered bugs, identifying the bugs that she'd never met on Earth Bet, and a variety of other things, and had still spent the last few hours in a stupor of boredom, unable to sleep or think of anything to do. They were resting early, though; there was still at least an hour or so before sundown...
And sending her bugs all around, she found someone. Someone wedged in between the crates, and she told the people to stop.
"No wonder they all wrote such long books back then," she muttered to herself as she got out of the caravan. The caravaneers had gathered in a small knot of activity: setting up the campfire, feeding the horses, and going back over the cargo carts to check for loosened knots or wheels. She looked at them, wondering if she should offer to help.
Taylor slowly moved towards the crates where she felt the person with her bugs and grabbed in between, pulling someone out with a small squeak. The men heard it, rushed up to her and the person that immediately threw herself to the floor was Amal, groveling and crying. The men came up to hold her still...
"Forgive me! Please forgive me!" she was exclaiming, frightened. "I just wanted - oh, goddess, sweet goddess Skitter, please have mercy -"
"Let her down," said Taylor, her shoulders slumping. No wonder nobody had managed to find her; she'd squeezed herself in with the cargo heading to Friede. "Amal. Do you even know -"
She was interrupted by Amal immediately throwing herself to the ground again, prostrate with her head to the floor in what was becoming an annoyingly familiar pose. "Mercy! Mercy! I just couldn't bear the thought of you leaving me. Please take me with you!"
"-what," said Taylor in a disbelieving undertone, and put her face in her palm. "Oh, fine. Get up."
Amal's face could only be described as exceptionally joyful. Taylor had a feeling that Amal would have decided to follow her anyway, had she been sent back.