2. TAKING NAMES
Violet awoke to the feel of warm air crawling down the shaft and caressing her face. She was surprisingly cool and comfortable. The sheet was loose and tangled around her legs, so she'd tossed and turned last night, but all things considered she was more well-rested than expected. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. No zombie had found her door last night, or if one had she hadn't heard it. Violet unwound the sheet from her body, got up and stretched. Then she began her day like any other: by making her bed - folding in the bottom corners and letting the excess hang over, then flattening out all creases. Her bed wasn't even damp.
She climbed to the surface and the sudden heat was very pronounced. It must be late in the morn. She closed the trap-door after her then worked to push the bed back into place over it. That task alone brought on the first sweat of the day: moisture under her arms and at the small of her back. Her hair was getting in the way, she noticed it was frazzled and started combing it with her fingers and gathered it over her shoulder. Violet retrieved a bread piece from her chest and filled her tankard with the last of her water. It was important to stay hydrated, and now she'd have no choice but to refill her water pouch at the well. Violet sat at her desk and bit into the bread while digging out a journal. She neatly tore out a page and took from one of her three quilled pens.
Violet was a list-maker. She enjoyed structure and being organised. Detours from her careful planning, especially ones that involved risk, were always concerning and made her agitated. This simple list was just a way to draw out all the tasks she wished to fulfil today. It was a relaxing exercise, so much so that she barely paid attention to the odd sounds of activity outside. It was possibly a villager, hard at work on something.
After snacking and planning, it was time to get ready to leave. She undressed, glancing out the window to make sure nobody was near, then started cleaning herself with a washcloth. She changed into her only other set of clothes, then started doing her hair in a quick braid. There were sounds again and she peered out the window but saw nobody. She was distracted, not really thinking as she finished her hair. Then she starting adding supplies to her inventory, vanishing objects like her pail and clothes, and willing items out from her chest as well.
Now ready, Violet opened her door and stepped out. Her home faced east, and that was where the sand mountains stood. She squinted up at the brightness from under the brim of her hat. The village's position meant that in the first few hours after daybreak it was shielded from the direct scorching of the sun. It would be the most efficient time for the villagers to get work done. A happy coincidence, or was it? It would've been clever if those who founded the village had done so with this in mind. Surprisingly clever.
Violet started walking north toward the village. She glanced westward, at the desert flat, and that's when she caught movement in her peripheral: a spider on her roof. She whirled around then froze. It was longer than she was tall and twice as wide. Its legs were a black carapace, a smooth exoskeleton but hairy. It crawled about up there, unhurried. Violet walked backwards slowly, stumbling from fear. It turned its misshapen head to her, and then looked away.
She stood and stared, heart pounding, then made herself accept the spider wasn't hostile right now. She started breathing again.
Of course, it could spring the distance between them and land on her easily. It would've jumped on her back and those fangs would've closed around her neck, but the sun had been up for a couple hours already. Violet watched the spider crawl to a different edge of her house and stare out.
Hopefully if she continued on to the village it would just wander away into some desert hole or into a cave and be gone before she came back. Violet thought of the iron sword in the last slot of her inventory line and pondered that option. She'd never fought a spider off in her life and really didn't fancy her chances. No, her having a sword at all was pretty pointless, she thought with mute despair. The calm spider showed no desire to climb down from her roof just yet. Violet turned and moved along to the village, praying it would leave soon.
She walked across sand that looked like it wasn't yet baking with heat. The first buildings were drawing closer. She saw villagers go by, but they were busy and none spotted her.
Then Violet was close enough to touch the first building. It was mostly sandstone of course, but a mix of smooth and lined pieces with odd squares of brown terracotta. There were outdoor steps jutting from the side of the building, and Violet saw pots at the top holding a little cactus, a little stick bush and a sea pickle. She was then walking on a sandstone path and saw a distant three-storey tower and the plain side of another building. She then passed a lamp, which was a pillar of two sandstone blocks then brown terracotta with a torch on top. She could hear chickens clucking. She saw the sandstone edge of crop squares and then saw a farmer, who finally noticed her and stared. Violet put on a smile as she approached.
Violet wasn't good with strangers, introvert that she was. She lacked charisma but she used her honesty. As Violet drew nearer she realised this farmer was a woman. Her loose raggard top made it hard to tell. She wore a straw hat, same as another worker on the crop square behind her who'd not yet noticed Violet.
"Hello, how do you do?" Violet said to the woman who'd stopped working.
"Thee are the new traveller."
"Yes, I'm Violet. What's your name?"
"Idalia."
"Could I help you with your work, Idalia?"
The offer made Idalia pause again to think. She then pointed to a chest, "In there. Thou can grab thyself a hoe. I be planting."
Violet walked to the chest, checking its contents and finding sticks, a spare hoe, seeds and a piece of bread. She took the hoe and it appeared suddenly in her hands.
She walked back and asked, "What are you planting?"
"Carrots."
Violet got to work tilling the square from its other end. The other farmer noticed her then but soon went back to planting wheat. Instead of farming in rows these were squares around a single space of water. Idalia frowned and made some corrections to patches of dirt Violet went over. That seemed a tad pedantic, but if working these crops was central to Idalia's life it made sense she took it seriously. Violet knew better than to try showing her the best way, which she'd learnt from studying agriculture. Every little village had their own way of doing jobs like these. Idalia began planting the carrots and Violet moved on to the next square, wiping the sweat from her brow and sipping the water around her neck. The skin on the back of her neck started to burn and she realised the sun had moved above the dunes.
Violet tried to appease Idalia by copying her movements, parting the dirt the way she liked. Violet did the job quick and proper, and tilled the second square by herself. Idalia finished planting the carrots and came over to inspect. She poked the dirt with her hoe in a few places but overall seemed satisfied. She then started planting beetroot seeds.
"I thank thee," Idalia said after.
Violet moved on to the wheat crops and spoke to a man called Gunther, and helped him finish his planting as well. Other villagers walked by and saw Violet working, they would stare as they went but didn't approach.
When she heard heavy, lumbering thuds Violet looked up from where she was padding soil over seeds. It was an iron golem, trudging along. Towering at eight feet, a steel idol that glared silver under the sun and with vines of buttery flowers hanging off its wide torso. Its magicked-to-life eyes were red within shadowed sockets, and they scanned everything in sight as it patrolled. Its movements and sounds were clunky; the ridges over what little joints it had overlapped with each jostling step. There tended to be one or two of these in every village, and Violet guessed there were two here because a minute ago she'd heard such trudging coming from behind the building on her other side. The golems were magically summoned by clerics to answer their call for protection against zombie hordes.
They were no threat to the villagers they protected. One time Violet had seen one take a knee and offer a red peony to a child as they cautiously approached. In Violet's case they were utterly unconcerned with her protection. In fact, they constituted a risk. If Violet were to accidentally step on a villager's toe, or open a door into one's face, she'd likely be chased from the village and even killed if the giants caught up to her. Violet had seen them in action against monsters: launching them high into the air with double uppercuts, swinging in a high-speed curve. She'd heard the bones crunching. Still, Violet wasn't so much worried about this. She was a cautious person and hadn't accidentally hurt any villagers while on placement yet. More than a negative, the iron golems were a positive because they'd fight out any monsters that entered the village, whether at day or night.
The exception to this was creepers for some reason. Violet got back to work as she pondered. She'd trained herself to crouch when outside her home, she never knelt to do tasks and her first instinct was to take off running whenever she heard anything vaguely like hissing. She didn't fight them but she was good at leading creepers away and running around the village boundary until they lost sight of her. Then she could return to work and they'd usually wander off into the wilderness.
On her first assignment Violet had been injured by a creeper explosion that detonated through a tree. She'd been working in an oak forest at the time, at one end of her stationed village. She brewed herself a healing potion and after that she stuck to the grasslands as much as possible. It was why she preferred openness around villages - less room for the green bastards to hide and catch her by surprise.
When all the farming work was finished, Violet stepped in the shade of a building for a drink. There were hay blocks stacked around, she leant against them and pulled a book from her inventory. She stooped inward as she jotted down notes to prompt her for when she'd be writing at her desk later that evening: observations about the farmers and the farms themselves. After that Violet walked around the crops, she also checked in the composters and barrels to be sure: no potatoes. She recalled the bird's eye view of the village she had on her first trek and knew this was all the crops they had. They grew wheat, carrot and beetroot only. Violet made a mental note to find potatoes and extend the farming area outward. There were other villages within a few days travel from this one, or if she was real lucky a wandering trader would have some among his wares, and then she'd only need to introduce the villagers to another food source they never knew existed, and one they'd like a lot better than cookies and other sweets.
Violet drained her tankard and then walked through the village to find the well. She passed villagers who stared at her, and she returned their looks with nods or smiles. One passerby was dressed like a shepherd and carrying a stack of wheat for the animals. He may have been Berthar, but Violet didn't want to be mistaken. She'd need a day or two of meeting everyone to then feel confident in telling them apart.
Violet passed a few medium-sized houses, a one-storey and a two-storey with more outdoor sandstone steps against its face. She saw more potted plants, laddering, balconies, chests. The windows had no glass, but through them she could see lime-green carpet and bedding. There was jungle wood furniture, and rectangular buttons were used for design. She kept her glances indoors cursory. She then saw on her other side a long building that likely belonged to the stone mason. It had clay, lime and glazed white terracotta pieces in its sandstone. She then recognized other buildings from the exterior or glances through empty windows: a tannery, a smithy, the cleric's and the cartographer's workstations. She passed more lamps then found some unexpected buildings. One, she didn't realise what it was until she saw the waterhole inside it. Fancy that: fishermen in a desert village. By some good fortune there was also a library, and Violet mentally rearranged her to-do list to fit in time to do research in it.
The path under Violet soon connected to a wide quadrangle. Here the sandstone was patterned and there were tiles of brown terracotta laid within. This was the gathering site where villagers tended to meet socially at certain times of the day. The well was up a little step and had four pillars reaching up to its cover. It also sported a gold bell for warning everyone of attacks. Violet approached the well. She looked in and found an undepletable two-by-two squares of sapphire blueness. Violet summoned her water pouch into her hands and filled it, it became heavy again and she vanished it back into her inventory. Then she dipped in her tankard and took another long drink, feeling clammy and a daze from the heat.
"Good day there, traveller Violet," she turned to see Herkel suddenly close, the chief stopped before her with someone beside him. An old man with sagging eyes, wrinkles and liver spots.
"Good day," Violet turned and nodded to them respectfully.
"Hast thee traded much?"
"I'm afraid that for the moment, I have no wares or emeralds on me."
"Thou hast nought for traffic at all?" That troubled him.
"Only labour." Violet pointed out toward her house, "I'd like to dig a waterhole out south. Your fishermen could use it, or your people could bathe in it. I could use the sandstone I gather to build more houses too. What do you think?"
"So thee are a builder? What wouldst thou build?"
"I have a few ideas. And we could discuss them after I've had a better look around."
"Most well. I shall agree to this traffic for labour. Wherein thou art content, visit me and the elders whom serve as advisors to speak on this." He indicated to one such man beside him, "This is Dagorov."
"How do you do," Violet nodded and got a nod back. They turned away and left her.
Violet spotted a child spying on her from the corner of a building. They ran away after meeting her eyes. Behind the well she could hear a golem's thumping steps. Violet left to check the buildings she hadn't seen yet on the village's far side, these included the animal pens.
She saw sheep, pigs and chickens. The pens weren't very large at all, but they were shaded by sandstone coverings and contained grassy dirt within their sandstone perimeters. The only other buildings were more houses. That was the village in its entirety, Violet had counted thirteen structures excluding the crops and animal pens.
She turned to go back when she heard scuffles, shouting and a squealing pig. The sheep near her lifted its head from a water trough, unconcerned. She peered around its pen to see a shepherd woman angrily shaking a villager in a green top. A pig had been freed and it was dashing to get past Violet. The shepherd reached after it and Violet knew what she had to do. She internally sighed.
Then she jumped, throwing her body in harm's way and catching the pig head-on. It shrieked and writhed, Violet fought to get her arms around it. The pig pulled back and Violet was thrown forward into the ground. She got a faceful of hot sand and spat granules from her mouth. She lunged furiously as the pig made to get past her a second time. Then Violet was wrestling the wriggling beast. Meanwhile the nearby sheep watched her, disinterested. The thirsty one ducked its head back into the trough while another drifted closer, munching on wheat. Tense seconds went by until Violet heard the running steps of the shepherd girl. Together they forced the pig back and threw it into its pen. Violet was panting with exhaustion afterwards, leaning back and immediately unscrewing the cap for more water.
"I be grateful to thee, traveller," the woman said, also panting.
"No worries," she straightened up. "Call me Violet."
"Such as the flower?" A nod. "Mine name is Sigrid."
"So what happened? That man forgot to close the gate?"
"Not so! That blasted fool Nicolai is always causing trouble!" She looked angry enough to spit but didn't. Violet supposed it was best not to waste moisture here, lest you had to take even more trips to refill at the well.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. He's a nitwit."
"Ah," Violet said, realising.
Sigrid continued her angry ranting, "The village fool. Doth no work and is aye wondering, and when he is bored he doth stupid things that make our jobs harder."
"I think he was inside my house yesterday."
"That surprises me not. Oh how I implored the chief time and again to order him leave, and yet we must suffer him still!"
"I'm sorry he's making things harder for you. Perhaps I could help you with work?"
"That is a kind offer, yet thou hast done enough. 'Tis almost time for us to meet at the gathering site." Sigrid looked away as a fellow caretaker approached. She confirmed it was Berthar, who Violet had met yesterday and she nodded in greeting, feeling the hot sun sting against her neck as she did so.
"Were it not for Violet here, you and I would be chasing that damn pig around the village, Berthar." Sigrid was still seething, "That fool is becoming too great a burden to bear…"
"Herkel will punish Nicolai as he sees fit," then Berthar turned to Violet and nodded this time in gratitude, saying, "Gramercy, Violet."
Violet left them and sniffed at her clothes, hoping she didn't now smell like a sweaty pig. If the villagers were about to meet for town gossiping she didn't want to intrude lest she be a point of discussion. Instead she walked between the buildings and looked for the library. She found it again, flat and rectangular with extra blocks atop the corners. This building actually had glass in its windows.
Violet entered and saw a villager woman who was young, barely an adult. Her parchment coloured robes had a white sash with tangerine and jade trimming. Whoever she was, she was likely to be the smartest in the village. She was putting books from a stack into their rightful places. When she turned to see who it was that came in, she peered curiously over her glasses.
"Hello, I'm Violet. How do you do?"
"The traveller whom built a house nearby. How most interesting." She had a soft voice. She faced Violet then, "I am Meliora."
"Is your library open to all or just villagers?"
"I be fortunate to share mine library with anyone. Only Ansel and Petra join hither once a moon, and only when they are looking for a specific thing."
Such good fortune.
"Well I love reading."
"By Notch," she exclaimed. "Thou doth?"
"I feel like you and I will be good friends, Meliora," Violet admitted despite herself.
The total of books occupied one shelf and the wall space around it, but they filled this from top to bottom. Violet trailed her hand carefully along the spines of leather, some quite battered and worn. Meliora stood beside her with her sleeves joined in typical testificate posture.
"A travelling merchant comes through hither every now and again, and he aye endues me books. I am quite fond of the fellow."
"That would explain why you have so many," Violet spoke while scanning the colours of the tomes she traced: burgundy, periwinkle, plum and rich umber.
"Keep care with the books, please," Meliora said, some anxiety trickling into her voice.
Violet faced her, "I promise I'll be very careful."
With that assurance Meliora went back to the stack she was putting away.
Violet soon had the familiar experience of being lost to the world around her. It happened all the time in Lan'Tim's eminent library, which in comparison made this look like somebody's garage sale. Still, there were books of all different subjects, some in languages she couldn't read. Books on farming, an almanack, a journal belonging to a long dead lord. One language Violet recognized as Ender but couldn't read it. She tried imagining the history of these books: likely pillaged from a number of places, sold, stolen, traded some more, then likely picked up by a wandering merchant who carried it here.
The pages were all yellowed, even the newest-looking paper was papyrus the colour of pear and moth-eaten at the edges. A portion were flimsy, stitched together with a rubber string within a leather hide cover. Another portion were proper hardcover books. It occurred to Violet that it would take a few long sessions to understand the topic of every book. Most had nothing written on their covers and only some had just simple pictures on their spines like a gold tree or faded sun. It also occurred to Violet that there could be books here that Meliora may have kept but not understood. A book on magery would be worth a great deal, for instance. Nobody would expect one to be sitting here in this simple village. Human visitors would be exceptionally rare in a world this remote, but if one were to find such a book while browsing they'd certainly steal it.
Violet decided to read the lord's journal. She'd flicked through it and discovered he was a testificate. She carried it to a worn table and sat, Meliora worked quietly around her. Violet opened the hardcover forest-green tome and squinted at the hand-written cursive. It was somewhat related to her assignment, but she wasn't supposed to be looking into the sociocultural customs of other villages, especially not ones that were long gone. Still, she figured she may come across a term or idea that would give her some new insight for here.
Violet lost track of time, turning those pages. The lord was an interesting enough storyteller, though lengthy portions of his writing were too technical and focused on his mundane duties. Perhaps it was his township that was interesting. He lived in a small sandstone mansion with servants. He was charged with providing wheat and vegetables to an important business associate. A trading company who sent merchants to other villages and bartered for emeralds. This lord was quite an ambitious fellow, a testificate with a higher strand of intellect - the ones who typically became librarians, as collectors of books, or cartographers mapping the surrounding landscape, out of a curiosity that stretched farther than their fellows'. This lord wanted to expand the farms, which were already three times larger than normal. However he struggled with motivating the other villagers, who were like his tenants. They were all expected to farm, and worked hard each day to fill coffers that were then collected by the trading company at a set date.
After the lord had been swayed to accept this partnership, he grew frightened of the trading company who became very insistent about the stock his village produced. For villagers in an isolated community the reward of a higher income failed to motivate them. They didn't want to spend most of their days working and the lord couldn't outsource more manpower. They lived within a quarter day's travel to a jungle, which caused Violet some surprise. The nearest other biome was the beach and that was far to the south. Even further, to the north-west was jungle but they were likely to find three other villages between them before that. Had this old book really travelled so far?
Violet was a third of the way through it, voracious but still carefully turning the old pages, when the sound of the door closing startled her.
Meliora had returned from meeting with the other villagers at the gathering site. Violet hadn't even noticed her leave.
"I read that one yesteryear. The lord was quite the industrious magnate, I would've liked to hast met him," Meliora commented with her hand fiddling at the edge of the bookcase. Violet was thoughtful, before she could speak Meliora screeched, "Nicolai!"
Bewildered, Violet turned to see the villager in green with his face against the glass, crudely blowing raspberries. His cheeks stretched and tongue wagged. Violet could only blink at him. Meliora darted outside and chased him away from the building, though he seemed to enjoy that.
Alright, it's time to get back to work. Violet fetched the book from her inventory and tore out a rectangle of paper. The journal didn't have page numbers, so she slipped in the makeshift bookmark and then returned it to its spot in the shelf. She couldn't spend all day here, she should make progress with introducing herself to the others.
It was past midday. Violet did her rounds, stepping into each workstation. She could complete no trades, but she was friendly and offered assistance to all of them. Her efforts were rewarded with a couple of carrots gifted for lunch. And by the time evening came around Violet had learnt the names of all twenty residents.
They were:
Chief Herkel, the leader who was elected via a process of meetings due to having experience but no frailty. His advisors were the elderly pair, a man called Dagorov and a woman called Arbell. They might have been married but Violet wasn't sure and thought not to ask.
Idalia, the pedantic woman farmer who Violet was the first to help that day. She worked with two other farmers, a man called Gunther whose face drooped with an excess of loose skin, and a woman called Laria who looked every bit as hardy as Idalia, maybe her sister?
Berthar was an animal caretaker who visited Violet on her first day, whom she'd given a cookie. He shared the profession with Sigrid, who Violet helped by catching a pig and wrestling it back into its pen with her.
Otto and Derg were confirmed brothers and both fishermen. They spent most of their days together, often snickering with private humour.
Then there was Meliora, the librarian who Violet was already fond of.
The cartographer was a woman called Petra, and while she was also one of the smarter ones she was the fastest to brush away Violet's offer of help. After Petra learnt that Violet had no emeralds or paper for trade, she went back to walking her steel compass across parchment that was big enough to hang off all sides of her rather large worktable.
Ansel was the stone mason, and Violet had also seen and gifted him a cookie yesterday.
A reedy older woman with sunken eyes called Gisela was the leather worker.
A wide-set man with big hands called Dunstan was the toolsmith, and he wore an eyepatch.
Those unemployed included the nitwit Nicolai and there were three children in total. Everard, an eleven-year old boy, Gweneth, a ten-year old girl and Tobias, he was the youngest at seven-years old. Violet had no clue if any or all of them were siblings, or who the parents were. They played a lot, running around and she caught them jumping on beds through doorways. They'd not spoken to Violet yet. By the end of the day they were no longer so shy as to not run right by her when chasing each other.
The only other person of interest was the final resident of the village: the cleric was a woman called Wendiah. Violet wasn't yet sure but thought the woman was mad. Her eyes were wide and darting, the corner of her mouth had been twitching when they spoke. Clerics were the ones who led the other villagers through spiritual rites. One of these was used to call forth the iron golems. They were also potion makers and there was a brewing stand centred in her little parish. If Wendiah was quite close to the spirits it could explain why she seemed loopy. Such psychic gifts were likely too heavy for the mind of a testificate to bear, and perhaps hers had fractured.
Before darkness befell the desert, Violet wandered back to her house, stopping for a minute to ponder where she should build the waterhole. She walked along its imaginary perimeter and came to a decision on it. Then she continued on to her house and narrowed her eyes in the dim, but there was no sign of the spider that had been there that morning. Violet entered her house without any trouble. She got dinner for herself then got to work writing out her observations with help from the prompts she'd left herself all day. There was a lot to document and she stayed up for hours into the night, her quill scratching away while the growls of monsters pervaded from outside. She'd not finished but when her eyelids wouldn't cooperate she finally surrendered and crawled into bed.
。。。
【AN: Another chapter so soon? I'm having fun with this idea. Typically when I enter a fandom I try to put my own spin on things, such as the case with AUrellia: Supernova Storm! Though in that story I had plenty of references to other authors' stuff, and I'm likely to do the same here too.】