Chapter 2
"A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water." - Eleanor Roosevelt
When she was in college, Erdene had her palm read. The woman had the old world charm only an aged woman with wild swaths of dark fabric adorning her walls and table could. The woman had bent Monica's hand, tracing lines and talking about long life and many children. The regular things everyone heard.
Except, when Erdene put her hand out the woman had bent all four of her left hand fingers back, eyeing Erdene's palm with a critical pointedness. "Your adaptability will be a boon to you. Use your voice to earn your way, and the rest will fall into place."
Erdene's only college friend, Monica blinked in surprise, one eyebrow rising as she met Erdene's hazel gaze from the seat next to her. The fortune teller's thumb touched the edge of her palm, under her pinky. "You will love and be loved." Erdene's heart sped up. "You cannot save him from himself." Sadly the woman pushed her fingers into a curl and said no more.
What the shit?
Erdene and Monica giggled about it the moment they were out of earshot of the tent. Monica had hooked her arm through Erdene's and wiggled her fingers as if she were casting a spell. They'd laughed about it like hyenas.
Now, as she attempted to learn weaving it didn't seem like such a joke. Her eidetic memory was a boon, the fortune teller had been right. Her ability to adapt the situation helped her learn the first time Warren, the man who's shop she appeared in front of took her in, or one of his four daughters taught her something.
She stood at the small loom switching out with Alisabeth, Warren's eldest daughter, learning to mimic the young woman's movements while weaving a tapestry.
Alisa, hands on hips, watched Erdene's hands, bewildered by the older woman's quick study of a difficult weave. A handful of corrections and the mistakes were never repeated. She'd never see anyone move that quickly. Learn that swiftly. Blue-green eyes watched as Erdene's hands weaved with perfection.
"Now," Alisa said, impressed, and bewildered, "I have nothing else to teach you." Her sisters and father had said the same, she thought them perhaps too much in awe of their guest. As it seemed, she was wrong.
Erdene turned her head a bit, "okay, then I'll finish this?"
"If you wish?"
One bob of her head and by supper, the commissioned tapestry was nearly complete. The work was easy. Too easy once she had a handle on it. The pottery was Catherine's domain while Alisa (ah-lis-ah) and her twin sister Alysa (ah-lie-suh) were the weavers, and the middle child, Gwen, was her father's helper and bookkeeper. The girls formed a close knit unit that Erdene envied if only a little.
After her mother there was grandmama and granddaddy, and the extended family on the weekends. Her father was a blip, appearing in her mother's life and dying somewhere on a dig in Chile a month before she was born. She had three things from him, the name he mashed up with her mother's, his apparently gigantic brain and hazel eyes.
There were ballet lessons (your momma took them you're going to take them and be thankful), violin lessons (you'll learn it), chess competitions (well your daddy's supposed to be Chinese child, the least you can do is try [her father was in fact not Chinese, but a boy from Cairo her mother met serving in the Peace Corps. A fact which her family knew well, yet somehow always forgot at the most convenient times.]), vocal lessons (if your mother can sing darling, so can you), softball (girls don't play baseball child), and her first degree by thirteen. Second degree by sixteen. Third and fourth degrees before twenty-one. It was all ambition and notoriety and competitions and her childhood was gone.
She didn't get to be 'normal' until she was eighteen. Until legally her family couldn't put her winnings from every competition 'aside' for her. To this day she still wasn't sure where several thousands of dollars had gone. She assumed they went to grandmama's Mercedes Benz and grandaddy's golfing habit. Or her uncle's gambling debts. Or her aunt's half dozen children all nastier than the last and her equally nasty husband.
Save Betty. Betty the tiny bundle of squirming pink and blonde who only stopped crying for Erdene.
Betty. It's been four months since Erdene arrived in Middle Earth and it had been almost two weeks before that since her last contact with Betty. Her cousin had put in a request for a visa for Austria of all places.
"Why Austria?" Erdene asked that morning. It was already late afternoon in Germany.
"Because I fell in love with the architecture." Betty had sighed dreamily. Of course an architecture major fell in love with the older buildings. "And the chocolate isn't terrible either." Which led to a completely off topic discussion about Belgian chocolate and European chocolate and not once did either of them speak about their god awful family.
She folded the delivery going to the blacksmith over once more and began wrapping it in brown paper.
"I suppose I am only going to have to show you the route once." Alysa shook her head, laughing a little either at herself or the situation or in addition to her own disbelief, Erdene didn't know.
Pulling the worn navy blue hood up to cover her hair from harsh early autumn winds lest her curls somehow end up a rat's nest by the time she returned. "I'm fairly certain I know where it is." It had to be on one of the dozen blank spots in her mental map of the city. This small, mostly human, somewhat dwarven occupied city.
In Middle Earth. It's been almost four months. Late April to late July. The names of the months haven't changed, nor the names of the days. It's Thursday. The seasons are slightly off with the end of next month, August, being early fall.
Alysa led her down several familiar streets, pausing to point out markers which made Erdene smile the smallest bit. She'd heard the same things from her sisters as they led her along similar paths. They turned at a corner and went toward a much louder section of the city. More people, a closer crush of bodies, more dwarves amongst the humans than she'd seen before.
When she first arrived here, Warren told her he thought she might be a dwarf. The handful of dwarves she'd seen before seemed smaller than her (five foot one before heels and hair [little girl you better marry yourself a tall man, her nearly five foot nine aunt would say while brushing a then twelve year old Erdene's hair]), but, as she paused to take in the view, now that made sense. It wasn't a comment so much on her size but what she was wearing at the time.
Color. So much color.
The children of man, as humans were apparently called, wore their clothes in muted shades due to costs and, she assumed, lack of skill. Dwarves wore color like armor. Every single one of them. Hues of blue, green, purples, oranges, yellow, red, gold and silver, the richest of black and white so white it rivaled clouds.
Alysa had gone on without her. Erdene caught sight of her almost thirty feet away, looking back with exasperation.
And music. There was music too. Off key music, but music nonetheless. In the more human centric parts of the city there wasn't anything this ADHD inducing and yet - here it was a technicolor rainbow of sound and music. It felt like that time she'd gone to a chess competition in New York City. All she could do was stare.
Alysa came back, looping her arm through Erdene's and tugging her along
As they neared the blacksmith a human minstrel perched upon a decently sized wooden box, played an unknown song. Off key. His lute hadn't been tuned in some time and the music hurt Erdene's ears. To add injury to insult, he began singing a tune in a warbly whine as he saw them approach. She stared at the man with straw colored hair and plain, clay brown eyes. His complexion had seen too much chocolate or deep fried potatoes, pock-marked as it was.
He caught her looking and leered.
She wrinkled her nose at him.
Which only made him croon harder.
Alysa steered her clear of him, glaring at the man as she did so. Her lips close to Erdene's ear, "see how he's given a wide berth?" Every woman going by stayed out of his way. "He gets a bit pinchy when you get too close. He likes bum, or thigh, but he'll grab your bosom or belly too if you're not careful. If you're alone he'll take your coin purse and demand a kiss for its return."
He strummed his lute with much too heavy a hand.
Her music teachers would have covered their ears and balked.
Where the would be minstrel played opened into a wide open plaza which flared into three streets. A variety of shops, kiosks and vendors with twice that number of individuals shopping. He picked a good spot. Despite that, his tips were meager, a handful of copper and one or two silver sitting in a sorry looking worn burgundy velvet hat.
They went to one of the stores on the left, one with large archways and a diagonal view of the minstrel and his painful plucking of strings. To the right, with his back to her, a dwarf with black hair peppered with silver, worked a blade. She watched the hammer fall and fall again, shaping the metal.
Strong forearms from hard work.
She always had a thing about forearms. Wrists. Hands. The more muscular and sinewy all the better. His drew her attention to the point she tuned out other things.
"Ery?" Alysa called, having already dropped their looped arms.
"Hmm?" Erdene's attention returned for the briefest of moments.
The blacksmith welcomed them. A human blacksmith. He took in the sight of Warren's new charge with no small amount of curiosity. Word traveled of a woman who had shown up out of the blue, and that his acquaintance had taken pity on her and taken her in when she wasn't well. Warren had allowed the girl to stay on as help in the shops.
She was small. No taller than his chest, with rich dark brown curls and eyes that picked up the light around them shifting their color to a honey brown. He'd only seen people with her skin color in summer, when the sun beat the world with its heat. What a pretty little thing she was, though she held no smile for him the way Alysa did. Her attention drifted to the hireling dwarf.
Alysa took the lead, "the tapestry, as promised."
The blacksmith nodded, unwrapping the brown paper to examine his wife's birthday gift. "Your work is always beautiful Alysa," he winked at her and the young thing turned almost scarlet.
"I cannot take all the credit I'm afraid," Alysa looped her arm with Erdene's again. "My friend is quite talented at learning and mastering art with precision. She completed the work."
His brow furrowed, examining the tapestry. His family tree now united to his wife's family tree. He couldn't see any imperfections, the signs of a new artisan. "Have you woven before?"
The girl, no not a girl, a woman. She had a round face like Alysa, but her eyes, honey shaded in a mix of sunlight and fire light from the forge, held a certain experience that spoke of her age. "No."
He looked down again trying to find where she'd taken over. He could find no sign of an error here, or a missed stitch there. "I'd say you found your calling." But when he addressed her again she was once more looking at the dwarf he'd hired for the week.
He did good work, all of them did. The dwarves were good at providing quality weapons and armor. The blacksmith was planning to keep the dwarf on longer.
To gather her attention, he asked, "What do you think of our town minstrel?"
Her head turned a bit over her shoulder to spot said minstrel, and for the first time, the blacksmith heard her full accent. "Man couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it."
Alysa gasped, covering her mouth, her eyes crinkling at the corner. She'd never heard a single mean thing come out of Erdene's mouth until that moment. The older woman sounded so sweet when she said it, her accent almost made it sound like a compliment.
The blacksmith gave a deep belly laugh.
And, maybe because only she was actually listening for it, Erdene heard a chuckle as the dwarf put the blade back in the fire.
"Payment," the blacksmith settled a small purse on the table, counting coins from it. Alysa thanked him, looped her arm with Erdene's and led her out of the shop.
A gust of wind, cold and tasting of autumn blasted through the area, making Thorin look up from his work. He always paused for the briefest of moments when wind made itself known. It held a memory, one he did not care to remember but would never forget.
The movement of a dark blue cloak caught his eye, flying back in the gust, revealing long, worn blue skirts that trailed on the ground, and mahogany spirals flying in the wind.