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Waiting for Winter
In all bluntness, Sandrylene and Astrid could not think of one woman they knew who got knocked up so quickly as Annabel. And she wasn't just pregnant, she was Ridiculously Overbarrenly Pregnant. Twins, that's what the midwife told her. But she knew better. Somehow, she knew, deep in her bones, that she had twice twins. A ripe old selt of four children.
She didn't talk about it, of course. She even had the gall to go on pretending like she wasn't pregnant or something. She tired more quickly, though. And she ate a good deal more (she was, after all, in her own mind eating for five).
And things were happy at home. The only people who tried to kill each other were Kip and Delinet, either of which could easily just go someplace else for a few days to cool off. Actually, Kip did a lot of "go away for a few days" even when he didn't need to "cool off". And he usually took Löwenherzchen and Ira with him.
Ira let it slip once that they were cave-shopping. Annabel hated to admit it, but Kip and Ira tended to get sickeningly cute when they talked about each other and the home they'd have together. Kip's little sufan, Löwenherzchen, didn't help to masculinify matters much, either.
But there was really too much to be done to worry about them right now. Annabel and Tren had moved into adjacant houses and knocked out some of the walls and put in doors to make the two houses into one larger house. Annabel did most of the home improvements, and Tren continued to work in the customs house. But the incoming ships were slowing down due to the advancement of winter and the great storms that came with the season.
So Tren spent a good deal of time in the fields when there were no ships to check over. He had become a fairly able farmer, or at least an able harvester. And he wasn't the only one. The harvest was vitally important to another safe winter on the islands. There were silos to be made, and storage sheds, too. There were scythes to wield and stalks of grain to strike down. Shells to shuck, and all sorts of other farmerly things to do.
Everyone helped where he or she could. The women mostly did the fine-handed manual labor, with some exceptions in the Valkyries and others who had lived all their lives as active sorts. And in turn, most of the men did the hard manual stuff, except in cases where they were busy elsewhere or had some inability to take physical strain for too long, as in Xylon's case.
And the autumn came, and a certain trio mostly disappeared from the town.
***
*I do like this one, Kip,* Ira said as he sailed around a cave at the base of a mountain. *It's warmer in here than it is outside.*
Löwenherzchen rolled over where he lay in glee.
*There's a hotspring far to the back. Stinks to high heavens, but I figured you'd appreciate it at the very least,* Kipfel explained to his mate, who hadn't been too keen on the cold of the previous winter.
Ira continued to fly around the cave, which seemed to have been caused more by an instability of a certain vein of rocks falling than by the usual dissolution of limestone. *Is it safe?*
*Safe as any cave. And the game's good in this area.*
*For now, anyway. We haven't been here long enough to know where they'd run to if it got cold all of a sudden.*
*That's true enough,* Kipfel conceded.
*I suppose we'll stay here, then. For the winter.*
Kipfel broke into a sharp-toothed grin and he and Löwen did a little dance in a circle. Kip stopped, suddenly, and gave an odd look to the little fortitude sufan. *Ira?* he asked carefully.
*Yes?* Ira replied, descending gently from the roof.
*You don't think I'm too... nice, do you?*
*What?*
*Well... It's just... I know stories about how blacks are supposed to be mean, vicious, nasty hermits and--*
*You are.*
Kipfel considered this a moment. *I think you're lying to me,* he said and seemed a bit hurt.
Ira raised an eyeridge. *Look. Kip. You're nice to Löwen and I because we're your friends, remember? You're perfectly nasty to anyone who's not.*
Kipfel blinked and considered this a moment. *I suppose you're right.* He let out a little sigh. *I just... Really can't find it in me to be nasty anymore. I think maybe part of my brain's broken, like Tor likes to say.*
*Tor's an idiot and a fool. Don't listen to him.* Ira nuzzled his mate lovingly. *Trust me when I tell you you're perfectly nasty and you make me so proud because of it.*
*Really?* Kip asked, looking up at the blue.
*Indeed. It makes me look just so much nicer when compared to you.* He grinned, and Kip pounced him to start a playful scuffle.
***
*Salvatore.* The thought was very clear in Tor's head, and he groaned as he opened his eyes to see the serpentine body of Clarinet, the city's rival Seer.
"Come to gloat, have you?" Tor asked bitterly. Recently, her visions had been much more frequent and accurate than anything Tor could have hoped to have produced.
*More like come to rouse you for work, since my layabout son's missing, and so's his sullen boyfriend.*
"No, I haven't seen them," Tor muttered, a bit angry that the marine dragon was invading his personal living quarters.
*Good. Because neither have I, and I wager that's because they don't want to be bothered. As I said, I came to rouse you for work.*
"The Hell? Go away, Clarinet. Sandry told me I didn't have to play farmer unless I felt it absolutely necessary, and I sure as Hell don't."
*Not that work, you great fool,* Clarinet said sharply, wrapping her tail around Tor's ankle and dragging him forcibly out of his nice, warm, not-quite-comfortable bed.
"Oof!" Tor said as he landed on the floor.
*Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and wake up so we can get to work.*
"We?"
*Sandrylene has given me the odious task of working with you to see if we get the same visions. Especially after I received a vision that fortold a frost that would kill of all of our remaining crops.*
Tor groaned and got to his feet. The floor was bitterly cold, and he pulled on a shirt and socks and went to open the door, only to see Clarinet blocking his way. "What?" he asked at her stern glare.
*Do a lady a favor and put some pants on!*
Tor grumbled and did as he was told. "Better?" he asked, tying the drawstrings loosely in front of him.
*Somewhat.*
"Good." He paused in front of a small mirror hanging on his wall and took the time to shave, always feeling the moonstone bishen's eyes on his back. When he was finished, he wet his hands and did his best to spike his short brown hair. The purple had, after a good deal of time and hoping on his part, faded completely from his hair. He was well out of that stage by now.
"Let's go, then," Tor muttered and opened a drawer to withdraw a small object wrapped in black velvet. "Somewhere dark, please."
Clarinet smiled cordially and led the way to one of the inner rooms of the Tower's third floor. There were no windows, and so no sunlight could destroy the magic imbued in Tor's seeing stone. He reverently unwrapped the smooth jasper stone from the velvet and sat opposite Clarinet on the floor. She curled up around her Vision Gem, and she closed her eyes.
Tor let his own eyes glaze over, staring into the depths of the liquid-like stone before him. Clarinet's powers may well spring from her stone, but his powers were inside him. The stone for him was merely a vessel to see the manners of past and present.
He was vaguely aware of the soft glow coming from Clarinet's Vision Gem and took in a deep breath, trying to find the vision for himself. Suddenly, without warning, he was thrust into the vision practically head-first, or so it seemed.
Where once was a room of almost complete darkness, there was now the fields the men were laboring over, completely frost-laden. The time accelerated and slowed and stopped at what seemed like haphazard paces, and the frost spots grew on the plants, seriously culling their yield. The squash was affected especially badly.
The time skipped ahead sharply, and soon the fields were covered in snow that was two feet deep at its shallowest. Ice had encroached on the edges of the harbor, and the fresh water wells were iced up completely.
The time jolted in some direction, Tor couldn't tell which for certain. But he saw a mound of blue and green rocks. They took him a moment to reckognize as the eggs they were, and before he could see whose they were, they were gone, replaced by the image of a proud woman with dark hair and green eyes, and a bright boy with blonde hair and blue, lace-worked eyes.
And then he woke up from his trance, and there was no more of a vision in his stone. He wrapped it hastily with velvet and pocketed it while waiting for Clarinet's own vision to finish. So as not to disturb her too much, he left the room and looked out the window. It was still early morning, about as early as when Clarinet had awoken him.
But that vision felt like it lasted forever. Had it been just a few moments' time?
Soon enough, Clarinet joined him on the balcony to look at the sun. "We have to do something, Clari. Or else it's going to get really bad."
*I've already told Xylon. He and Havelock are working on it.*
"Beat me to it again, did you?" Tor asked ruefully and made his way back inside. Maybe his deck would give him something interesting today, too.
***
"Oi, Rudy, what do you think that big birdman's up to?" Anacleto asked, watching Xylon making crazy noises in the fields.
"Recon we sould ask him, Clet, if it's so important to you," Rudolph replied. The two angecur looked at each other a moment. Then, Anacleto, the spotted one, shrugged and fluttered into the air.
"'Scuse me, sir," Anacleto said, moving to land in the grain. Instead, he landed on the air above the grain. He boggled. "Oi, Rudy!" he said, lifting to the air again as another human ran out to shoo them from the field.
"What?" Rudolph blinked and followed Anacleto into a tree mostly devoid of its leaves. "What happened?"
"They're puttin' up a net of some sort," the spotted angecur replied, boggling at the younger human who was trying to find them in the tree.
"Oh dear," Rudoph replied. "They've gone and found us."
"Hey! You two! Stay out of the fields, will you?" the blonde lad shouted up. "Master Xylon is doing a very delicate process to make sure the fields don't frost over!"
"Frost over?" Anacleto and Rudolph asked, looking at each other.
"Aye! Frost over! And if you want us to live the winter, you'll stay out of the fields, okay?"
"Fine, fine, human. Meant no offense by it. Just curiosity," Anacleto said smoothly.
"Poor things," Rudolph said, shaking his antlered head sadly. "They don't know any better, but frost'll come whether you magic your fields or not."
Anacleto sighed comically. "I know, friend, I know. But let's leave them to their devices. After all, there's no harm in letting them think it'll work. Otherwise they'll just get their panties in a twist, and then what good will they be?"
"Too true. What's for lunch today?"
"I found some wonderful apples over in that grove there."
"And where there's apples .. there's bound to be mice!" Rudolph said, delighted. Anacleto nodded, and the two took off in search of the apple tree...and the mice.
***
Havelock and Tor helped Xylon and Oberon take the Frost Nets off the crops the next morning. It was hard to fold the stuff, since it was basically huge gossamer sheets spread over the plants. "Master Xylon," Havelock said as he came in to meet Tor to fold their net again.
"Yes, Havelock?" the avian asked.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to have used sheets to cover the crops?"
"Sandry thought about that," Tor interjected. "The farmers said that the sheets could blow away and weighting them with rocks could hurt some of the taller-stalked plants."
Havelocked eyed the fields and said nothing. It'd be easier to have the whole city doing this with them, but Xylon had expressly stated that very few besides the four of them could feel or see the Frost Nets.
Privately, he thought the whole idea was a bit ridiculous. But he had learned earlier on not to second-guess Xylon.
***
And so, the harvest was spared. Kip and Ira and Löwen found a new home. The angecur found a nice warm place to winter down, actually the exact same place as Kip and Ira, only on a different island. Annabel continued to "fill out" as the other women called it, and she continued to insist that she had more than just two babies in there. And it was starting to look that way, too.
The nights grew longer and the days grew shorter. And as it neared the last month of the year, a great snow storm fell on the islands once again, dropping down at least two feet of snow in all parts. The snow drifted and swirled and icicles dangled from the rooftops and boughs of trees.
And so, winter began, and with it came the strangest bit of news.
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