Bolts of cloth, centuries old, lined the walls and were stacked into shelves or strung about as curtains and tapestries in a riotous explosion of color fading into the black of ancient textiles. Poetry and paintings lay about the Sanctuary, and Gershwin was caught breathless by the extravagant sight of it. Rotting food and drink and flowers and body parts lay about the Sanctuary, stacked precariously atop itself without rhyme or reason. The Sanctuary was never emptied by the priests. Every sacrifice still lay here from the silvered mirrors to the pieces of enemies vanquished in Fate's name.

Only Fate herself could remove offerings from her Sanctuary, and she always had something better to be doing.

Gershwin approached the alter, the only empty surface beyond the path from the door, and took a knee. "My Lady," he said quietly. "Where your hand guides us, we will follow. Your wisdom is divine. Keep us in your heart. We trust your push alone."

He rose, then, and sat the mesh-and-wood case on the alter. The birds inside chirpped sweetly. In a smooth motion, Gershwin unlatched the case, and they errupted upwards towards the stained glass window between the ceiling and the sky.

As the birds lost themselves in the glare, Gershwin felt the tug. She was happy, and she had a project for him. What more could he ask for?

He felt a rush as her divine will reached out and consumed him for an instant, unbraiding his hair and setting it to blow wild in the wind she had brought with her. In her touch, he knew there was no other way to be complete, no other way to reach this wholeness that he craved so, so much. He would gladly lay his life down for her, go where she asked, do as she willed, just for this instant of gratification every year.

And as she left him, he sank to his knees and wept for the loss of her touch. But she was gone, her desires delivered, and he was to serve, and to trust her. Implicitly, and completely.

For the first time in five years of service, for the first time in twenty-one years of life, she was separating them.

But he had to trust her.

He had to trust her, but she was leaving him alone again.

He steeled himself against the tears that threatened. She trusted him to fulfill her will.

He would do the same of her.

Faline hauled the logs while Camphor cut them from the trees. They were roughly worked and quite difficult to move, but Quetz wwas helping. He could haul five times as quickly as Faline, but he complained double that.

It wasn't the hauling of logs that had so crept under his skin. He did things like that nightly. Instead, it was that the bridge, when finished, would not be burned.

"Quetz, I need a push," Faline called as her log jumped off the road and struck a heavy stone. Faline tugged on the rope she was using to haul the logs to the cliff, but it wouldn't budge. Somehow, it had dug itself a little hole and packed itself in very neatly. She tried again to haul it out, but her hands were torn with rope burn and the heavy log itself, when she tried to lift it, tore at her raw skin.

Nevertheless, she heaved with all her might.

She managed to lift the log a few inches, but it tore free of her hands and came crashing down. As it struck the dirt, it sent up a cloud of dust, which then clung to her sweaty face. She spat out a wad of mud, and she wiped her face with her forearm, simply smudging the dirt across it. Flies swelled around her face and neck, and they buzzed in her ears.

"Quetz!" she shouted again. "Ugh. Where is that dragon?" She kicked off her shoes and wrapped her toes around the stone, trying to push the log free. It barely budged. The heat was unbearable, and Faline started cursing out her bondmate. She looked up as she heaved on the log and it again tore through her fingers, and Camphor was coming up the road, shaking his head at her.

"Faline," he said calmly, some horrible pain in his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"I'm cursing out my dragon," Faline snarled, still trying to move the log by perching on the stone.

"I've given him a project. He's quite happy now. He seemed so miserable just hauling logs.

Faline sighed. "Well now how am I going to move this log?" she sighed.

"First things first," Camphor said, and took her hands, which were worn raw and torn to shreds. She yanked them out of his grip.

"I'm fine," she snapped.

"You're bleeding quite a bit," he said. "You'll get an infection if you keep it up." With excruciating patience and tiny steel forceps, he plucked every last rope fiber from her bleeding blisters, and every shred of bark. He rinsed her hands with cool water, and then bound them tightly with the clean cloth. It took at least half an hour. Faline was squirming with sitting still and pain by the time he was done. Finally: "There you are."

She yanked her hands free of his and twitched a moment.

"You have very soft hands, Faline. You should look into getting a strong pair of gloves."

"What the hell do you care?" she hissed.

He pulled the gloves from his back pocket, the heavy ones he had used to keep a grip on the axe handle even when his hands were sweating. "I don't like to see people in pain," he admitted quietly. "Take them. Please."

Faline stared quizzically at him for a long moemnt. She wasn't sure, but she felt she was dealing, once more, with both sides of Camphor at the same time. If his story was to be believed, that is.

"Well, let me see your hand," she said.

"I'd rather you didn't." He stepped away from her and snatched up the rope, which he wrapped several times around his right wrist and heaved the log up and to the side. The rope bit into his wrist, and Camphor bit into his lip, but the log moved up and out of the ditch. "I'll get this one," he said. "Why don't you go check on your dragon?"

His voice was dead, or empty, or hiding something, and Faline was not entirely certain what. She stared after him until he disappeared around a bend behind a copse of trees.

The sun continued to beat down on her, and Faline sighed and, once more, threw her arms in the air. Sometimes she remembered why she chose not to live among larger populations.

Marley rocked her chair back until it thumped against the wall. Her girls were sweeping the sand off the floor, sterilizing everything, cleaning up in general. In the other kitchen, a few were fixing dinner.

It was a rare moment of respite. Marley was going to milk it for all it was worth.

It wasn't that there weren't doctors, and so the townsfolk had to see the midwife for their ills. There were military doctors all throughout the town, especially this close to the local garrison. The issue was simply that the people didn't trust the military doctors. Their answer to everything they couldn't figure out was 'cut it off.'

Marley had performed very few amputations throughout her career. She had an astonishingly low occurance of gangrene, and she was the only one around known to slit open a mother to deliver a child, and save them both.

Her stitches, perfected from a childhood full of embroidery and crosstitch, were impossibly tight and even. No mere military doctor could do a better job at minimizing scars.

And yet she knew her techniques would one day cost her. It was a dangerous game, working a man's job in a man's world. She had to play her cards very carefully, act how they wanted her to act, behave how they expected her to behave. One toe out of line could result in her execution as a witch, ludicrous as that was to believe. So, she reassured the men constantly that they were in charge. She was careful to walk the very narrow line between subserviance and progress.

"Ma'am," one of the girls said, peeking in the room from the main kitchen. "Supper's ready."

Marley hauled herself to her feet, groaning. "Someone put the sign out. We're closed tomorrow, excepting for childbirths."

One of the girls propped her broom against the wall and hurried out of the room to follow orders. Marley hobbled out of the room to eat, her aching feet making her feel much, much older than she was.

It had been a very long day.