Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: [storm] A Boring Basement
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1993 17:11:55 GMT


        Kardia awoke to the sound of the earth crying.  She opened her 
eyes, her body still as she listened for the sound again.  She saw that she 
was in a house, and when she heard the boom and then the groan she realized 
where she was.  In Mrs. Cludne's boarding house, under a wall of brick and 
stone; and she was hearing Wind hunting for death.

        There were loud voices in the house.  Kardia dressed quickly, 
packed all her things and put them back on her back.  She went down the 
stairs, jumping once as a gust found its way around the wall, boomed as it 
hit the house, and rattled all the windows.  The solid hiss of rain finally 
was recognizable, closer to the front of the house.  She saw the ordered 
chaos of all the Cludne grandchildren and the other guests who were up as 
they gathered provisions and water to bring down to the cellar.

        "Kardia!" even over the hubbub of all the others on the lower floor 
Kardia recognized the imperious voice of Mrs. Cludne.  "Get the other 
guests!" 

        Kardia nodded and turned to sprint back up the stairs.  She 
missed the first step because of the missing ball of her left foot and 
banged one knee hard against the stairs.  She swore as the pain bloomed, 
but managed to get up and hobble up the stairs.  She was still swearing 
as she reached the top landing and started banging on all the closed 
doors.  Pale bulbous eyes amid paler face looked out at her from behind 
the chain of the door. Kardia calmed herself in the face of the fear in 
those eyes.

        "Sorry about that." she said a touch contritely, "But there's a
monster of a storm coming down and Mrs. Cludne wants us all in the cellar,
where it'd be safer."

        Quietly, the pale head bobbed in acknowledgement and the door
closed.

        A touch subdued, Kardia went around and knocked on all the other 
doors and was rewarded with three other guests that grunted, nodded, and
went back into their rooms to pack up.  

        She went back down the stairs, grabbed a roll off a basket of bread
one of the kids was carrying down and, while chewing on it, picked up
another basket and headed down the stairs to the underground rooms.  

        The ceilings were just barely tall enough for her to stand upright
and not bang her head; but Kardia still bent her neck and back just a
little, not used to the ceiling being quite that close.

	"Does that not hurt?" asked a quiet, accented voice below her.

	Kardia stepped out of the way of the folks behind her and looked
over, into wide eyes as pale as ice.  Eyes that could easily see in the
shadows of these underground rooms.  Eyes that belonged to a girl with skin
whiter than the bread Kardia was eating and with the wider bone structure
of one of the digging races.  A dwarven child.  Kardia blinked and nodded her
head, "If I keep this up it's gonna hurt something awful in a while... but
I'm worried more about hurting my head against the ceiling..."

	The child only smiled and said carefully, as with a different
language than the one that she was brought up with, "You are..." she held up
her hand and squinted, "four fingerwidths from ceiling.  You cannot... hurt
head on it."

	Kardia looked quietly at the solemn child and then blinked, sighed
and, carefully, straightened.  The child giggled quietly to herself at the
look on Kardia's face when she didn't hit anything.  Kardia gave the child
a disgusted look at the giggling and the child quieted instantly.  A little
shocked at how quickly the kid quieted, Kardia smiled in apology and said,
"It's O.K.  Sometimes I need a push..."

	She only got a blankish look, "I need someone to tell me when I'm
doing something silly."  The smile she was rewarded with warmed her.
"Hmmm... I'm going to help with carrying things down here, could you watch
my things?" 

	The child took a moment to translate and then said carefully, "How
you know I not steal?"

	Kardia laughed softly, "Because you ask such questions... Here...
What's your name?"

	"Tourmaline..." said the soft voice so softly Kardia had to bend
down to hear.  "Tourmaline Rose.  Mam names me Linny ..."

	"I like Rose." said Kardia then she laughed softly at the wrinkled
nose.  "All right, Linny... here."  Kardia piled her bags around the child,
and placed her harp box in her hands.

	"Oh." said Linny, her eyes wide.  "You play?"

	Kardia nodded and said, "I will."   Her eyes slanted into a smile,
"If you're here when I come back for it..."

        Kardia strode off with the basket to a peal of giggles...

			*		*		*

        Only an hour later Kardia was half regretting her promise.  She
hadn't played for months before this, and the metal picks were starting to
create blisters on the fingers they were supposed to be protecting.  The
new denizins of the cellar seemed to have decided that since she had a harp
she must be the entertainment for the day.  She'd quickly run out of
Generica and Nexus related music as her data stores hadn't been that fat on
something that was regarded as purely entertainment.  In fact, she'd been a
little frightened by the intensity with which they'd paid attention to a
song that, under her stores, had been simply labled 'folksong'.  To her
ears it had been nothing more than a formula god creation story; but it
seemed to have more meaning to the folks here than she really knew.

        She sighed and her hands wandered over the strings.  Her mind came
back to focus as she saw fear in the eyes around her.  She then realized
that her wandering mind had started accompanying the most evident sound.
The sounds of the storm outside.  The notes were eerie with the treble of
wailing rush of the winds and the bass boom of the thunder.  She shook her
head, stilled her fingers and the strings.

        She was surprised by the scattering of applause through the tightly
confined group.  She grinned her surprise and then nodded her thanks.  Then
folks split up into small, talking groups.  Kardia sighed and then grinned
in self-deprication.  They'd just been polite, waiting for her to be
finished.

        Kardia took off the metal picks from the tips of her fingers and
gently rubbed the places that had started to get rubbed raw.  "Strong
hands." said a gruff voice.  She looked up into eyes almost exactly like
Linny's but in a body that had completely fulfilled what was only a promise
in the child's.  "Strong enough to carry the story of MoltenHeart through
to its true ending."  The pale eyes narrowed just a touch and then the
dwarven woman spoke words as harsh as the splintering of rock.  In the face
of Kardia's incomprehension the woman smiled a rueful smile and shook her
head, "And doesn't even know the language used to write that song into the
Stone in the Dark.  Blood Child of the Moon's Heart, you were caring and
careful of the telling, even in your ignorance.  Such memories are best
kept with care."

        Kardia's eyes widened at what the dwarven woman called her, and at
the warning she didn't really know what to say, so she simply nodded, all
the while cursing the person who'd put that song in a datastore without any
notation as to its origins.

	The dwarf woman nodded back and smiled, "Good." she said and
stepped away.  

	Kardia sighed a deep sigh; and to take her mind off the near call,
she pulled out her knitting and she calmed herself with the steady, slow
work.

			*		*		*

        Six hours later, she was entertaining Linny again, this time with a
couple of drop spindles and a ball of wool roving.  She pulled a section of
roving off for the child, and then a section for herself.  Watching the
child emulate her movements, Kardia thinned the roving for a length about
as long as her forearm and then rolled it up her leg, putting a clockwise
spin into that bit of roving.  When it was spun tight enough to hold
together, she tightly tied the end of the newly formed yarn at the base of
the spindle, against the whorl, brought it around under the whorl to catch
on the stub end of the spindle, and then back up to a half hitch near the
top of the knitting yarn thick spindle.  Very different from the thread
slender spindle that Peter had been using.

        Kardia suspended the spindle from its yarn, gave it a twirl with
her fingers, and drew fiber from the roving at an even width for a knitting
yarn.  The twist went up into the draw, the yarn formed over the still
spinning spindle, and she kept drawing until the spindle stopped.  She
deftly caught the still spindle before it could spin in the opposite
direction, flipped the half-hitch off the top with a practiced thumb,
uncaught the bit under the whorl, and wound the resultant yarn onto the
shaft of the spindle.  Until she had about the length of the spindle plus
the amount it would take to catch it under the whorl again.  With a flick
of the wrist and thumb, she had the yarn caught underneath and the half
hitch in place and she was spinning another length of yarn.

        Linny tried to emulate the smooth actions of Kardia.  The yarn she
started with was too loose, so when she tried dropping the spindle to twirl
it the whole thing dropped to the floor.  A quiet scowl and and some
twisting later, Linny tried again and suceeded in getting the spindle to
drop and turn, but in the wrong direction.  The spindle hit the floor with
a clack.  "Sorry," said Kardia a little contritely, "you have to spin the
new yarn in the same direction as the yarn you start with, otherwise, you
undo the spin in the starting yarn."  She showed Linny what the difference
was in the clockwise and counterclockwise directions and sent her on her
way.  More twisting and time and the spindle made its slow way down the
floor.  A smile from Kardia and the lumpy yarn was gently twirled onto the
shaft.  Again and again and soon Linny had a lump of yarn that was getting
more and more even with each arm length.

	Kardia was fascinated with the dwarven child's patience and
persistance.  She hadn't known many who could sit this still and
concentrate for this long.  After three hours Linny's spindle was full.
Pulling the resultant cone off the spindle, Kardia took her first cone as
well.  She put the two ends together, tied them to the base of Linny's
empty spindle, hooked it, hitched it and gave it a wild twirl in a counter
clockwise direction.  The yarn plied beautifully.  The two plys evened out
the bumps in Linny's and with the opposite twist for the ply, the yarn
softened as well.

	The spindle filled and overfilled with the two plies, but as neatly
as Linny wrapped the yarn around the spindle, the yarn still held its shape
until she finished plying both cones onto it.  Kardia smiled to see just
how full it was and wound the yarn into a ball bigger than two fists put
together and gave it to the girl.

	"For you." Kardia said.  Linny smiled, took the ball and turned to 
run off.

	"Wait."  Kardia said, and the girl froze like a frightened deer.
Kardia extended the simple, wooden drop spindle, "Don't forget your tool,
Mistress."  The widened eyes asked the question that couldn't be voiced.
Kardia simply nodded and the girl took the spindle as well and ran off with
a small burst of laughter.

	Kardia grinned and went back to her spinning, the sweater needed
more yarn before it could be finished.  The memory of the small laughter
drowned out the keening of the wind, the crash of the thunder and the
steady pounding of the rain over her head.

			*		*		*

	The rest of the interminatable time in the cellar was only
punctuated by two or three crashing falls of something in the house above.
They slept when the clocks said that night had fallen, though the darkness
was no different, and spent more time entertaining themselves.  The card
tables had been brought down along with the provisions and a card party was
begun by the various patrons of the house.

	Kardia spent the time finishing her sweater, first.  Then she
pulled out a needle slim brass drop spindle and a small brass bowl.  She
pulled out the last bundle of moonsilk fibers from her pack, pulled a small
section of it away from the main body of fibers; and put the rest back into
her pack.  The section she pulled off she spread in a towel, a thin layer
of shining gold fibers, and rolled the towel up with the fibers snug
between the layers.  A makeshift, easily travelling distaff that still
controlled the fibers.  No matter what Andrea's answer might be, Kardia
still needed the thread to do either her bidding or, perhaps, something for
'Raelf.  She could always use the thread.

	The dampness in the air helped make the fibers easily managable and
a bowl used to catch the drips from a single leak in the 'roof' of the
basement held plenty of water to wet the tips of her fingers with.  She
started it much as she has the wool spindle, but with a thread too fine for
most to see in the candlelight of the basement made of three of the fibers
twisted together between thumb and forefinger.  The spindle spun while
supported by the bowl, so the weight of it would not break the thread, and
spun as quickly as a top to put enough spin into the slenderness of the
thread.  Since the fibers were so much longer, the draw was almost as long
as her forearm.  So, quietly occupied, Kardia watched the card games and
the conversations.

			*		*		*

	Kardia woke suddenly.  For a long moment she just lay in her
travelling bedroll, completely disoriented in the total dark.  She did the
mental flip she'd learned at 18 and the room glowed red from the body
warmth around her.  She sighed softly was startled to hear the sound of her
own sigh.

	She smiled into the dark silence and went back to sleep knowing
that the worst of the storm was over.


-- 
Liralen Li             |  "... and how you feel can make it real 
aka Phyllis Rostykus   |       Real as anything you've seen... "
li@Data-IO.com         |                      Peter Gabriel _US_