Like Fire In The Forge

9 – Cherries

    It was hard to focus on her staff-work these days. As Midwinter drew nearer, Daja had taken to joining the Fire Temple novices for their early morning drills. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t to see Lina, and yet, every time she caught a glint of the novice’s shy little smile across the yard as the ranks broke up, Daja’s heart seemed to beat twice as fast and her face heated up like rod iron in the forge. It was beyond perplexing. It was plain disturbing. Every so often, too, she’d catch Briar looking at her sidelong when she returned to Discipline after practice, wearing an enigmatic little smile she’d come to loathe.

    Daja began to feel her technique was actually worsening the longer she spent training with the other Fire Temple devotees. Two days before the mid-season holiday, she’d purposefully stayed away, diverting every ounce of her attention to the rush of projects that raining down on the forge as everyone scrambled for pretty things for their dear ones. For an extra distraction, she set to the final touches on a pet project she’d been hurrying along in secret for her teacher’s gift.

    The theory had been sound. In practice, her plan failed miserably. Halfway through the first morning, she caught herself hip-deep in idle wondering if it was possible to convey the wild flick at the end of Lina’s braid in the design she was sketching onto a bracelet.

    On Midwinter morning Daja poked her head into the forge shed. She was looking for Frostpine—but only to make sure he wasn’t there. She’d just managed to scrape the last polish on her gift in before lights out the night before. It would hardly be a surprise if her saw her putting in on the workbench.

    She was turning to leave when Kirel arrived.

    The Northman smiled at her. “Just the girl I was looking for. Well, actually, I was looking for Frostpine—but you’ve saved me a walk out to Discipline.” Grinning, he dug in a leather satchel. He emerged with a small, rectangular wooden box.

    Daja approached with curiosity. Relieved she’d thought to pick up Kirel’s present as well as Frostpine’s, she held out the small cloth bag to him and exchanged it for the mysterious box. It was plain wood slats slotted and glued together an inch or so apart. Only the top was solid: charred into the wood was an oval design of an orchard in a mountain valley. Wafting from the open sides was a delicious smell Daja thought was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

    Kirel’s gasp of surprise caught her attention. He had upended the bag into his hand and now held his gift to the light.

    Months ago while walking in the markets after the pirate attack, Daja had stumbled across the pendant. It struck her as the perfect thing for a mountain boy missing home. Hung on the leather cord was a small polished disk of white-streaked black stone, cool as a chip of ice. Deeply carved into the centre was the outline of a mountain. To Daja it looked like nothing so much as Little Bear’s head when he threw it back to howl. The clever craftsman had fashioned it so the lines of quartz intimated an overcast sky and snow-capped foothills. The stall-minder – a white-haired northerner – had told Daja it was a landmark near where he was from. When she asked, he told her it was called Blacktooth Mountain.

    Kirel seemed lost for words. “This is…”

    “I found it completely by chance. The stall keeper said it was the only one of its kind he had. It seemed like too big a coincidence to happen by chance,” Daja said simply. “If I knew your gods better, I’d say you were meant to have it.”

    She looked down at the open box in her hands. Smell, dark fruits winked up at her in the forge’s half-light. Cherries! Somewhere, somehow, he had found a box of fresh cherries in winter.

    “I remembered you liked them at the festival.”

    “How did you—”

    “I may have bribed Dedicate Gorse to store them away for me,” Kirel admitted self-consciously. He was fiddling with the amulet’s cord to get it over his neck without tangling in his long hair.

    Daja grinned up at him. “I suppose you want me to share them with you.”

    “Oh no,” Kirel said, holding up his hands. “They’re all yours. Happy Midwinter, Daja.”

    Kirel grinned at her and ducked his head. The light-hearted peck on her lips caught Daja completely by surprise. Her mind churned wildly. Kirel didn’t like her like that—and she didn’t like Kirel like that.

    But this was sort of nice… On impulse, she pressed their closed mouths together with a little more force. Her lips fizzed pleasantly. There: she could put her mind at ease. She couldn’t like Lina, she liked kissing Kirel. It wasn’t sparks and crashing thunder, but she liked it well enough.

    The odd feelings around the other girl were just a passing artistic fancy—a craftswoman’s romantic notion of a girl with a pretty smile and a slender form, and hair like the spirit of fire. That was all.

    It had absolutely nothing at all to do with the way Daja’s belly tightened up when Lina smiled at her, or the warmth that filled her fingers and toes when she thought about their chance meeting in the meditation room on night, months ago. Daja liked boys, like everyone else, and there was nothing more to say about it.

TBC.

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All right, the original 'theme' was 'Sakura', but I got the list from an anime fangirl (clearly) and applied artistic license.

Do they celebrate Midwinter in Summersea? I know they call it Longhammer, but maybe I'm getting my Pierce mixed up. Speaking of mixed up, this is the winter following their return from the northern provinces. I believe that was mentioned in Drawing, but it was a throwaway line and easily missed.