Northstar Vale wine drop
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#1
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"@Zosime."

she followed the girl's trail through the snow, hoping that her daughter would not be too burdened to speak with her.

they must talk of this, and swiftly.
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#2

she had gone as far as she could. from everybody. from her father, her mother, her siblings. even from meadow.

she didn't cry. she didn't wail. she sat in her silent fear.

even when her mother's voice pierced the air. zosime squeezed her eyes shut tight. ears splayed.

and said nothing.
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#3
eventually she found zosime.

eventually she settled close but dared not touch.

tamar did not know what to say.

"this is not for you to hold, my daughter," was all she could muster in the end.
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#4
she heard the words. for despite all her best efforts, she had not plugged her ears. they were not deaf to the broken voice of her mother. she wished she had sympathy and perhaps she did, beneath all the fear she currently held.

you are like kunosoura. her voice was small within her throat. epoch circles you and papa. her voice — creaked and clenched. twisted and turned. it was a thing she had meant to tell her mother before all of — this.

the sniffle, only just the start.
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#5
"the world does not begin and end with us."

zosime was consumed with something. tamar knew to be direct was the best thing. "we all have experiences which shape us. but that one will never be yours, my sunspot."
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#6
she wanted to weep. to wail and sob and choke upon her mother's grief.

she sucked a sharp puncture of air. it will. for how could it not be? they shared all things! for when she had cried, her mother consoled her always. for through her mother and father zosime had learned how to be.

how did the world not begin and end with them? how did they not share this experience too? like all the others?

we share. we share! her voice hiccupped with her sadness now.

and it was then she reached for her mother. only just a girl, confused and wounded by the sadness she had seen.
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#7
we share

her lip trembled. she held zosime close, over the heart that perhaps one day soon might watch over children growing within.

"do you want to know my story, najmat saghira?" tamar asked, using the tongue she rarely did, for it hurt. "the first part."
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did she?

for a nearly first time, she feared a story. what she might find within it or what it might bring out of the teller. the listener.

yes. she mumbled in a hushed, crying voice against her mother's heart.
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#9
"then i will tell you."

"we lived on an oasis in the desert. those long sands, you must travel to find water, travel far. but there were many of us. my mother was dinah, her sisters yaset and hadassah and bilah. zilpah was my father's second wife, always more of an aunt to me than a co-mother. my aunts had twelve children. i was the thirteenth cousin but third daughter to dinah."

for a moment tamar only held zosime and remembered. 

"my father only had two sons, with zilpah. i had three sisters. hayida. yasana. nasima." a smile came to her. "hayida was wild and brash and danced under every moon she could. she said it gave you powers. yasana was like omi. careful and someone who had great thoughts and knew what herbs to put with meat, so that it became a true meal. nasima was so kind that she cried when she saw little birds die. she nursed animals back to health."

and then tamar.

"eventually there were many, many of us. my mother took me to births with her. she showed us how to forage in the sands. my cousins and brothers taught me to hunt. but they were still above us, do you understand? above women. it was how things were." not that it was right. "but before i knew that, all i did know was happiness and laughter. and my sisters. and my aunties showing us how to craft good jokes."

a time before the haunting years.

"my father did not like me. that is all i have guessed. it is said he did not believe i was his and resented my mother. they never said it. they hid this always, each of them. my mother loved me. but i hardly knew him."

some pain, a thread of it.

"do you remember what i said about traveling, for water? a year after i was born, traders came to our oasis. they showed my father blue stones and described the ocean. how could water come to be gathered in a place so great? none of us believed it. except for my father."

"they swore it was true. they called these stones 'glass' and said it was spun by spirits who lived in the water, which was bitter and undrinkable. my father asked to touch these things, to hold them. he could not understand the secret of water trapped in a stone. he had never seen ice, nor snow."

"the traders named a price. my father received the blue glass. they brought me to akashingo where they were paid in more than sea-stones. and that is the end. and now you know it all, and we are here, where i feel as though i have come back to the oasis."
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#10
it was a long story. one of great importance to her mother and the life her mother lived before her. such an odd thought! to think things happened before her own existence.

a family, sprawling and wide. aunt and cousins plenty. siblings mingled about too. zosime did not speak on how wonderful it sounded. how she thought hayida might be right! oh, how she wished to meet these faces. lost to the traveling sands and turning of time.

but there was sadness laced in. brothers above sisters in all ways, not just by order of birth! a father who did not love a daughter. her mother.

a father who gave away that daughter for displays of water. a daughter who had been traded into that place that seemed to be a sense of hurt. akashingo. the place with the pharaoh. the place where a daughter of a sprawling family had become a slave to those who seemingly continued long lines of hurt.

zosime did not have words for any of this. for the great explosion of feelings in her for all her mother had seen. in places and times that zosime could never understand. for epoch was of peace and paradise. not once had she ever thought her father did not love her, or that her brother may be above her.

i am sorry, mama. it was all she could manage as she softly cried.

this time not for herself, but for her mother.
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#11
she held zosime.

"i am not."

she cradled the girl against her beating heart.

"i found your father. i had you and your siblings," tamar whispered against the downy ears as zosime softly cried.

"i would do it again," her eyes dampened with the same salt.

tamar took a breath. "i would do it all again. all those things brought me to this moment."
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#12
fade and something fresh soon? <3

she wanted to wail loudly. to say no! never again! she knew, in a way, that her mother would surely never have to do it again. yet the thought gave her trembles and a sharp inhale.

she nodded stiffly. understanding what her mother meant emotionally.

but zosime was without words. too stuck in a new world of grief that was old world for her mother.