Northstar Vale wine drop

"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."