For everyday work, Kira helped in the weaving shed, picking up the scraps and leavings,
but her twisted leg diminished her value as a laborer and even, in the future, as a mate.
Yes, the women liked the fanciful stories that she told to amuse restless tykes, and they admired the little threadings that she made.
But those things were diversions; they were not work. The sky, with the sun no longer overhead,
but sending shadows now into the Field of Leaving from the trees and thorn bushes at its edge, told her that it was long past midday.
In her uncertainty she had lingered here too long. Carefully she gathered the skins
on which she had slept these four nights guarding her mother’s spirit.
Her fire was cold ashes, a blackened smudge. Her water container was empty and she had no more food.
Slowly, using her stick, she limped toward the path that led back to the village, holding on to a small hope that she might still be welcome there.
Tykes played at the edge of the clearing, scampering about on the moss-covered ground.
Pine needles stuck to their naked bodies and in their hair. She smiled.
She recognized each little one. There was the yellow-haired son of her mother’s friend; she remembered his birth two mid-summers ago.
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