Pluck from a Memory a Rooted Sorrow

Althea's skin glowed with the warmth of a late morning sun coming into her home with a large woven basket full of the plants and roots of the earth in her arm and a pitcher of water from Blessed Stream on her head. As the sun rose higher, the outside work would be too tiresome in the heat, so she did her outside chores early leaving the inside work for the heat of the day. She took off her shoes to feel the cool, soft earth of her home's floor at her feet. As she removed her shoes one could see the mark of Healer just above her ankles, the mark of her Heritage. Naturally bending and turning with the bones and contours of her feet, it reminded one of flowers on the vine, a mark to signal a Healer.

Then she let down her hair as it was bundled high on her head. In the heat of the day, her dark hair made her so hot, but now she was cool in her home, and her mother had always said her long hair was so beautiful, even longer and more luxurious than her great grandmother's. Even if her days were long, even if the need for her was great and she work tirelessly into the night to see the first light of dawn, even if she had worked until the dust and soil covered her completely, she had her hair that dazzled and amazed.

As she took out each bundle of a variety of plants from her basket and organized them on her work table in the front room, she felt a change in the earth beneath her. The air seemed to change. She closed her eyes to see all she could not see, extend all she was into the room to search before seeing. Too subtle, too complicated, and she still had much to learn. She lifted her eyes, not even fully expecting something to be there.

But there was.

This man was tall, built as a statue painstakingly sculpted. He had long hair, so he had to live a life out of the fields, and it was like sunshine. Most of the men and boys of Base Village were darker haired. Even if they were born with fair hair, their life out of doors darkened it. And even if they wanted to have the luxurious and coveted longer hair, they couldn't bear with it in the sun or could not grow it with a life of labor. But this man's hair, it was beautiful. It was unlike anything she saw before in life, but instead the stuff of dreams.

She tried to concentrate on seeing beyond sight, assessing more than present as she had been trained. His hands were slender, soft and fair like hers, but he couldn't be a Healer. Though his boots concealed his ankles, she could tell this. His hair was too fair to have gone out and gathered plants and he walked high in stature instead of rooted low into the earth as she did. He had to be nobility, maybe even a member of her Majesty's court. His eyes were green; she'd never seen green eyes before. Her eyes were brown, deep as the earth as were most people's in Base Village. Sometimes she'd see a painter or artisan from Courtside with blue eyes, but never green and never this vibrant.

Enchanter

Yes, he had to be. Master of incantations and spells, Enchanters could pluck the very Magic from the air and dance at their command. It was even said that they could reach up and grasp the stars themselves! And one was in her home...and coming this way.

If it were ever possible to feel all emotions at once, Althea did now. He was beautiful, and the mere thought of what his skills must be, it was nothing short of wonderous. Though she knew she should say something, anything, she found she had no breath to give to words. The most she could do was muster concentration to keep her mouth from gaping open like some fool.

Before she could fully conceive the grace of his walk, he was stopped before her merely a few feet away. He said nothing either, and though at first she thought it was from pride and status, she could see deep in his eyes he wasn't able to speak either. His eyes seemed to struggle with composure just as her heart was.

Almost as though drawn together by invisible rope, they both leaned toward each other just slightly. Both stunned at the other, both thinking the other to be unlike anything they had seen. How absurd this moment, how unimaginable, how fateful. It was as if the cosmos wrote at its creation a meeting like this, and that was all the reason to burst forth into being in violent splendor.

Then a sweet smell, that overripe smell of fruit. And in the door behind him came a shimmering glittered with tiny starlight in a mist. A Purple Mist. It consumed him, covered him whole. And the claws encircled the door and entrance to her home.

Then it came for her.