Waiting on One

The Chosen One (2)

She found her mother near the side of the house pulling fresh loaves of bread from their stone oven. Lyra dove her hand into her full satchel and pulled out some sprigs of lemon grass, she crushed the pungent plant with her fingers and when she reached her mother brushed it over the hot fresh loaf of bread.

"Oh! Lyra! That smells heavenly!" 

Cecil her sister gasped. Her sister always spoke in breathy gasps. She seemed excited about everything, always. Lyra loved that about Cecil. Her absolute adoration for everything, Cecil knew how to enjoy life, or so it seemed to Lyra. She smiled at her sister and offered some of the broken leaves to her so she could smell them to her heart's content.

"It was a good harvest today." 

She said as she swooped down and landed a kiss on her bent mothers' cheek. Cecil had returned to her task of removing loaves from the oven. Mira, their mother, turned and offered a knife to Lyra so she could cut into her stolen loaf.

"That is excellent news because your brother brought five more orders for your father from the village." 

Lyra's smile belied her anticipation. She loved helping her father make medicines and poultices for the villagers. She offered Cecil a cut off of the loaf of bread and then another cut to her mother before she snagged a slice between her teeth and ripped into it.

"Orders already? Can't a man rest?" 

The lyrical cry came from her father as he rounded the corner of the house. His protests were in jest, he liked to play the role of the feckless husband, but he was energy in motion. Leander had never spent a day not being productive. Lyra offered him a cut of her bread.

"Where is my son whom you speak of?" He asked, accepting Lyra's bread slice and glancing around for his son.

"He set off early this morning to deliver some loaves to the Blacksmith's daughter. Her youngest took ill a few days ago and I am sure she had not had time to cook. I sent some cured cheese and eggs with him as well." Mira's husband nodded in approval and finished his slice of bread.

Mira handed both Lyra and Leander some cured cheese and pecked a kiss on her husband's cheek. "Speaking of which, you should start work on some medicine for the little baby so that woman can worry less." Leander smiled at his wife and nodded, he eyed Lyra and then headed to his workshop, polishing off his cheese.

Lyra kissed her mother's cheek, smiled at Cecil, and scurried after her father. Once in the workshop they fell into a companionable silence again. Experienced hands moving with confidence as they emptied their satchels and sorted through their various harvested herbs.

Lyra started bunching the groupings for hanging and drying as her father turned to making the various orders that had come in while they had been away. Bundling the herbs for drying was not generally her favorite task. It was what was needed to be done however, they needed to be hung for drying before they started to wilt or mold. She knew that if she could complete this mundane task for her father then he would be able to focus on preparing the orders that came in.

This was how she had earned her place beside him. Quietly volunteering to do the simple tasks that she could so that he could focus on more important things. Eventually when the simple tasks had been completed and he had run out of them to give her. He would show her some more complicated things. Then she could do those for him.

It was an apprenticeship that worked for them both. Her deft fingers moved over the bunches quickly and soon the bundles were hung. They had worked in silence for most of that time but, as was inevitable, her father had started humming at one point.

He was a light man of music and movement, lithe and always full of energy. Rarely did he sit, only when he was waiting on something important would he wait, and then nothing could move him, as if Medusa's gaze had turned him to solid stone. Even that though, was an energy to itself, because waiting is doing something.

"Can I help, Da?" She eyed his workbench and leaned against the wall next to him. He smiled without turning to look at her. Without a word other than his joyful humming he slid her a mortar and pestle and some dried roots. She smiled and started to grind the dried root into a powder to be combined into the medicinal poultice the man was making.

From the smell and look of the plant she knew that it was sunchoke. It was used to aid with chest congestion and bad coughs. She knew that this was meant for the Blacksmith's daughter's youngest child. She handed over the ground root and he smiled at her. "What else do we need?" There was a twinkle in his eyes when he asked the question.

 She looked at the collection of herbs in front of him and considered. "Witch hazel? I know that it's generally meant for infection, but the child has been sick for a spell, and it might aid in mending an internal ailment." 

Leander nodded, his smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "That would do well, I think. She has been sick for a while so if she is fighting something off in her lungs, then it would help. It also could take away some of the pain she might be feeling."

She was not liberal with the plant as it did have a numbing effect and the child was small. They made quick work of their tasks and by the end of their list she was sitting at the table in charge of their makings while her father supervised from the corner of the room.

They finished just in time. Both her and her father looked up through the small open window above the workbench and saw her brother loping down the dirt roads to the house. "Well! Alright then! We finished just in time." Her father, still smiling, smacked the workbench for emphasis and gestured for her to help him gather their creations.

Making sure not to mix up any of the various instructions she collected their work and followed her father to the house. She could hear her brother and sister gabbing before they reached the opening.

But as soon as her father hit the threshold there was an immediate silence. The abrupt quite unnerved her as it was not normal for her siblings to hold their peace in front of her father. Curious, she hurried into the house to see their faces. Her father's brows were raised as he looked between the three of them, Celia, Mira and Leon.

Laughingly he joked, "Should we come back?" 

Mira shook her head with zero mirth and swallowed eying Lyra out of the corner of her eye. "We have some news that Leon brought." She sighed and squared her shoulders, so Lyra was prepared for something bad.

 "The Oracle has died."