Alone with her mother, Sage washed her hair in a bowl on the table and then sat by the fire for a while to help it dry. They had an hour or so before the festival and since everything had been taken to the centre, there was for once nothing to do but wait.
Almost nothing. Sage took out her spindle.
"Did the other girls like your anklet?"
"Mhmm, Nell has one just like it."
"And were those boys walking back with you?"
"No, just some tall ladies with deep voices."
"Oh, where'd you find them?"
"They used to be trees, I think, but our dancing woke them up."
"You must have done well then."
"Not really, the other girls didn't remember the steps right so we may have accidentally created a summoning ritual."
"Sage, if you knew the dance better you should have told them."
Sage looked up, disappointed her evasive little charade had been cut short that way.
"Maybe I wanted to make a ritual," she said.
Her mother rolled her eyes at her with a smile.
"You should finish your bath and change. I'm going to leave soon to help your father with the cauldron."
*
One conversation absolutely does not count as a chapter, but I didn't think it fit with either the earlier section or the next one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-Laura