The Etoririq’dzwei, the Turga
“I can smell the fish from here,” Fera says with a wide smile, all her teeth gleaming. “I dreamt of this fish our last journey,” she laughs; Poro laughs too, and Nkemi as well.
“We helped in the fishing,” Poro says, cheerfully, rubbing her hands together. “Good entertainment as well.”
“I needed to be sure there be would be enough,” Fera says; her eyes gleam.
“We owe you a debt of gratitude,” Nkemi says, solemn, and they all laugh again.
Alefa is a dark shadow in her hammock, her face turned towards the wall.
Fera and Poro go first; Nkemi lingers at the door. She stops; she turns back.
“Ada’na, do I think correctly that you study at Ire’dzosat?” She asks, thinking of the strength of the girl’s perceptive field.
“Yes,” Alefa sniffles; she sits half up, still tangled in the blanket, looking at Nkemi through bleary-eyes. She straightens up further, finding the straightness in her spine. “Yes,” she says, more firmly. “I am a student there.”
Nkemi smiles. “Then you know well the value of following the motions,” Nkemi says, meeting the younger girl’s eyes. “Will you come and take fish with my friend and I? He visited Ire’dzosat for the first time only a few days ago; we sat together in Iz. I know he would be interested to hear more of the Thul'Amat.”
“My stomach was upset last night,” Alefa says, quietly; her hand tangles in the hammock.
Nkemi inclines her head. “Then come and sit only, and do not eat if you are not hungry. See how the motions feel.”
Alefa comes, down the hallway.
The fish are fresh, and they are many. They are fried whole, dropped large into the boiling oil. In one pan they are coated first in thick red paste, with a smell of peppers and pepper which rises thick into the air and streams out the window. In the other they are plain, but, as Nkemi tells Anetol with a bright-eyed grin, the fish need no ornamentation.
There are many clothes, and syrupy sherbet to drink; there are no knives, no forks or spoons. One reaches through the fried skin to find the tender meat within; some fish are small enough to be eaten by only one, and others large enough for two or even three to share.
“I meditate sometimes In Tseli,” Alefa is saying to Anetol. There is a little crease in her forehead, still, but there is, too, a smile on her lips, and she is digging her hand again into the small fish before her, eating bits of the tender flaky white meat. “You have not gone yet, have you? You must, before you leave Mugroba; there is a grove of petrified trees,” her eyes gleam. “Most are only trunks, of course, but on some there are the shapes of branches – so ancient they have turned to stone.”
Nkemi rises, and makes her way across the room, wiping her hands, to refill her sherbet; her offer to the others is made perhaps too freely, and she balances her glass, Alefa’s, Anetol’s and Keraxa’s in small hands. She fills them up, and picks them up – one, two, three – and frowns down at the forth.
Two small hands take it; a solemn face looks up at her. Jafrela frowns.
“Thank you, ada’na,” Nkemi says with a solemn bow of her head.
Jafrela nods; she follows behind Nkemi, and then cuts in front of her. She sets the glass down before Anetol, and stares up at him; when Nkemi sits again, Jafrela comes to stand beside her, taking her sleeve in one hand.
“Do you like fish?” Jafrela asks Anetol, staring very intently once more. She looks down at his pale hands digging into the skin, and then back up at his face. She pauses; she thinks it over. “I like fish,” Jafrela adds, frowning.