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The song and music escalated and then droned off her footsteps dying with it, her hands slowing, her breathing heavy and labored. Sweat covered her body with a fine sheen. The music stopped and so did she, standing silent and aloof, her brilliant blue eyes staring out at the crowd. Uncaring as to there reaction.
It however was favorable, coins showered in her direction and whistles and clapping filled the crowded market square. She nodded her head slowly and gracefully with natural ease, stepping through the crowd ignoring the comments and questions that reached her. She brushed through it all silently, her dress an unconventional color for gypsys was solid black. The bodice was tight and covered only one shoulder slanting across the chest to cover her entire front. Stopping just before the belly button and the skirt picking up just below. Stopping just above her right knee and sweeping down to her ankle on her left side.
Bangles and bobbles of gold decorated her golden arm and gold rings were sown on to the hem of her blouse and skirt. Winking as she walked. With the slow careful tread of practiced ease. She had possessed her calm and unruffled spirit for years. Nothing seemed to ever provoke her to outright anger. When she spoke it was always calmly aloofly and correctly. She never answered if she had no answer and she didn't waste time on idle chatter with people unimportant to her.
She was in all ways the perfect leader. But peasant born. No, lower than peasant. Gypsy born, the curse of the earth the lowest of nations. Disgraced and hated almost everywhere. Known as pety theives and liars. Their women thought of even less than the crows in the fields. Men loved to look and have them but forgot them quickly. Woman scorned them and gypsys themselves often took to becoming proud and alloof from all others. Knowing what was said was true, made it all the worse.
Shayna, walked slowly feeling the heat beating down on her bare shoulder. Her long black hair swaying down to her hips drew eyes as she walked and she ignored them all. She was unusual to say the least. Her face was thin and elegant, lips wide and beautiful eyes so pure and blue that they bordered on unnatural, she was short, yet managed to still appear graceful. Perfectly proportioned she was a sight to behold and drew many admiring or hateful glance.
Her grace and coordination, never faltered she was always smooth and easy always knew what to do and she was respected. She had no friends but no one knew more about gypsy lore and life than she. She would sit around the fires at night. Her soft and even tone, describing pictures of brilliancy, pictures that stirred the imagination, making one believe that one really was one of the fearsome warriors of old. A young woman dancing her heart out. A man alone in the world searching for love. Anything and everything. A mountian stream flowing and never stopping searching for a resting place. Her stories were essential and all the people looked to her for the truth and the light, a reasoning in a dangerous world where they were considered less than human. Something pretty to look at, something to shoot at in the dark and something to warn their children about. But to be called humans. Never.
Shayna sighed. Eyes searching the crowd finally alighting on an old woman telling fortunes next to a wagon. She approached quietly listening with intent. Her visitor was a pale and beautiful woman as light as the dawn, where as shayna was as beautiful as the dusk.
Shayna stood silently looking on as the young womans eyes shined with mirth and good humour. Not really believing her fortune and yet enjoying herself at the same time. Shayna wondered, why would anyone pay for something they would never believe. Something that they probably never should believe. There were a few that could see peoples futures and there were many that were just very clever at guessing what really lay hidden in peoples lives. Her grandma was one of the latter.
Finally the girl got up gracefully her rich gown spreading about her as she stood. Noticing shayna for the first time she paused as though struck by the indecipherable gaze thrown her way and then with a deep curtsy she was gone weaving her way back through the crowd on the arm of a tall young man. Who looked much like her brother. Shayna turned to her grandma and sat down holding out her hand.
The old woman glanced at her with a smile and according to thier age old trandition took it and intoned "you shall find love adventure and romance. Do not stop till you find them all. then she released it. "Really shayna aren't you getting tired of hearing that. Every time you come I tell you the same thing?
Shayna shrugged with the same unnatural grace. "I suppose not, I like to hear it, its reassuring in a way, even if you have no idea what your talking about."
Nallia laughed swatting at her "You would be horrible at fortunes should you ever take it up. Your so blunt. Why if an ugly old man came along and asked for a fortune he'd probably take his life afterwords."
Shayna looked thoughtful "Yes I suppose so. Yet some people I look at and I know what will happen to them. It's in there faces I suppose."
Nallia looked at her fondly. "You have a gift shanya, and someday you will use it. For good or bad I do not know. Just be careful when you do"
Her grandma was so serious that Shayna smiled sadly "I will dear one. I will take all you say to my heart and keep it safe. You are all that I have left. "
Her grandma smiled "And you are my pride and joy never ever forget that."
"Of course not"
Shayna stood from where she had been kneeling next to nallia and brushed off the front of her dress. Blue eyes sweeping the crowd. Alighting on the figure of a man staring at her coldly. She eyed him trying to remember if she had seen him before to require such a glare and then smiled coolly and collectedly.
He frowned slightly and turned away his tall figure striding through the crowd. Shayna smiled she really couldn't help it. He had been important his clothing and air lent to that assumption but the horse he rode drove it to heart a great black stallion standing tall and broad, king above the others. A friesan she supposed but she'd never seen one. It's feathered feet were truly magnificent and it's build was stunning. Not to mention the saddle and bridle. They were not overly done but simple enough to strike elegance in the stomach. It was more than elegant it was stunning.
She shrugged. "Blast him, he hasn't much right to glare at me. Isn't like I've ever done anything to him." She walked away into the crowd her grandmother watching a strange lost look on her face. Shayna didn't notice when a moment later she fell from the steps convulsing and then with one final shuddering sigh seesed to move. Nor did she know till much later that her grandma had left her alone in the world with no one else to turn to.
When she neared her wagon later the amount of people around it unnerved her so did the sight of the tall black horse from earlier.
Several of them turned towards her pity on there faces but she ignored them all a feeling of heavy dread on her heart as her steps so graceful lagged and stopped for a moment blackness creeping in. her tongue dried and her heart bled, then she was moving again slowly and hypnotically like always towards the flap and destinies cruel hand.
She brushed it aside stepping in with the help of a tall young man next to her. She didn't look at him.
Squinting in the dim light she found Hanah the healer next to the bed closing her grandmothers eyes and smoothing her face out to look pleasant. Shayna winced her face unchanging, her brilliant blue eyes dimming slightly. She wordlessly reached out and touched her grandmothers cold hand cringing inside. She could think of nothing to say, nothing to remember her last moments by.
Turning to the woman next to her she forced out a stiff sentence that came out graceful and smooth despite her inward turmoil. "bury her, quickly she would have wanted no fuss about her death." And then she turned like a caged animal and with a trembling hand swept back the curtian the same young man reaching to help her down and she met his eyes realizing curiously that he was the noble from earlier.
She walked stiffly down the path avoiding peoples concerned gazes and gestures towards her. Her stiff and always aloof manner stopping them from showing there sympathy in physical forms. She walked slowly and precisely her heart beating heavily sweat bathing her body again. Yet none of it showed. To the world she was cool and unnervingly calm.
To the world she looked uncaring and harsh.. To herself she was a heartbroken girl struggling in a world she didn't belong, they all watched her. Practically the entire gypsy camp, silently and pensively, Till she broke past the people and out of the town. She walked on through a meadow, up the road and out across into a forest. She finally stopped under a large tree and knelt down trembling fingers stroking the grounds cool touch. Her head tipped back. Eyes closed emotions racking through her.
Memories, pain, hatred,
It all came back wave upon wave. One following the other. Cascading like a mountian stream tumbling head over heels off a cliff. Like a wave dashing upon rocky shores. They slammed through her, her mouth open in a silent cry of pain.
Her mother, her father, her brother and her baby sister. Now her grandmother. One had followed the other. The circle of life breaking and leaving her after they,
She remembered the screams. The fright and the pain. Her mother fighting with a man. Richly dressed and decidedly noble. Her fingernails leaving streaks of red across his masked face. His henchmen stood watching silently. She cowering in a corner unnoticed could only stay still and watch. There was pain and there was blood and there was innocence shattered that night as she watched the cruel hand of lust take over.
She had hidden. Hand pressed to her mouth. Tears falling. Many said she had cried all her tears out in her life and had nothing left to give. Her mother died that night. Under the hand that had taken her. Shayna could do nothing. As he left he had casually kicked her little baby sister. Wailing in the corner shocked and afraid by the strangers around her to little to understand it all. Shayna had watched the heavy boot smash into the babies side and heard the whimper and the hurt screams. She had flung herself at her baby sister. But it was to late for her too.
Her father and brother came home shortly later and there had been great mourning. Then they had left seeking vengence and there bodies were found tortured and beaten by the road side the next day. Blood on there swords. Triumph on there faces. Shayna was alone. Alone shattered and frightened. Then she had met nallia, nallia, sweet sweet grandmother. Nallia had taken the bruised and tormented child in and patiently helped her through her life. Stopping the nightmares that racked the tortured soul. Soothing the pain and easing the memories. And now fate had torn her away to.
Shayna rocked back farther. Hair streaming down. Silent tears poured across her face dripping scalding hot onto her hands. Pain. It was all and it was nothing. She couldn't hold onto it and she couldn't cast it away. She needed it and she hated it. Emotions coursed through her blood. Memories reeled by, unchecked and unknown. Her mind whirled, her skin burned, her blood chilled. There was nothing and there was everything. All she had had and all she could no longer have. All she had remembered and and all she had yet to make. Hands clenched at her side. Muscles quivering, mouth open, worldess and cryless. Yet knowing pain. Knowing hurt and knowing hate...
She stretched and stood from her kneeling position. Her once numbed body now feeling the pain of cramped knees. , the cat stirred and stood with her looking up its great eyes seeming to understand. And yet demanding attention of it's own. She subconsciously reached and picked it up.
Crooning softly "Hello sayan, had a good sleep."
Her cat purred a deep and rumbling sound. She turned about head throbbing, heart dull and heavy. She didn't think and she didn't feel. She merely walked silently and swiftly back the way she had come.
The square was empty, the people were gone. Her wagon stood cold and silent near the edge of the grassy meadow. Other wagons clustered about it. A fresh mound of dirt drew her attention and she moved silently towards it. Slipping her sandals off of her feet and kneeling in the dry grass. She took out the rose in her hair and laid it ontop of all the other now slightly wilted flowers.
Her last tribute to a dead woman.
Then silently she moved away cat cradled in her arms. Face emotionless and still as a rock. She brushed back the flap on her wagon and avoiding the place where nallia had always slept she curled up next to it. Cat held to her chest and fell asleep.