Date: 1058 Month 6

“This is a lovely garden,” an unexpected voice told Denel.

Denel looked up, reminding herself not to flinch. Birka looked tall from her kneeling position. Denel was an average height, but next to the snow-unicorn rider’s willowy figure, even standing, she felt short. She also felt unfashionably plump, to say nothing of colorless. Birka had the most amazing blue eyes, like winter skies or lake water, and flawless vibrant skin that didn’t need the slightest touch of rogue. Her hair was brown, a rich glossy brown that reminded Denel of a chest of drawers her mother had owned, with hints of golden grains in the right light. The sunlight drifting through the fruit trees was apparently the right light, and Birka’s hair was haloed around her face, brushed loose in the style of the upper classes.

“Thank you,” Denel said, rising and brushing the dirt from her knees. She tried not to resent the beautiful woman’s presence. “These are rather commonplace gardens,” she said, her diplomatic conversation skills taking over when her brain presented nothing more interesting to say. “The gardens of Tur Myan are much grander, but I suppose you did not have time to see them while you were there.”

Birka was wearing the dress that the house tailor had thrown together in a fit of inspiration, modeled after a society walking dress with strong influence from the fur-trimmed design of the tunic she had arrived in. Denel stifled a sigh of envy; she’d certainly never inspired any tailor. She was wearing her oldest dress, an average cut of ordinary length, in an unexciting grayish dye, and she was acutely aware of the dirt beneath her fingernails.

The dark-haired woman was nodding solemnly. “I saw them briefly,” she said. Even her voice was lovely. “I prefer of this garden.” Her accent had improved, these last few weeks.

Denel happened to agree. The Tur Myan gardens were grand, open, ostentatious and perfectly manicured. Denel liked her roses spilling unclipped over short stone walls and clustered around antique looking fountains, not trimmed into uniform shapes with identical, evenly placed blossoms. She preferred the wild, cluttered, private garden that she had designed, no matter how un-grand it was. It was her haven, the only part of her life that she could shape as she willed. She found herself wanting to shriek hysterically, grab up a shovel and chase Birka from her garden, but Denel only picked up her trowel and nodded politely. “I find it more restful here,” she said agreeably. But it didn’t feel restful now. Now that Birka was here.

Denel was used to feeling common next to the women that visited the house. She had as much of a pedigree as any of them, but she knew that she didn’t have that same self-confidence and poise. She was used to watching Jerumal eye them appreciatively, and smile when they made clever remarks.

‘I wish…’ Denel found herself thinking. But wishes were useless.

Birka was looking with interest at a branch from one of the fruit trees. Denel wanted nothing less, but she knew her duty as lady of the house, and she moved to draw the woman into conversation. “Those are shiffas,” she explained. “They are very much like apples, but softer, and sweeter. I had clippings brought up from the jungles in the south.” She reached up and plucked a ripe one, a perfect yellow orb with a star pattern on the bottom. She had watched that particular shiffa ripen, and had been waiting some time to taste it. Birka was a guest, though, so she handed the fruit to her.

The dark-haired woman took it curiously, and toyed with it a moment.

“Here are the ladies of the house!”

Denel turned with Birka to smile at her husband, who granted her an obligatory return smile and beamed at Birka. He was dressed in state robes, fresh from Merchant Guild Assembly, and he looked his usual dashing self.

Birka, in return, smiled warmly. “Your wife is showing me of your Southern fruits.”

“Perhaps your snowy will enjoy the taste of them,” Jerumal suggested. “I have come to tell you that the workers have finished the pens. Would you like to come and inspect them?”

With a flip of her loose hair, Birka smiled agreement. “I would like that,” she purred.

Jerumal offered her an arm, and turned back to Denel. “Darling?”

Denel wondered if she imagined the coolness that crept into his tone with the word. She shook her head with perfect politeness. “I have work to finish here before the evening meal,” she said evenly. She forced the corners of her mouth upwards into a smile. “And I admit I have not gotten over my fright of your large creatures, Birka.”

It was offered as light humor, something they could chuckle together over, but Jerumal only looked vexed. Birka smiled warmly at Denel, a friendly smile. “I have seen nothing close to their size here,” she returned peacefully. “As a child, I had a great fright of them myself.”

‘As a child,’ Denel echoed bitterly to herself.

“Come,” Jerumal said coaxingly. “I have promised Dramin that you would be right out and I would hate to disappoint him.” He nodded once at Denel and, with Birka on his arm, strolled away through the fruit trees to the garden gate, which he held chivalrously for the woman. She was lightly tossing the shiffa, and Denel wondered if she would feed it, un-tasted, to her great gray snow-unicorn.

Denel looked achingly back at her work, wishing the parting image of them hadn’t been captured so clearly in her memory, as if it had been frozen between time crystals. He smiled at Birka, as he’d never smiled at her, and Birka smiled back, warmly, and no smile on that face could look less than sultry.

She glanced up at the shiffa branch, and the bare place where the fruit had hung. It was the only exotic fruit in her garden. Jerumal had often frowned at her plants as being ordinary things. Once he’d brought her a selection of jungle plants from the southern places. All of the plants but the shiffa had died the first winter, despite Denel’s best efforts, and Jerumal had never brought her plants as a gift again.

Denel sighed as she knelt again in the disturbed soil.

Birka was beautiful, and exotic, and interesting, and undeniably clever. Beside that woman, Denel was commonplace, slow and dull. And Jerumal wasn’t fond of commonplace things.