((neatly penned in Lumi-kieli))
It has been two years since I came back in defeat from the southlands and I have not taken up the pen in all that time. Even now, I feel there is no reason, but my mother, she nags at me. She is worried for me. She says I have to stop moping and get on with my life.
So she pushes this old journal into my hands and tells me to write. She brushes the dust off my harp and tells me to sing. She drags me out of the ghoati to watch the sky-ribbons and tell stories of the people in the sky. She tries to put me to work cooking the things I made in the south, but we do not have the butter and the flour and the pork. She gives me charcoal and tells me to draw. She even asked me to sew.
And she finds people to try to get to court me; even now I am stuck in Kauppa-kohta selling candles to southern guests because there is a young fellow, a hunter, who seeks a mate and who is currently hunting in the forests of Taur Orthon, and who I am supposed to 'just give him a chance'. Last year there was a woman in Pynti-peldot who seemed quite taken with me, but I never felt anything. They were both perfectly nice. Maybe one day I will give in and marry someone, just to have it over with. But it would have to be someone who did not need me to love them, at least not in that way. I do not think that will ever happen for me again.
Papa, though... he just nods, and hugs me, and we sit together quietly. He must know what it would be like if he lost his love. Some people do find love again, but he and I are not that sort, I think.
For the first year I hardly wanted to leave the ghoati. Mother didn't even try to push me to visit the Great Lodge or go out to collect hillot, but when spring came last year, she started to entreat, then to insist. And I hated it, but little by little, it became normal again to be amongst people. Oh, they still do not like me. For so long I thought it was only because I was 'too much' but I no longer chatter, I am no longer so over-full of cheer and giggles. I no longer need to just be myself 'only not as much' - I am no longer 'much'. Being myself is not much of anything at all; I feel like I have been hollowed out. And still, I can make no friends. Mother says it is because I have gone too far the other way, being glum and mopey. She's probably right, of course. She always is.
With this spring, I am feeling like being out amongst people is almost normal, though like everything, it is joyless. I saw a few southern guests yesterday, and even sold one of them some candles and brokered a sale for Lassa the tailor; one of the small-folk needed furs and I managed to sell him on both furs and hides. There was one of the stone-folk too, but it wasn't Frimsi; he has not been to the northlands since last year, or if he has, no word of it has come to me. I suppose I want to see him as much in hopes he will have some word of her, as to see him for his own sake. And that is unfair and unkind of me; he has ever been a friend, at least after the fashion of his kind. But I never look upon the sky-ribbons without thinking of when I first showed them to her. The taste of honey is no longer sweet on my tongue, for it is her taste. There are no songs anymore that have any joy in them without her voice in them. And I cannot think to see him without my first question being if he knows what has come of her.
Probably she has found some other love. I hope she has. I hope she is happy. I hope someone else can give her what she should have.
Mother had better not read this. Imagine the lecture I would get if she read those last few paragraphs.
I will hardly be the first, nor the last, lonely old woman to live out her life simply plying some craft, tucked in the back corner of the ghoati, finding each sunrise only because it will come whether you want it or not, ultimately left to wither away in the company of nieces and nephews and their children who think of her as the old aunt who is always sad for no reason. Maybe mother could get used to that and accept it. I suppose papa and I have.
