Dragonfly Web: Whitestuff

Thirty | A Fast Group of Friends

That night Ciara stayed in the Hilltop camp and ate mushroom stew with wild carrots, onions and berries that were definitely not fuschia-coloured.

The fire smoked and burned in her eyes. Flames warmed her cheeks, and the popping and hissing sounds made her think about her relationship with Skye. Where was he now? Was he off by himself?

She had never expected to have the day she'd just had. She was far too tired to worry whether the students might not really want her to be there. But what a surprise. The opposite seemed to be true. They're nicer to me than Rondan was. And I guess I know now why he didn't want me around. But, I didn't expect this.

Some of them sat quietly near her to listen as she answered questions from the few who were brave enough to address the Proxy of Skye-Voice. They seemed really nice.

One student, called Nighe, actually moved spots to give her his best one.

After dinner, another girl offered her a handmade hairbrush she had brought from her home a long way off in the distant mountains. "Here."

"What's it made from?"

"Porqupai quills and goose feather spines."

"And you poked them all in there to make it a brush? Who put these beads on? This is too special. I can't take it from you!"

But the girl, Rakael looked desperate. "You would put it in there—" She pointed to the thick cover rolled round the handle that folded over the bristles. "—when you don't want to use it and you won't get hurt."

Ciara smiled. "Thank you. I will always remember how you must have made it. It's so clever."

"You can brush your Torgney with it, if you want, like we do sometimes with the moghorses after Rain Dance. They're getting wise to my grasswires, but I manage to slither up to their snouts when their behinds are turned to the rocks and catch 'em."

"Oh, what are those—?"

"Moghorses? We can still get one or two coming up when they climb high in the hills looking for sweet water nymphs for a good scratch on their backs. They get all itchy with the blue dot spurs, this time of year."

"And what do you do with them, then?"

"Sometimes I can convince them to stay around for a day or two. They don't want to at first, but I just blow blue bell pollen on them and soon they'll let me touch 'em—so I can scrape the sucking blue dots off. Then they like me just fine."

"Haha."

A really quiet sound came from Ciara's bag, that sounded like a sqeaked, "Blue bells!" from Walter, but then he was quiet.

"They make the good dye plants come," the girl went on. "They turn the ground all up with their feet and the dot spurs fall off and start a new crop. We make honey for the Story Fair, but mostly for grandma. She just likes it in tea. And the light flies will come and take some. It makes them shine blue."

"Wow. That's sounds really neat."

"Ya, they're pretty."

"Could I see one?"

"Only if you want to come up for a visit after the snow. They've come and they're gone now."

The Hilltop kids seemed more impressed by her presence than anything else, and even shy around her! Could they be? After supper she was shown where to sleep.

She was suddenly so tired she wouldn't have minded that the knots in her hair were too tangled at the back of her head for her to be able to get to, but the girl, Rakael and her younger friend, Majeeta helped to pull them out. Then she slept, and slept deeply.