Destiny

Chapter Twelve - Dawn

Eyllene had avoided Dawn.

She would leave early in the morning for her work and come back later in the evening. Dawn saw Eyllene's exhaustion and didn't press for any further details regarding their previous talk. Truthfully, Dawn felt notes of betrayal and chose not to speak to her aunt for some time until the grudge dissociated.

"I would have liked it if you'd stayed home until the winter illness ceases. There has been a lot of villagers admitted to the physician. I am afraid it is quite contagious," Eyllene said that morning and with that she left for another wearisome day at the infirmary.

Dawn worried for her aunt. Every time Eyllene left through the front door she would feel heavy weight placed at her chest. The girl wished her Aunt wasn't a nurse but a market worker or a fruit picker or a baker at the local bakery. Some occupation that hadn't involved contagious illnesses, animalcules or rude patients.

If Eyllene could cease being a nurse, the aunt and the niece could have been fruit preservers or herbal tea producers. After all, Eyllene was the one who taught Dawn all the secrets of herbs, flowers and plants.

Deciding to stick to her Aunt's exhortation, Dawn tidied the kitchen, clinking with plates and polishing metal cutlery, sweeping crumbs from the floor into a shovel.

Whilst Dawn was kneading dough for a meat pie, her thoughts kept drifting away to the times when Eyllene taught her the perfect dough method. It was all about the timing and pressure applied to the dough. Dawn had to apply just enough pressure with the bony part of her palm.

Dawn was just a little girl of around eight winters. One of her friends, Lily, who used to live next door, was the only daughter of Springville's baker, Johan. Lily liked to come around when Eyllene and Dawn were baking because, unlike her own father, Eyllene allowed the girl to play with bread dough and experiment with pastry fillings.

Lily wasn't allowed to stay overnight or walk around the village with Dawn, therefore girls would spend their time together either in the kitchen, baking, or in the garden, watering the plants and trying to grow pear trees.

Sometimes, Neala would join the girls as well, whenever she wasn't occupied with her parents' fruit and vegetable selling. She lived diagonally from Dawn's little cottage, and her from time to time Dawn would catch Neala's older brother looking through his bedroom curtains at night when Dawn would be preparing for bed.

Silence. Occasional crack of wood logs in the fireplace. Wind howling outside, seeping through window frames.

Neala had wed a blacksmith in Fairenville and was content last time Dawn had seen her in the village. However, Lily was married off to a man in Wolfbourgh. Dawn had never seen the man before, and from what Lily had told her, he was her father's flour main supplier. It was no doubt that he was much older than Lily, around the same age as her father, and Dawn's stomach turned at the prospect of that.

When the sun was starting to set, hiding behind the tree line of the forest, Dawn sat down by the window. Eyllene was due to come back any time soon, and a steamy hearty pie was waiting to be eaten for dinner.

Eyllene baked the same meat pie every winter back when Dawn was a little younger. Steamy vegetables, tongue-burning meat and the stretch of goat cheese warmed their evenings as they sat by the window and giggled at the slurping sound each of them made. Eyllene would then tuck Dawn into her bed, pulling the covers to her chin, and laid beside until the girl fell asleep.

☽☽ ☆ ☾☾

It had been awhile since Dawn saw Aedan. Almost twenty days passed, she counted. For almost twenty days she tried reading his journal, but so far the only thing she was able to read were his plant drawings.