Donkeyskin - ON HOLD

Of Friendship

*Of Friendship*

        Elodie spent the night in the loft of Ninon and Birch's cottage, curled on a lumpy straw mattress that felt like heaven after weeks of sleeping on the hard ground. She hardly minded the scratchiness of the bits of straw poking through the worn cover.

        She woke at her usual time, before dawn. Ninon and Birch were still asleep in the bedroom off the kitchen, so Elodie climbed quietly down from the loft, shaking out the dress Ninon had leant her-she'd fallen asleep before taking it off-and shut the kitchen door behind her.

        The kitchen fire had gone out, but there was a small woodpile off to one side, and a flint and kindling at the other. Elodie knelt by the fire, and scraped the ashes into a pail half-full of ashes from past fires.

        She'd built enough campfires during the last few weeks to have figured out how to build a good, strong fire, so she was fairly sure she wouldn't burn down the cottage around their ears.

        She stacked the wood, leaning the kindling around the log, pyramid style, and lit it, grinning triumphantly. At least, this morning, she could do some of the chores for Birch and Ninon, to thank them for taking her in, and helping her out of a pinch.

        With the fire crackling merrily in the hearth, Elodie straightened and looked around. Birch and Ninon were still asleep, the house perfectly silent and dark.

        The windows in the kitchen were closed and shuttered. Elodie pried open the heavy wooden shutters, securing them in place, and glanced outside.

        The farmyard glittered in the early morning sun, frost shimmering on every surface, turning the world a beautiful, brilliant silver. Everything was quiet and peaceful, so different from the rain-washed night before.

        Elodie cast about for an excuse to go outside, and found an empty bucket by the doorway. In the mudroom, her donkeyskin cloak had dried, so Elodie whirled it around her shoulders and slipped outside, bucket in hand.

        The cold nipped and teased at her skin, dancing around her, wind tugging at her hair, at her clothes, making her feel alive and brilliant in a way she'd not felt since the night her mother died.

        The well, like everything else, was covered in a delicate silver frost that melted beneath her touch. Hooking the bucket onto the pulley, Elodie realized that a light coating of ice had spread over the water in the well.

        Instead of gently lowering the bucket into the water, she let it smash down onto the ice, breaking through to the water below.

        The bucket full, she heaved it up to the surface, and lugged it back to the house. Birch came out as she pulled off the donkeyskin in the mudroom.

        "Mornin', lass," he said, taking the bucket from her hand. "Found 'er, Ninon!" he called into the kitchen, and Elodie heard his wife's answering laugh.

        "Breakfast in ten!" she called back as Birch set the bucket down inside the door and Elodie squished past him into the kitchen.

        Elodie lurked in the doorway, watching Ninon stir a pot of porridge on the fire, and felt, more than ever, useless. She did not know how to cook porridge, or bake bread, or even make stew. She knew nothing about household chores, nor even, really, about herbalism or animals.

        Finally, pressed by a need to do something with herself, something that didn't make her feel like a useless lump, she cleared her throat. "Beg pardon, Ninon? Do you need help?"