Savages

8: Filth

It had been four days since they made the decision to go back to Albia, yet nothing had happened. It was like torture. The promise of Saint dangled in front of Sannah, almost close enough to brush with her fingertips, but it wasn't getting any closer.

She was antsy every day, waiting for Gaen to turn up, say, okay, get ready. Time to go. He didn't.

To make matters worse, it had been raining torrentially for two full days. The rain drenched everything, running in waterfalls off the roofs of the houses, in brown rivers around the walls.

If you stepped out in it for just a few seconds it left you slick, shivering, soaked to the bone. Whenever Sannah cracked open the door, their little settlement was deserted, everyone driven indoors by the unrelenting wet.

Sannah paced up and down, drip-drops echoing around her. Brown water pooled beneath the byre door, slowly snaking a thin, meandering journey across the earthen floor. The trickle looked rounded and solid in the dust, a glassy reflection of the fire wobbling in its spherical head.

"Are you going to see Gaen today?" Sannah called to Judit through the wooden wall of the byre. If she was, she could ask him what was going on, when they were finally going to go.

Judit didn't reply.

"Dit? Are you going to see Gaen and Merle?"

Still no reply. Sannah stepped over the puddle, opened the byre door. The whole entranceway was underwater.

"Judit?"

"Sannah! Stop skitting talking to me when I'm on the toilet!" Judit's voice came angry from behind the makeshift curtain that separated their ersatz bathroom. "Can't it wait?"

"Sorry." Sannah stepped back, hanging on the byre door to avoid the puddle. "Are you, though?"

"Sannah!" Judit howled.

Sannah still hung on the door, waiting for an answer to her question. She could see the white light of the solar lantern peeping out from under the bathroom curtain. It flickered, and went off.

"Skitting hell!" Judit screamed. That had been happening a lot. They hadn't had much sun recently.

"I'll get you a candle," Sannah said helpfully. "Wait a sec."

"Thanks." Judit's anger relented. "Can you bring me some more water, please, too?" She was quiet for a moment in the darkness. "And my menstrual cup?"

Sannah hopped away from the door quickly. Getting your period here was licit the worst. Their 'bathroom' was just a bucket with a curtain nailed around it for privacy. They had no toilet paper, instead taking a little plastic container of water to wash themselves with whenever they used the toilet.

Sannah had got used to the water—it actually felt cleaner than tissue, now—but the whole logistics of washing yourself, then the container, then your hands in another container, then washing that container—when you didn't have running water, and had to get it all from the well, then empty it outside—was a skitting nightmare.

Then, to make matters worse, you had to take the toilet-bucket to the big communal hole they'd dug to dump it in. It was licit the worst job ever. Sannah was always mortified, convinced she'd bump into someone on the way, like, don't mind me! I'm just carrying a big open bucket of my own excrement! Yep, that's some period blood mixed in there! Ugh. The worst.