Snowblind {complete}

Dry - Adapt

Lanna hated mornings. With a groan she rolled off her sleeping mat and glowered at the beams of the hut. She could still smell the green wood's sap. They would need to rebuild with seasoned timber once they could afford it. The hard-packed earth below her felt dry and level. Almost like her yurt back in the south, except there was less ice on the inside in the morning.

'Lanna, get up.' Her mother bashed a spoon against the cooking pot that sat astride the firepit. 'You're last to rise yet again.'

Lanna shrugged her thin woollen blanket from her shoulders and wriggled to her knees, rubbing her face to alleviate the numb sensation. The hot nights were too warm to sleep covered, but the biting insects seemed to love her exposed skin. The locals burnt a resin to keep the bugs out their homes. Perhaps next dry season they could barter for some.

'Sorry, Ma,' she muttered and glanced around. As the males were absent, she didn't use the bamboo screen in the corner, stripping off where she knelt instead. She glanced down at herself. Her ribs no longer protruded and her belly had rounded, the hollow of her stomach gone. Weeks of good food had also padded out her hips and arms. Village Eight-Nine-Two ensured they ate well.

Lanna had a day of threshing ahead. Her Southern body allowed her to work beyond the endurance of the local women who had been separating rice grain from stalk all their lives. What she lacked in technique, Lanna made up for in brute strength.

Mika joked that Lanna was part ox – or at least that's what Lanna thought she'd said. Mika sometimes forgot to slow her speech.

Lanna pulled her cotton tunic over her head, another donation from the headman, Mika's father.

Her mother thrust a bowl of rice and some sort of mashed vegetable at her, scooped from a pot that lay in the bed of sand that surrounded the central firepit. Having an open fire in the hut was familiar, though it made the temperature unbearable when they cooked the evening meal. There was a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, though it also let the insects in, it was better than trying to keep a fire going outside, especially when the wet season arrived.

Lanna scooped the meal into her mouth. Food was food. No one from the clans wasted it, even if it was tasteless mush. None of them had yet mastered the stick-like eating implements the villagers used. Lanna couldn't see the point. The sticks slowed down eating and food risked getting dropped. What was wrong with her hands?

A month in the village and Freya still couldn't cook with the new ingredients. Lanna would have to learn if she hoped to get a chosen one here. Her stomach churned at the thought. That would be a consideration later, after she mastered the language. She didn't need the additional task of finding a partner as well as learning how to be a good Imperial, making herself useful and trying to communicate.

Bouncing up, Lanna kissed her mother on her weatherworn cheek.

Freya chuckled with a warm smile. 'I'll join you for stook gathering. The chemist wants to see me first.'

'Not sure he can help, Ma – your feet smelt before you got rot.' Lanna ducked away from her mother's attempt to spank her and skipped out the hut, giggling.

The bright morning light stabbed her eyes; she hissed and narrowed her gaze as she searched for her sandals. The wooden shoes had taken some getting used to. Nowhere near as comfortable as hide boots. She tapped the sandals on the ground, smiling at the hollow sound.

A familiar sensation shivered her spine, like she was being watched, and Lanna turned, her movements deliberate and slow, memories of a fangcat racing to the front of her mind. Her smile died as she shifted her weight, legs braced. The scars across her back stung with remembered pain.