Thunderheads loomed dark and distended over the North Bree-fields. A crisp wind nipped in from the west, sending the foxes burrowing, the grasses shivering. Somewhere far, far overhead, the sun shone.
“A bit late in the season for rain,” Elan said, trotting down the lane, Jessamy plodding docilely behind, “I suppose it’s all as well we’ve managed the threshing.”
Cuphir, a large crust of bread in his mouth, nodded. “Be good for the leafy bits,” he mumbled, “The cabbage, I mean. Extra crunch.”
Elan snorted loudly, kicking along a small, smooth stone with every clattering step. They’d need shoes soon, before the first frost. Cuphir swallowed his mouthful of bread and handed the rest to Elan, who slapped his hand away.
“Eat it, you pig,” she sighed.
The skies rumbled to the meter of Cuphir’s stomach. Recently, he’d come to realize that it was a dangerous thing to learn that hunger might be sated. He was hungry all the time now. He tucked the rest of the bread into his pocket.
As they crossed the dusty trench that marked the bounds of the farmstead, their little house swam into view. Beside the front stoop, a long line had been strung taut between three tall stakes. From this line hung a veritable forest of linens and trousers and tunics; every scrap of cloth on the farmstead, it seemed, had been put to the line and either beaten or scrubbed into submission.
“Look,” Elan said conversationally, “Those are my underthings blowing in the wind.”
Cuphir scowled, red in the face.
The growing wind twisted a pair of Halga’s trousers to the side, revealing a lanky figure in billowing shirtsleeves hastily snatching laundry down from the line. Elan laughed. It had become a happier sound, recently.
“D’you really think he’ll stay through winter?” she said, toeing the stone along with a hop and a skip.
Cuphir shrugged uncomfortably. “I dunno,” he replied, “He’ll probably have word next time he goes to town.” Quietly, he muttered, “I don’t think he’d want to stay, anyhow.”
“What do you mean?” Elan asked, brow furrowed.
“Would you want to stay here?” Cuphir returned, “If you had the choice, wouldn’t you rather be elsewhere?”
Elan turned away and looked up the hill, where Pick had crept out of the house and begun to clamber up the rough siding towards the roof. Halga burst through the door a moment later, reached for his brother, fell short, and shouted instead. Aeralhil, arms full of linens, turned sharply, staggered, and lunged across the yard in two long strides.
All the while, Pick climbed, and his burbling laughter sounded faintly across the field. Cuphir stiffened, on the verge of breaking into a run, but Elan placed a hand on his chest.
“Wait,” she demanded.
“What–” he protested, but even as he spoke, Aeralhil tossed the linens aside in a cloud of roughspun cloth and bounded off the stoop, snatching Pick down by the ankle before he could reach the lip of the thatched roof. In a jumble of limbs, they tumbled to the ground.
“Herþan,” Cuphir hissed in blind panic, but Pick was still laughing, still shrieking.
He watched Aeralhil sit up and set Pick neatly on his feet while Halga scampered about gathering up fluttering laundry in danger of escaping down the hill. Pick shook his head and squirmed out of Aeralhil’s grasp, but before he could make it another step, Aeralhil snatched him up again and swung him onto his shoulders. Laughter, high and low, rolled with the thunder across the fields as they trailed Halga through the yard, seizing stockings here, trousers there.
“Does that look like someone who’d rather be elsewhere?” Elan said, some sort of strange accusation in her voice. Before Cuphir could reply, she tugged Jessamy along and strode purposefully away, leaving him standing in the wind
