Her eyes slowly opened, brilliant green wide eyes the color of emeralds or the green, green grass that grew in the gardens during the all too brief months of spring and summer. They were slitted. Like a cats, people would always say. Even after all this time, she couldn't help roll her eyes when someone said that. It was so...cliché. Obvious.
Obvious or not, it was still pretty accurate. Like a cats, Silmaria's eyes were slitted, sure. They also saw incredibly well in the dark. The room was near pitch black; the candles had already burned down to nothing, and the fire in the tiny, pathetic excuse for a hearth in the corner of the room was out as well, leaving nothing but the barest remaining glow from the embers, and the very first rays of sun peeking meekly through the cracks of the room's stone slab walls.
Silmaria threw the threadbare cover off and sat up. She stretched, yes, catlike, arching her back and wriggling briefly, then glancing around the darkened room with clear seeing eyes. None of the other girls were awake yet. Good, she thought; most of them she couldn't stand to begin with, and the few she could would hog all the water. The young woman rose gracefully to her feet, silent and careful. She quickly threw on one of her plain scratchy woolen dresses, more for the sake of warmth than modesty, before gingerly stepping around and between and even over the other women sprawled in their pallets in the small servant's quarter.
Quietly, Silmaria padded down the sleeping halls, the cold stone under her bare feet, causing the short, sleek hair of her pelt to raise all over her body. The halls at the back of the Manor were a maze, twisting and winding and leading to a multitude of servant's quarters, washrooms, storage cubbies, broom closets, larders, pantries, and other dusty and neglected nooks. But Silmaria knew the Manor well and could have found her way even without her night-eyes. She pushed a door open, wrinkled her nose at the screech of the old hinges, and stepped out into the only-just-barely dawning air outside. The cold rushed over her even more frigidly than in the empty halls inside.
Wanting to spend as little time out in the cold as possible, Silmaria sprang to the small stone well to the left of the door and set to pumping water into a much used wooden bucket. It was hard work; this early in the morning and this close to winter the pump took an agonizingly long time to get the frigid water moving. The Gnari girl was persistent though, and working the pump kept the chill at bay. At last, her beat up old bucket was full. She hefted it carefully; in need of a washing or not, she had no desire to get drenched out here in the cold. A careful nudge pushed the door open, then closed once more.
Silmaria was almost feeling awake and in a halfway good mood as she rounded the corner to the corridor leading back to the washroom adjacent to her quarters.
"Sil, drop the pail and get your narrow ass in here," A familiar voice called just moments after she passed the main kitchen.
Silmaria blanched and for fleeting moment she considered walking on as if she'd heard nothing. But it would be pointless; Cook would only raise her voice and scream after her until the whole Manor was springing wide eyed from bed. Turning, she kept her bucket of water still clutched hopefully in her hand.
She really didn't want to see Cook this morning. Sure, she would rather see Cook than just about anyone else in the Manor, but she didn't want to see anyone this early in the morning.
Cook stood in the door of the kitchen, her large, round form blocking most of the light from the kitchen fires crackling behind her. Cook had been working the kitchen at the Manor longer than Silmaria had been living. So long that most people half believed Cook really was her name. She had short, wiry brown hair gone gray, a plain face that scowled frequently but smiled well when someone made the old lass laugh, and an abundance of hip and bosom that made Silmaria's own, which were amply generous to anyone's appreciative eye, look like a girl barely in bloom.
Cook's old apron was already heavily caked in flour from the first batch of bread she'd already sent into the oven, and a similar film of the white powder was splotched all the way up to the elbows of her heavy arms. Her hands were strong and worn from many a year of kitchen work, and presently planted on her hips as she absently tapped a big wooden ladle on the thigh of her dress, missing the apron completely.
"My ass isn't really all that narrow," Silmaria replied wryly. She silently hoped Cook would relent and leave her be even as she knew there was no chance. Her bath was slipping further away by the moment.
"I've enough backside for three of you!" Cook quipped. "In the kitchen! Now!"
Silmaria sighed. She knew it was useless to argue; Cook was as relentless a woman as ever lived and if she had her mind set on Silmaria helping in the kitchens, she wasn't likely to give the a girl a moment of peace until she complied. Which normally wouldn't have been a problem. Silmaria didn't mind helping Cook with kitchen duties; on the contrary, of all her duties and tasks and work at the Manor, kitchen duty was one of the most enjoyable to her.
Most any day she would have gone readily. Only...Silmaria had a well-known stubborn streak of her own. And it was too early for people to be ordering her about already. Even Cook. Especially Cook.
And...her bath...
"But...my bath..." Even to Silmaria it sounded little more than a halfhearted, grumpy complaint. It was all she really had the energy for this early in the morning.
"Bath nothing! Taleesha is abed with fever and Tomar was sent to the fields to help with the last of the harvest. There's no one else and I'm not about to feed this whole bloody house on my own. And you haven't had kitchen duty in longer than I can spit! Get your mangy hide in here!"
"My hide isn't mangy! Now move if you want my help. My ass may be narrow, but it's not going to get itself into your kitchen if yours keeps taking up all the doorway!" Silmaria snapped. She let her bucket drop to the floor ungently, sending water sloshing over the side to the stone floor. She stomped her way to the kitchen, taking some small satisfaction in her little protest. She would help, and she wouldn't complain about it. But if she were going to be separated from her bath to go sweat and labor in the kitchen all day, she damn sure wasn't going to act glad about it!
Cook just let out a cackle of laughter and walked back into the kitchen; the old woman was well used to Silmaria and her dispositions. The Gnari girl's moods were as bright and warm as summer's sun, and likewise as dark and frigid as a moonless winter night. Silmaria could be prickly at times true enough, and frequently guarded. But she never meant much harm by her grumblings and no matter what black mood might take her, she would work hard through them.
And work hard through her sulk she did. She pulled the first batch of bread from the oven and as Cook prepared a vast amount of porridge, Silmaria set to making a second batch of bread. She beat at the dough on her board with her fists, kneading it with energy and purpose, heedless of how much flour dusted her worn out dress. After the dough was set aside to rise she took a large joint of venison from the larder and skewered the meat upon a spit, then pushed it over the central fire to roast. This done, she helped Cook prepare small griddle cakes.
As it often did, Silmaria's bad mood lifted quickly. She and Cook worked together and she laughed at the older woman's crass jokes, her own wicked humor coming out as they worked over the cooking fires. The two made jests at each other's expense and laughed easily together. Cook was too old and had done too much living to have much in the way of shame or decency left. Silmaria, on the other hand, simply had too sharp and loose a tongue for her own good. With just the two of them there they could speak and laugh plainly without worrying about the judgment of the other servants, most of whom snatched at gossip the way the dogs snatched at kitchen scraps. Not that either of them cared overmuch what their fellows thought of them.
