Valdyis galsin

I’m still not quite sure what happened, but we’ve had an exciting day or two. Of course, the day started exciting enough, with me having Moyri in my bed, a bit rumpled and sleepy and tousle-haired and cuddly. Strange… Her muscles are as hard as steel, her skin as taut as a drum, she’s mostly as cool as several oranges, and even when she’s sweaty as a swamp, she feels like she’s not turning a sweat, if you get what I mean. Compared to her, even though everybody is always surprised by the strength in my arms, which comes from kneading sweet dough, well, I’m fluff. Soft, squishy fluff. But if that’s what Moyri likes, I’m happy with that! I offered to get her breakfast in bed, but she insisted on getting up and being about. I thought she might’ve wanted to stay out of sight of her journeymen orderlies (is that the right word? They are in the order, so they must be orderly?) for a bit, feeling a bit embarrassed, but she got up pretty soon after me. Maile was making pancakes, and I started filling the pancakes with greens, sheep’s cheese, pepper and some drips of honey. […]

First we took in Maile, the daughter of the farmers up-hill with whom I have an agreement for herbs, mint, fruit and food in general. She wanted to become my apprentice sweet-maker, and pretty soon had a couple of friends in the street. That made the house nicely busy, and having an apprentice meant that Aldan could go back to working as a bouncer in the Piebald Carrack, where he hoped to pick up more information. And then one evening we met a man, Fian astin Rhydin, who was looking for his daughter. She had disappeared a couple of months before, and he refused to believe she had simply gotten lost in the woods, or eaten by a wolf or something like that. Said he was sure he would have found traces if that had been the case, so he was travelling along the coast looking out for any hint about what happened to her. I am horribly afraid that she never even got to Selday. If I were an evil-doer eager to abduct valdie sangha kids, and let’s be frank, that has happened quite a bit, when the emperor in Ashas was as crazy as he was and the […]

Why are these Valdyans so, so, so incredibly ARROGANT!?!?!? Yes, yes, I know. I come from a pretty weird place. I wouldn’t go home if you gave me a pound of first-rate pearls. I know I was born here, in this country, and I’ve seen the King and met the Queen. But why are they always so sure their way is the right way? Answer me that, Anshen! I mean, why didn’t the King have himself crowned Emperor of the City after he’d conquered our City? I’m all for women being boss, but leaving your sister and her wife to play queens to some Iss-Peranian lounge lizard, and not even honouring the City by becoming its Emperor after conquering it, that’s almost, well scratch that, that’s kind of insulting, isn’t it? As if the first and foremost City of the world is just another place where people live, fuck, bear children and die. It’s the City, dammit. And nobody seems to understand what that means… And in the meantime, here I am, preparing sweets, pastry filling and feeding my apprentice and my — what should I call him? He lives here, helps out a bit, has his own job, gets […]

And just when I thought we couldn’t be happier… I made Aldan furious with me! Our house/workshop/shop was all finished, cleaned and we had lots of help from neighbours and friends from all over Selday to put in all the furniture. The workshop was in a fine state, my ingredients mostly still fresh and usable, the kitchen clean and the stove with its weird top and doors great for cooking on — though an open fire without doors feels better when it comes to praying. Our bedroom was cozy, the shop had its shelving done, and Aldan told me his bedroom upstairs, for when someone else would be sleeping with me, was all right as well. So, I spent some time making the first batches of various candies, and agreed with the nearest baker to make the pastry that I would fill with my lemon-cream filling. Soon, the nicest smells came from our house, and we had customers almost immediately. And not only that, Aldan agreed to take samples of the pastries down to the inns at the waterfront, and we got a good fixed agreement to supply the one he works for, the Piebald Carrack! With quite a good […]

Well… If this isn’t bliss, then I don’t know what bliss is! I woke up this morning with not just one, but two handsome young men in bed with me, and with me in the middle! Not that we had done anything but sleep, you know, but it was still a pleasant surprise! (Besides, I don’t think that making love with two men at the same time can, you know, actually work, because everyone has got only one mouth to kiss with.) It was a bit of a pity that Ram was already too late for work, so he had to run. And we’d only slept, because the other man was Aldan, and besides, I was so sleepy after the theatre night! But I should start earlier. Of course, we were a bit bored, because while our house was being almost rebuilt, we had almost nothing to do. One night, Aldan was working in the Red Cockerel, and I was so bored with hanging around in an inn among drunk or almost-drunk people that I went to visit our backyard neighbour, the doctor. I asked him, did he have any books for me to study, and I spend a couple […]

Selday is fun! I’ve met this half-Iss-Peranian-half-Valdyan boy. But that comes later. Let me marshall my thoughts. So, we were waking up in the hay loft of the farm up the mountain, and I went into the kitchen after having washed (they have two sources of water here: one pumped up from underneath the mountain, and that water is brackish, and one brought down from the river in a pipe, which is sweet; washing is done with the brackish water) to help prepare breakfast for Aldan. (Too much text inside brackets again, dash it.) I got to chat with Aine about herbs and stuff, and she showed me her garden, which is gorgeous! It’s so big, and so well-organized, with vegetables, fruit, medicinal herbs and kitchen herbs each in their own place, placed to catch the right amount of sun and shade, watered with the sweet water from the river. I not only hired one of her sons to help me prepare my garden, but also made a deal with her to supply us with what we would need until my garden, next year, was up to scratch. After breakfast, which was very good and pleased Aldan, we were shown […]

Written in a little farmer’s village on top of the white cliffs of Idanyas. It was quite a pleasant voyage, as far as we could tell. Of course, neither of us had ever been out to sea, but Cook and I were a good team, and he even asked me whether I didn’t want to stay around for the whole trip. It wasn’t going to be too long, Captain Sinaya didn’t intend to make a full eight — whatever that might mean. Aldan had nothing more to do than holystone the deck, but I had lots of fun. I felt a bit guilty about that, but on the other hand, Cook also had lots of fun. The white cliffs, well, they are white. And when they came into ken, as I believe the expression is, after the days and days of marshland, we knew we had almost arrived at our destination. Selday! Selday turned out to be a smallish town, stuck to a soup bowl like cut into those cliffs like porridge to a toddler’s face. Mostly wood, a castle on top of the cliff, a white villa half-way the  cliff, shipyards to the south, and quays in the middle. […]

It is very hard to write when swaying in a hammock, a hammock which now and then bumps into the next hammock, or into the partition wall. There are two hammocks in what is a little room without a door in the belly of the ship, one is mine, one is Aldan’s. We’re finally on our way to Selday. And I haven’t managed to kiss commander Moyri again! The morning I woke up in Moyri’s bed, we woke up much too early! There was no time for a reprise, because she had to do commander stuff, and Aldan and I had to go to Maile’s island. It had been a pretty grand night, and I for sure hope that Moyri’s subordinates will be in a forgiving mood today, because their commander certainly isn’t going to be at her sharpest. In the boat to Maile’s island I mostly slept — since I hadn’t slept much, if at all, that night. So I missed most of Essle’s scenery — celebrated or notorious, I’m not sure of the right adjective. When we were close to arriving at our destination, Aldan woke me up. I had fallen asleep in his lap. The island is […]