On the eve of the day of Anshen, we all went to High Penedin, on the other side of the lake. It’s quite a trip, over two hours with donkey and cart. It’s the only time the doctors take off, every other week — the other week it’s Serla and her fiance who go. Half-way we stopped, ate a bit of food, looked out over the lake at the town and chatted.

And when we arrived, there were already people there who were going to put up the four of us: me, Leva, Arni and Merain. Arni and Merain slept in the stable loft of the farm, which was a bit outside the village, together with all the donkeys, mules and the dog, Monster. Leva and me, we helped out preparing the dinner. We had brought some tasty stuff from town, and a jar of good wine, but honestly, everything is nicer in this village than it is in Tylenay itself.

There were a bunch of children at the farm, Rava the farmer herself, her husband Arin and about a dozen farmhands, so there was a lot of work in the kitchen!

In the evening, we went out for dancing in the village green, next to the Temple. The musicians were actually placed inside the Temple wall, but carefully not in the vegetable plots or the herb plots. And we spent most of the night after that talking with our hosts. I seem to remember that, apart from the recipes we exchanged, we talked about deep and important things, but the next morning I couldn’t remember a thing.

Cider is insidious stuff!

In the morning, there was a short prayer around a fire for Anshen, and after that, the school people went to inspect the village’s water works, while I went out to the fields with Rava, because day of Anshen or not, the goats needed to be milked, the beds weeded and the food for tonight harvested.

Actually, working with my hands was a lot of fun, even though I got really dirty, and I’ll need to go to a pharmacy to get some really good oil to make my fingers smooth again. I rely on those fingers of mine for the precise work of crafting unforgeable documents, after all.

Leva came back with Tarn, the person who had designed the waterworks. He’s a bit older than us, and terribly shy, but he promised to come with us to Veray to give the craft school a try. His days in Valdis weren’t a success, but we promised we knew someone who could take him in, close to the school, and that we’d fetch him in the mornings.

And in the evening we went back to town, where we arrived just before dusk turned into dark.