@Riorlyne pets
(I wrote one anyway - I hope that’s okay.)
Cerulean Blue
“Finest blue dyes, straight from Ajharakt! You won’t see a brighter blue this side of the Liftling Strait!”
Loni gasped and came to a halt before the cloth merchant, letting go of her mother’s skirt in her amazement. Never, she thought, had she seen such deep, vibrant colour imprinted on a humble piece of cloth.
“Did you cut a piece from the sky, mister?” she asked in a whisper, her eyes glued to his wares. The blue dazzled her; it was impossible to look away.
His booming laugh shook the stall and sent the lengths of fabric all a-quiver. “It’s the very finest bit of the sky, little lady. Across the sea in Ajharakt the sky is so close you can cut it,” he mimed the action, “with a pair of tailor’s shears.”
Suddenly a hand gripped Loni’s shoulder and she jumped. “Loni!” her mother scolded. “What have I said about staying beside me?”
“Oh Mamu, can I have…” Loni’s question died as she caught sight of her mother’s grim face. “I’m sorry.” She hung her head and took hold of her mother’s skirt again. They set off without another word.
“Do… do you like blue, Mamu?” Loni dared to ask as they measured out grain at the miller’s.
“We don’t have coin for that sort of thing,” her mother said stiffly. “You’ll have to wear Tula’s old dress if you need a new one. Put it out of your head, Loni.”
Loni tried.
She tried to put it out of her head that evening as she helped Tula wash the dishes. Tula’s old dress was just the colour of the soapy, used dishwater, she thought. She was certain there would never be a potato-peel stain on the sky.
She tried to put it out of her head the next morning as she helped her mother forage for greens in the woods beyond their house. Tula’s old dress was scratchy, too. Nothing like the sky’s silky cloudswept softness at all.
She tried to put it out of her head later in the afternoon as she ran to Aunt Gallien’s with a loaf of fresh bread and ironed laundry. Her mother was too busy to carry the other side of the basket, she had said, so Loni managed alone. She reckoned that Aunt Gallien’s place smelled like Tula’s old dress: steeped in sickly-sweet lavender and desperately needing the sunshine it hadn’t seen in three years.
And she tried to put it out of her mind as she trekked home again, foot-weary and dust-worn, until a flutter of colour caught her eye.
There was her sister’s old dress pegged to the washing line, looking for all the world like a wet corner of the sky dropped halfway down to earth. Loni gasped. She hardly noticed that it was the slightly muted blue from a crushed native plant and not the heady azure of the Ajharakt plains.
Her mother appeared from behind a skirt she was pegging. She met Loni’s gaze and smiled. Loni noticed a bright smudge on her mother’s cheek where she must have brushed away a tendril of hair.
Cerulean blue.
