the splits


Her eyes opened to daylight and she looked down to see two reedy arms twined about her middle. Meanwhile Raoghnailt pulled in flush from behind, healed her hold and sighed whilst Gormglaith gazed at the skeinish blue veins under her skin. Later their arms were jumbled loosely. Gormglaith nestled her head on a big pillow, the left side of which was deeply embroidered, the other half swan-white. Raoghnailt watched her with sleepy eyes, face puffy from slumber, red-streaked flaxen hair tumbling in tangles to chalken cheeks. Her smell was braided with the sharp, sweet and sour edges of cairmeal and slattag ghlass as periwinkle blue eyes keened and they stared at each other in a wraithen hush.

Raoghnailt squirmed and with witchy grin threw aside black cotton, leapt from the staddle and darted across the smooth feldspar floor on her toes with neach longstockings much rumpled and rimpled from sleep to speak the tumbling words meant for a house robot bringing breakfast.

Sitting up in a stretch, Gormglaith looked through windows glazed here and there with panes of blue, green and yellow at a treeless, misty slope of windblown purple heather. Walking to the low sill she stopped still to eye half a dozen black and dashing, white-swathed magpies hopping quickly sideways in the grass nearby, their wings barely open.

"Three for plighting," she whispered, "...four for a birth," then peered over at a sheltered indigo swimming pool also aproned in black feldspar with tall, swaying breck and faiyr beyond. Five naked scollagyn bobbed and swam like wan trout in the shaded, sparkly water. One clambered up a six-yard diving ledge, held out her arms, flew off, spun thrice and knifed in with hardly a splash.

"I like to swim," said Raoghnailt coming up beside her, "but I paddle like a catfish and dive like a tern."

"I've been likened to an oghtapus..." Gormglaith said, nodding as she watched the maegden swim nimbly underwater for the pool's length then pull herself out with a single thrust.

Raoghnailt brightened.

"I like oghtapuses!"

They giggled.

"What time is it, anyway?"

Raoghnailt looked at the sky.

"An hour after noon, I reckon."

The cart-like robot came with berries, droops, scones, seeds, two tumblers of rowanberry and a bighty black pitcher of hot chocolate. They smirked as this quirksome gadget warily scanned the ruffled staddle and with quite a wobble set a tray on the edge. Raoghnailt helpfully put it in the middle.

"This is spog," she said, pouring two mugs of purple chocolate then biting hungrily into a flaky scone.

"It's from Fen Glioon."

Gormglaith nodded, mouth also full of scone. Raoghnailt took a dripping big red boxberry and crushed it in a ruddy burst among bright white teeth whilst Gormglaith ate a blue plum.

Raoghnailt held up another boxberry. Gormglaith reached for it but the scollagyn's eyes narrowed as she shook her head and nudged it into the chary maegden's mouth, withdrew wet thumb and forefinger then sucked them dry and raised a mug of chocolate. Gwenhwyfer breezed into the Heathering as this saga spun out, her yellow, white freaked hair fluorescing in the afternoon light.

"Hey y'all!" she said with a wide awake, broad smirk.

"Hi Gwenhwyfer," they called singsong, more or less together.

Gwenhwyfer plopped onto thick cotton and slid by her knees to the tray.

"I like these," she said, taking a blue plum.

The three munched wordlessly.

"So... was it a fallain fall morning's sleep?" Gwenhwyfer asked, eyes crinkling and shifting from Raoghnailt to Gormglaith as she drank from Raoghnailt's tumbler.

Gormglaith nodded, sipping chocolate.

"How 'bout thee?"

"Slept like a stone. I must have done anyway, can't recall a bloody thing. So Gormglaith, Tegan wants to know if thou mightst drop by for a wee spin...?"

"A wee spin...?"

"A bit of the splits, thou knowst," she said, holding up thumb and forefinger, "if tha like'st."

She shrugged and took another plum.

"Gwenhwyfer?! I only got here last night!"

Her sister banshee answered with bright, sunken eyes and a battish nod.

Gormglaith stared back.

"Someone'll fetch thee then!" said Gwenhwyfer, scooting off the staddle to breeze from the nest, hair flying as she glanced back with a grin, gnawing into the plum.

Gormglaith whirled about to Raoghnailt.

"Ok, that was fast."

"So too wontedly."

Gormglaith and Raoghnailt were waiting groomed and combed when two scollagyn came. One was Eiric, her swatch of golden red hair shimmering in daylight. Faine was a whist, knobby girl with two deep red, hip length braids tied up in winding green ribbons. With less than a word and more than a hug Raoghnailt dashed off.

"Any teaching clannin," said Eiric as they walked along the wide hall, "has its dish, which means a gollop first so it's all puke."

Faine gaped at Eiric, then Gormglaith.

"...Raoghnailt's spot on, Eiric. Thou art enthralling," Gormglaith put with a chalky, shruggish smile, "and I like how thou readst the skeeal."

Faine cast up her eyes and Eiric beamed as they came through the black hornblende lobby where a knot of scollagyn met them near the wafered lights, gabbing in a skein of names. Then they went through an airy hall with paned doors, stopping at one between tall and narrow frosted windows cut with runes.

Eiric and Faine left her off with swotty little waves and Gormglaith drew a deep breath as she walked into a den with deeply puzzled, wooden box crafting overhead and wide windows below which spilled sweeping sights of purple, green and yellow heather sloping seven furlongs to the cliffs of the blue Keayn sheear. A clock set in a granite wall ticked to the sweep of six black, white and striped hands in sundry lengths on a dish which was pye-sliced in dark blue, orange and white, bearing an almost full moon in the middle and showing two hours and three minutes after noon at Haethwyck, along with fifty-seven minutes forward at Snotra.

"Hello Gormglaith, it's chilling to see thee again."

The lone waist-length lock of hair on top of Tegan's head glowed geal yellow and was pulled tightly back. Her black Snotrian longstockings and the wonted blond wooden klompen were set off by that seeming fixation of scollags, black gloves sheathing her arms but opening at the knuckles to show gangling blue veined fingers and closely clipped white nails.

Tegan

"Shee bannee mee Tegan!" Gormglaith deadpanned. "Oo lonraghey lesh yn conney freoaie."

"Er-egin," said Tegan, quickly gathering herself. "Kanys ta shiu, er-giyn ayd chied madjin 'sy Haethwyck?"

"...Kestal!" answered Gormglaith, grinning broadly. "Fastyr mie!"

Tegan gave her a beholding look.

"Meed afternoon thyself," she put with a smirk, then slunk to a wooden bone board with twelve matching, narrow high backed chairs. Here warm grains ran in red rusts, seared pumpkin hues and yellows through whorls rubbed smooth long ago under thousands of scollagyn elbows and hands. The witch twirled about, tossing her head.

"So how'rt thou feeling? No headaches, dizzy spells, stomach aches, cramps, anything like that?"

"I'm ok Tegan... other than feeling like, pitched, stitched and bewitched by Gwenhwyfer's talk about bloody splits. I mean can a girl at least have a tick to catch her breath or what."

"Devon was spot on."

"...What."

"Skip it. We need thy help."

"Uhm, Tegan, as I recall, thou wast in Loch henge yesterday, as in... plighted sister banshee?"

"Yeah... speaking of Loch henge it's about that fit thou hadst."

"I didn't fold... until they had me cozily stashed behind the sound screens of that plight lair..."

"Gormglaith thou swooned and Bairrfhionn caught thee."

"...Fuck."

"That's a cheer."

"Anyway I'll bloody swoon when I want, 'k?"

"Ok! Besides, as far as I can tell it came off like spin in Kin Dails. Some want to see how it tangles, is all."

"So th'art telling me... if green Gormglaith could like, lick a few splits it might boost wiles the new banshee's so fuck all, she can keel over at Loch henge 'n hew rainbows in the blink of night and day. That not only reeks, but someone's weaving a swank fad of ancheisht on Eryn Mynter's trigger, spun with my Slinn's gauge by the bye thanks for asking my leave, not and Enid says where there's a fad, there's a fumble."

"I've never run into that before..."

"Thou shouldst talk to Enid."

"I think I will... and tell her I've never met a henge maedchen who says fuck as much as thee."

"Oh, sorry. So what's the fumble?"

"We'll get there, little sister," Tegan said with the wink of a frosty grey eye.

They settled at the bone board. Tegan put elbows to wood, chin in hands with a cloth bound book (Mote string thresholds by Randottir) and frothy mug of coffee beside her, looking rather maegdenish, even lass. Gormglaith inhaled deeply, gazed ahead and her fingers reeled with goblins.

Twelve minutes later she looked away, squinting and bleary eyed.

Tegan pulled her up by the hand, then outside onto a shady stoep of scrubbed bluestone which was empty but for a small board bearing coffee and ginger crush with starkly colourful tulips beyond, swaying in the sea breeze.

Gormglaith seemed feazed and lost in the cool air lofting smells of fresh flowers and grasses but she grinned when Tegan swept her into a dropsome kiss, the witch's geal yellow lock wafting in the windswept, dark shade. They sat in chairs with tall straight backs, shyly, wordlessly, heads down, both sheerly hiding grins. Then Gormglaith drifted, barely sipping ginger crush, looking from the Keayn sheear and wide swaths of sun dappled turquoise slipping through deep blue waves, to Tegan, who again held a coffee mug and with flitting eyes beneath knitted, shadowy brow scanned a fluttery goblin.

Gormglaith set her gaze back to billowing heather and sea. The witch looked up frostily.

"It is spog, isn't it? ...the Minch."

Gormglaith nodded as the sound of clopping klompen gathered from behind. It was Bairrfhionn, red hair flying wildly about her waist in the steady breeze.

"Randottir's Mote string thresholds," Gormglaith mumbled with a frown.

"Funny thing..." said Tegan. "About an hour ago I told a pink I thought it spat out the oddest crack about something a scollagyn had written and it came back with, 'If your mote strings were notched like these you'd spit out the odd crack too.' I'm trying to reckon that."

"When I was a moppet my Geileis popped the lid off one so I could see it was only a gadget. The inside was like a box of bright pink string noodyls!"

"...We both know those aren't the kind of strings it meant."

"Yeah but I had thee worried for a tick, di'n I! Anyway why dostn't thou ask?"

"It'd only blow me off. It's a game I play," Tegan sighed, waving her hand, fingers peeking out from black armglove.

"So what was the crack?"

"Hurl... Thou knowst, Gormglaith, I think we could get thee shee in say, two dozen moons if thou like'st."

"...Not."

Bairrfhionn watched, enthralled.

"Plighted little sister... what," Tegan nudged.

Gormglaith leveled a stare on the frosty witch.

"Ever since I can recall... sometimes... I've rather whistly dreamed of being a scollagyn, never mind if my kynn are so too thrallish. Now I've plighted my life with this clannin and I want those four dozen moons, to be a scollagyn and live like a scollagyn doing scollagyn things with scollagyn friends in scollagyn nests and then maybe I'll be able to peer into the looking glass and say, 'Now there's a bleeding daoine shee.'"

Bairrfhionn nodded.

"Gillian's gonna frickin' weep when she hears that."