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Gathandrian
Interlude
     
    Annyeke
     
    “No,” said Annyeke Hallsfoot the First Elder
of Gathandria, hands on hips, facing her husband who was sitting at
the other side of the eating table and was also, to her chagrin,
smiling quietly. “Absolutely not. Why should I change my name
simply because we have taken the ancient vows together? What good
have the traditions been to us so far?”
    “Well, I …” Johan Montfort began to reply,
but Annyeke gave him no ground. Which was, she fully accepted,
unfair to a man who had had no option but to move into her tiny
home due to his own being destroyed in the Wars and had also had
the foolishness to ask her to marry him.
    “And besides what have our menfolk given us
recently but death and loss and misery?” was her final triumphant
question.
    Johan blinked and his smile vanished. Instead
one eyebrow raised in a manner she recognised from the
not-too-distant day-cycles when her new husband had been her
overseer at the Sub-Council of Meditation. In truth, those
experiences seemed like a lifetime away. But always the raised brow
had signified some misdemeanour of hers which would need to be
corrected shortly. Back then, he’d tended to be right in his
judgements and she had to acknowledge he was right this day-cycle.
Probably.
    Annyeke grimaced, drew up a stool and sat
down opposite him. She sighed. “All right. I accept my last
statement may have been rather too harsh, but just because I’ve
married you doesn’t mean my whole personality changes, you know. I
love you, Johan, but I’m still me.”
    This time he laughed before reaching out and
holding her hand. She could feel the warmth of his touch flowing
upward through her skin. Red and gold and lilac.
    “I know,” he said. “If you weren’t who you
are, then I would not be as happy as I am now. And yes, I
understand what the former Gathandrian elders have done to our
lands and the lands of our neighbours. But I am a man, as is the
Lost One, Simon himself. We are not against you, but for you.
Surely men and women must work together if we are to be what we
could be?”
    She took his hand, kissed it once before
letting go.
    “Now that depends entirely on the men and
women involved,” she replied. One of the best things about being
married to Johan, even if only for a couple of week-cycles so far,
was how easily teased he’d turned out to be. Gathandrian women
needed every kind of good thing they could find in the great task
they all faced of rebuilding their country and, she hoped, that of
their neighbours too.
    This time, however, Johan neither frowned nor
grimaced, nor even rolled his eyes at her. No, this time, he sprang
up from the table, took the three paces needed to bring him to her
side and gazed down at her. His deep blue eyes and serious
expression never failed to make it hard for her to breathe, and she
experienced no change to that response now. Perhaps men always had
the last word.
    Before she could think of gathering her
thoughts together and making a suitably caustic comment which would
uphold the honour of Gathandrian womanhood wherever it might be
found, the colours flowing round him shifted from gold and the
calmest of blues to a shade of deep swirling red. They made a
pleasing contrast to the soft yellows of her kitchen-area. The next
moment, he’d pulled her to her feet – an action that only made her
level with the height of his chest – and gathered her into one of
his unexpected but welcome mountain-hugs. She breathed in the scent
of him – rosemary and winter-jasmine mixed with the wool of his
tunic – and smiled. Knew he sensed her smiling. Then she heard his
whispered words reverberating in her mind, not spoken aloud.
    You’re right, my love. Everything depends on
the man and woman involved.
     
    *****
     
    Some time later, Annyeke lay on her back
staring up at the patterns of her wooden ceiling. She’d always
enjoyed allowing her eye to take in the ebb and flow of the grain.
It was an