Free The Age of Light (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 1) by Ako Emanuel Page A

of
her grew brighter, an encouraging sign.
    Ky’pen’dati,
he called, come to light. You must wake up.

 

CHAPTER IV

    beguiled, the light turned, led by
darkness...
     
    The
light turned through the air and the silence, drenching the lain with the sweet
presence of itself, the afterzen crushed
with its perfume as the Season’s blossoms wept their scent.
    The scent of afterzen surrounded
Soku as she sat back in her sunken marble bath, washing her hair. She sighed
with contentment, smiling. It had been a long time since she had washed it
without aid.
    Forgetting all troubles and losing all cares in the
honey-scented water, shetook great pleasure in
washing the thigh-length, silken mass. Her hair was her pride and the symbol of
her standing, that which marked her as Queen. For it was her hair, when guinned and arranged, that made her crown, the Dakua crown of the
Doan. When guinned it hung straight to her
thighs, before the intricate winding and fastenings bound it up into the
standard of her Tribe, Family, and Reign, the hundred and tenth Queen of the
Tribe Doan.
    Of course, it was not thigh length at this moment.
The hair of the people of Ava’Lona , when
freed from the guinne and wet so that the natural
spirals of the strands asserted themselves, drew up tight to a thick round
quantity. The strands, if pulled straight, actually reached her feet. Braided,
they stopped at mid-thigh. Wet, the strands twisted and curled about each
other, until the whole wealth of it hung to only half its full length, about
the middle of her back. She loved the feel of it loose, free, and full of thick
lather of the olia plant. She worked the lather into
her scalp, combed through the living wealth of it with her fingers, then moved
languidly to stand under the arch from which a crystal curtain of water fell,
to rinse it before lathering it again.
    It had been a very long time since her hair had been
solely her responsibility.
    She repeated the luxurious lathering four times, the
ritual sweeter since she did it for herself, feeling her hair become softer,
silkier and more tightly spiraled with each repetition. Finally she stood under
the arch to thoroughly rinse it of all traces of the shampoo, before emerging,
like some newly-born Goddess rising from the sea, from the bath, her hair a
glowing, liquid black mass of near-locks. Donning a soft robe, she knelt in the
last of the afterzen light and inundated her hair
with thick mela’oil. Then she wrapped her head in a swath of special oil-cloth,
to let the waning light of Av draw out the
excess moisture and help her hair and scalp absorb the oil. She formed a picture
universal the Realm over. It was a ritual as old as time, as deeply rooted in
the forgotten past as the sacrament to the ancestor tree, or the game of Trade.
    She used this time to think. With the edict of
silence and contemplation, all Trade lorns she had
planned between the end of the Bolorn and the
beginning of the Salaka had to be put off. This would
not affect her too adversely, and it gave her a chance to review her lists of
prospective and established suppliers and buyers. Based on the information she
had gathered in the turns before the Bolorn , she made
tentative changes to be discussed with her Voice and Trade’Marm when talk and ‘ tun were once more
permitted. She worked through the political and economical ramifications of her
revisions before committing them to memory. The game of Trade was a broad and
intricately complex one, touching all aspects of Ava’Lonan life. Subtle, convoluted, it was a dance of politics, economics and personal
interaction, a war’don’mi of wits and words, rather than with skill and swords.
One’s rank among Queens often had little
bearing on one’s standing in the game. Skill in negotiation of Trade agreements
and winning concessions were huge determining factors. Honoring agreements made
and having a record of long standing, profitable coalitions oftimes affected
one’s position