Free The Fire and the Fog by David Alloggia Page B

when she had more time to
spend prowling its hard-bound depths, hopefully surrounded by fewer
distractions, but the text had brought several questions to mind.
She still had a present to ask for from her mother, and from her
brothers and sisters. Normally, as in years past, she would have
asked for even more books, and she would have enjoyed whatever they
found for her, but she was starting to question.
    She loved almost everything she read, whether
it was the religious sermons of Ragn's text or fairy tales or
educational texts or philosophical musings, it didn’t matter. But
most of her collection of books did not warrant repeated reading.
She would absorb a book in a half-day or so, and she would remember
it. This left her only the most interesting, or the most difficult,
books to reread.
    As such, it was hard for Erris to say if it
was worthwhile to ask for more books. She loved reading, to be
sure, but surely she could do more with her presents.. Surely,
after everything she had read, she could write too. She had not
tried writing; not yet. Paper and ink were not a staple of farm
life. But if she used her remaining presents on writing
supplies…
    Erris walked in contemplative silence as
Marmot and her family slowly made their way towards Oortain's
Copse, and the afternoon plodded slowly on.
     
    ***
     
    Oortain’s Copse was a small village, seventy
or eighty buildings total, nestled in a small valley and surrounded
by a lush green forest. The forest was small as well, small enough
that it only barely enfolded the village, a tiny patch of green
surrounded by an ocean of golden wheat on every side, and as such,
both the forest and the village looked strangely out of place, like
they belonged in another part of the world.
    At only an eight-hour walk away, Oortain’s
Copse was the closest village to the farm, but it stood in Rognia.
This meant that, at some point during the day’s walk, the family
and Marmot had crossed the border from Rege into Rognia. But a
border separating wheat from more wheat was both useless and
indistinguishable, and it was never until she reached Oortain’s
Copse that Erris felt she had entered another country. Entering
Rognia meant entering the dominion of a different Church. Both Rege
and Rognia believed in Ragn, as did virtually all of Dohm, but they
differed greatly on how that church should be run. Rege had a
Monarchy, a good old King and Queen who lived in Vhindyar, while
Rognia was a religious state. The Maeter was the master of the
army, the priesthood, and everything in between in Rognia. The
Regan priesthood took their cues largely from Rognia, but they were
not so absolute, or so fervent, in their devotion to Ragn.
    There were other differences too. In Rege,
houses tended to be low, long, and wooden, often with an attic but
seldom with a second story. It was a style Erris was both used to
and preferred, while the houses in Rognia, at least those she had
seen, tended to be tall and narrow, with brightly coloured panels separated by thin strips of
wood.
    Rognian clothing was much more chaste as
well. The women never bared any leg, and hardly any chest at all in
their long, beautifully coloured and
frilled dresses, and the men wore tight-fitted jackets that
buttoned almost all the way to their chin. The people themselves
though, at least those she had met, were just as nice as Regans. It
was hard for Erris to say more really. She learned everything from
books, and the one book that might have been able to tell her more
about Rognia, her brother Dom had burned. She was still sad about
that book. She always wondered what it had said about the people of
Rognia, and thereby Oortain’s Copse, for her brother to have burnt
it.
    Then again, Oortain’s Copse was on the very
edge of the Rognian Empire, and had a fair amount of intermarriage
between Rege and Rognia. They were less religious, and more
accepting than the center of Rognia, where Erris had heard stories
of women being arrested and