<div dir="ltr"><div>Part 2a of Blossom</div><div> </div><div>---- </div><div> </div><div>Ginger's next lamb went much smoother than the first, only taking another half hour to lamb and clean up. Her father still took every chance to remind her about proper rearing technique, diseases to watch for in the weeks to come, warmth and security, growth patterns, and behaviors particular to rams. Mostly, this was to occupy time to ensure that Ginger and her lambs were comfortable; after an hour or two, her father let her off to wash her arms in the cooled birthing water and change from her work clothes into her formal dress. Her father got himself dressed in his fine Sunday hose and tunic and his hooded shepherd's cap, while her mother switched her white apron for a red hood and jacket, keeping her farming dress on. Child morphs in Twone always wore hoods, to mark them from the uncursed children, like Lori's three younger siblings. They had already been at the celebration, being too young to lamb or work. The village was already feasting by the time Lori and her parents arrived. Lori saw immediately a few townsfolk glancing at her, pitying her tardiness. She knew they were doing no such thing, and they were likely simply curious to see a new arrival, perhaps seeing a shadow and wishing it confirmed. But it made Lori awkward, as if she was supposed to justify her late appearance. She wondered how many of them knew what she and her pa had been up to. In any case, Lori stopped looking at their eyes, and cast a long glance over the tables. In Twone, people seemed to always separate and gather themselves by curse, even across families. At the far end of the feast, for instance, were a long table of child morphs, all distinguished by their short stature and long hoods. In several smaller groups were the animal morphs; a cluster of canines here, a group of ungulates there, some rodents and smaller animals over there. A few of them mingled with the gender morphs, who otherwise formed unbroken lines along the tables, one female, one male. The female gender morphs, though, were mostly occupying the forward-most table, directly opposite the stage, upon which the five blossoms were dining. Their tables were festooned with snowdrops, irises, crocuses, and other early spring flowers, either woven into the forward trellis or gathered into large vases for the blossoms to give to their suitresses. At the very end of the table, Lori saw two of her friends, Nancy and Maggie, talking to one of the blossoms, a man with a thin beard, cropped auburn hair, and a soft brow. The resemblance of the man to her friend Mallory was uncanny -- and Lori had to stop and remind herself: this WAS Mallory. Maggie caught sight of Lori just a moment after Lori saw her. She waved and walked over. Lori's father smiled. "Go on. Go meet your friends. We'll be with the other reg'es, if you need us." Lori met Nancy and Maggie at the opposite end of the stage. The stage was already crowded with suitresses, and it took a few minutes for Lori and her friends to pick their way through the crowd. "Took you long enough," Maggie said. She wore a low-cut white dress that only reached down to just past her knees and elbows -- more of a skirt than a dress, cinched around her waist with a light blue sash. A closer examination, though, could see that the cloth was worn from overuse and overwashing, and only multiple layers of chemises and shifts kept her warm in the chilly night air. However shabby her dress was, her long hair was richly decorated with small flowers and ribbons that bobbed as she shook her head back and forth. "Lambing," was all Lori had to say. Nancy grimaced. "That's why you're the shepherd, and we're the farmers." Nancy, for her part, wore a long simple dress with a few decorative embroideries along the bottom hem. Underneath was a long-sleeved shirt, cut a few inches from the wrist, a compromise between warmth and modesty, and celebratory flamboyance. Nancy was also from a farming family of Twone, not as wealthy as Lori's, but one with deep roots here, one who made very little waves in Twone, except for her parents' recent conversion to the Follower faith. Maggie scoffed. "Lori, no offense, your parents live like hermits. The whole village was here. Sheep can look out for themselves." Maggie's family had not been a lucky one. She was the only child of her parents, a dog-and-child couple; rumor had it her birth made her regress mother sterile. They also weren't an established family, having fled here from the Lutin raids of Mycransburg long ago. Being very poor, of course, only made them an easier target for criticism. Maggie had adopted a purposefully defiant attitude to the other children of Twone. She was a year younger than Lori and Nancy and Mallory, but her knack for reading body language and catching secrets made her a useful ally in their adventures. "Every sheep counts," Lori sighed. "It'd put me to sleep," Maggie joked. "Seriously, though," Nancy said, "we're glad you made it. Hurry and eat something before it's all gone." "Ah, ah, ah, now," Maggie waved a finger. "We all got to talk to 'Marcus', so it's your turn now." "I was just thinking of that." Lori looked at her gender-morphed friend. There were a few subtle changes to Mallory's face: the cheek bones were a bit more prominent, the jawline a bit finer. "He turned out pretty well. How was he in the procession?" "Why're you asking us?" Maggie winked. "Go on and talk to him, we'll be at the table with Ophelia." Ophelia was Mallory's younger sister by three years, but had always joined them at play, and had become a sort of younger sister to all of them. She sat at a group of empty seats near her mother, a gender morph paying more attention to her fellow gender morphs. She was easy to find; Ophelia had been learning to hand-sew her own dresses, but she insisted on following her own unique sense of fashion. Thus, she had one set of bright red sleeves too wide around her shoulders, and another set of narrow sleeves, green sleeves sewn to the red, reaching down to her wrists—it looked as if her arms were wearing their own dresses. Ophelia had insisted she had meant it that way; Lori went along with it, if only to support her. Maggie and Nancy went off to join Ophelia as Lori approached Marcus. Marcus set down his meat with a smile as the young gendermorph ladies before him left. "Glad to see you made it!" Marcus said. "I'm sorry you missed all the games, though. I know you were looking forward to it." "There'll be other years," Lori shrugged. "Did your family already come talk to you?" "My parents did. But Ophelia... you should talk to her. She's been sad all evening." "Sad?" Lori glanced backward to see Ophelia. Ophelia's back was turned to her and Marcus. Only Maggie was watching them; she smiled and waved at them. "Trust me. Something's been on her mind since the blossom began. Just say hi to her for me. I'd rather be there with her, and the rest of you too, than up all night for this darn ceremony." "But still, you're the man of the hour!" Lori cracked a smile. "The talk of the town! Everyone wants your name and a freshly-kissed bouquet!" "As if," Marcus rolled his eyes. "You know all those things we'd say about men being boorish clods?" He grinned and leaned over and lowered his voice. "They're true." "What, so you're a boorish clod, now?" "Just saying, not everything that happened in that barn was order and manners. And anyway, the real 'man of the hour' is Amos over there," he shrugged a shoulder in Amos's direction. "Us other men are his dangling ornaments." Lori glanced at Amos, the man in the center seat. She recognized the name Amos; people had been talking about the miller's daughter-turned-son Amelia from Sawtry. The miller was rich, and could have paid for the whole festival by himself, and three more just like it. Naturally, Amos had a lot of suitresses. Amos was stroking one of them with an iris, but making eyes at another one. The two blossoms on either side were very unhappy; one kept trying to catch one of the lady's eyes, the other glared in disgust at Amos. "Who are those girls? Are they also from Sawtry?" Lori whispered. "At least one's from Hareford. One I even think's from Laselle. All come from way out of town. He's already had private correspondence with everyone in Sawtry." Lori smirked. "And he's still not chosen one yet. Is he holding out for the highest bidder?" Marcus smiled. "A gentleman does not discuss the personal affairs of others." "Come on, Mallory, it's me. What's he looking for? Wealth? Looks? Perhaps a noble house?" Marcus had another bite of lamb. "You've been hanging out with Maggie too much." Lori laughed. "I really couldn't care who he's after. I'm just trying to stay in the loop. And I thought," she widened her eyes, a slight pout in her lips, "that I could count on a good friend like you to help me." Marcus nearly choked on the lamb. "Ha! Bless that blossom barn! If you had tried that on me a mere month ago, who knows if I could've said no! Ah!" He drank from his cup and swallowed the meat. "But you really should get some food. I can see the fiddlers already getting out of their seats." "Good to see you again, Mallory," Lori said, turning and heading to the banquet. "It's Marcus now!" he said, but Lori was already far enough away that Marcus had to say it out loud. Everyone nearby laughed good-heartedly. The banquet table had already run out of bread, but there was plenty of stew left. Lori filled a bowl with boiled vegetables, and topped it off with stewed lamb. She remembered her dad had sold five of their lambs a week ago to the mayor—sheepherding was quite profitable in a valley where one out of ten people could only eat meat. Ophelia and Nancy had already cleared their plates, but Maggie still had a plate of stew and a large chunk of bread she was working on -- very slowly, given her state of chatter. She was still smiles as Lori sat down. "Well, you two were enjoying ourselves! Hoping to be a child morph, perhaps, and become Marcus's child-bride?" Lori elbowed her in the side. Nancy smiled, leaned over to Maggie, and said, "I heard a rumor that if you are with child when the curse strikes, you remain a child morph forever." She then whispered, "So go ahead. You could make him yours." Maggie nearly tossed her bread at her. Lori shook her head in response. "Unbelievable. He's only been a man for a couple hours. As far as I'm concerned, he's still a blossom until tomorrow. Can't you wait until then to start joking?" Nancy tightened her smile in embarrassment. Ophelia was silent, but still smiled at their antics. Maggie kept chuckling. "Oh, lighten up, Lori. It's not like we can marry until after the curse." "And they say that nothing makes the curse come faster than talking about your own," Nancy added. Like harvests and black cats, the curse came with a bunch of superstitions. One of them was that, although it was safe to talk about other people's curses, it was never safe for an uncursed child to speak about their own curse to come. Then again, superstitions were unlikely to be true. Lori's mother would warn her that slouching or bad manners would give her a hideous insect or fish curse. And yet, she'd never met an insect or fish morph -- even though everyone pretended they had. "None of you are any fun," Maggie said. "Come on, it's a two-in-three shot for one of us to stay eligible. And there are four of us here! That means, um..." She scratched her head to puzzle out the math. "... At least two of us won't be men!" "Under that logic," Ophelia suddenly spoke, "Two of us won't be children, and two of us won't be animals. Apparently, two of us will be curse-immune." Maggie narrowed her eyes at Ophelia while Nancy laughed and Lori chuckled. But now seemed like a good time to change the subject. "I didn't ask him, by the way, what he did in the parade. How'd Marcus do?" "Ah, you should have asked him," Maggie said, eyes lighting up. "He was great! He was a sword fighter! After they all rode horses around the village square, Marcus and some other guy leapt off their horses and drew their swords. They traded blows and chased each other up onto the stage! The other guy nearly had him, but then Marcus somersaulted off the platform and nearly slashed the guy's legs, but he leaped away just in time!" "Like the sword fight from three years ago?" Lori said. "Huh? Did they? Anyway, then the other guy tossed his sword to someone else, and they had a fight across the green." Maggie mimicked the sword fighters with her hands, one imaginary sword in each hand. "They had to stop when Amos rode past, but then they went back at it! Up! Down! To the side! It was close. The other guy was tough, but Marcus held on and brought it to a draw." "They always fight to a draw," Lori said. "And so he gave his sword up to Marcus," Maggie went on unabated, "and Marcus took out a third sword and started juggling. That was beautiful! After a couple minutes someone switched out his swords for flaming daggers, and he tossed them high into the air. Someone else threw an axe through it, I don't remember who. But then Marcus caught them all at once, still flaming, and he threw them at a guy at the barn..." "... with a wooden shield. Right between the crossbeams. The guy smothered the flames with a robe, and it made a nice smokey glow when he threw it off, right?" Maggie frowned. "That never happened three years ago." Lori nodded. "Five years ago. It was in the autumn. They stopped doing it because it was a dry summer and the grass started to burn. Glad to hear they started it up again." Nancy swallowed a chunk of bread and smiled. "There's no fooling you, is there, Lori? Some day, when you're a blossom, you can teach everyone else the routines." Maggie looked down, suddenly wondering where her bread had gone. Before she could look around any further, the village all around them got to their feet. The fiddlers had all taken position beside the platform, and only a second later they started up a jaunty dancing song. The crowd cheered and quickly headed for the center square, all seeking a dance partner. "The dancing! Quick, everyone get a partner!" Maggie said. "Must we?" Nancy said uneasily. Lori also didn't feel like dancing. But, it was as much a part of the blossom ceremony as the parade. She could join in this much, at least. Lori looked blindly around for a man or a boy to dance with. This must've been another reason that villagers of one curse sat together -- it was much easier to grab a partner this way. Thankfully, she wasn't alone in needing a partner, and grabbing a gender-morphed man wasn't hard at all. More disconcerting were the animal morphs who joined in. Animal morphs in Twone generally kept to their side of the village, and only the important figures mixed with the adults, like the town watchman and the sheriff. Lori was afraid to touch them, for fear their curse would rub off. Another superstition, yes, but one that mattered quite a bit to her. The man she was dancing with was much taller, and he moved much too fast for her to keep up with. Two separate times did he step on Lori's feet after she was trying to match his jig. Lori was so busy focusing on her footsteps that she didn't notice the whole town had sorted itself into two columns of dancing pairs. Suddenly the man broke off and swung her around to her new partner just opposite them -- a goat morph. Lori's stomach churned as each of his hooves slipped between her fingers. He was young, perhaps a couple years older than her, which made him all the more repulsive. To either side of them, two people had formed an arch just like she and the goat were doing. Behind them, the line of single partners grabbed each other's hand and began dancing to the side. Lori turned, and saw one end of the chain ducking and skipping beneath the archway. There was nothing for her to do now but to wait for the line to go all the way through. Unfortunately, they were at the long end of the very long archway, and the chain was moving at barely a walking pace. Lori's fingers brushed along the hooves of the goat boy. They reminded her of the young ram she'd just lambed. Lori closed her eyes and focused on the music. It had a galloping rhythm to it, light and airy, like a bird flying over a landscape. The goat's skin was soft and thin where it touched his hooves, with the hairs along his thumb having enough length to tickle her. Lori opened her eyes and looked around for Maggie or Nancy. Maggie was farther down, swinging her arms as the last of the chain went through. Nancy wasn't there; Lori turned and looked at the chain of dancers as they danced rounded around the tables and behind the shadow-casted stage. There was a sudden tugging; without her realizing it, the chain had caught up to her. Everyone from the archway before had gone through; now the goat was pulling her inwards, and another young man had grabbed her other hand. This should have been a fun dance. Lori had danced before with animal morphs and never been bothered. Why now? Why did the thought of holding a goat's hoof bother her so much right now? Was it just that she was so close right now to the curse? Closer than she ever would be in her life? The chain was winding its way back into the center field, folding itself around four times until it was back into being a closed loop. Even once it had closed, they kept dancing around the loop, waiting for the fiddlers to reach just the right note for them to split the loop into two. Lori wondered why she was still holding onto the goat. If someone split the loop early, it would be no big deal. The two of them could just find another spot in the loop to join in. But it wouldn't look good. People would call her clumsy. Wasn't a gender morph, after all, supposed to be graceful? Then something unexpected happened. The goat stopped. In the middle of a dance, he stopped and leaned back. Lori was going to crash into him! But Lori didn't. As if she had planned for this opportunity, she leaned away, inadvertently dragging the boy behind with her. They rolled over and crashed into the bench behind them. The goat looked back at them, and seemed about to ask if they were alright. But the dancers behind didn't skip a beat, and with a slightly more extended reach, the goat took the lady's hand behind the boy and danced onward. "Ouch," Lori said, pulling her dress back down around her ankles. "The heck was his problem?" the boy beside her said. "Are you alright?" "I'm fine. It's nothing." She brought her legs back down to the ground. She'd twisted her neck, and felt a bit dizzy. "I almost landed on top of you." The boy pulled her up and tried to brush her off. Lori yanked herself away; she hadn't bathed since the lambing, and felt too unclean for some stranger to touch her. "I'm fine, really." She smoothed out her dress and looked at the befuddled, red-faced boy. "You shouldn't have held onto me." "I know, I know," he quickly said, blushing. "It's my first time dancing." Without another word, he backed away and past the tables, leaning away from the line of dancers who had already broken down from two large loops back into pairs of dancers spinning themselves around. </div></div>