"Her father is a military man, trains people to fight. Her mother is a homemaker." She listened to her son talk hesitantly, allowing his mother to feed him questions he digested slowly. She has learned to be with her son's deliberate ways, and enjoyed the information he gave back as precious food. The two of them walked the uneven shoreline, the smell of seaweed and the flapping of noisy seagulls creating timeless background. She imaged her son partnered into a family like that and weighed gently the prospect of her long role as mother to her son and the timelessness of homemaker.
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"Preparing for the Harvest are you?" The keeper had filled many sugar and salt bags today and would be glad to receive the coins and paper promises for the two white commodities that preserved the harvests of his village's people. If they knew what it took to bring the sweet grains of sugar to this village, oceans away from the plantations that turned cane into granules, would the pleasure of the sweetness be quite so rich? The woman smiled and nodded to his question. Neither one of them, for all the years they have known one another, never letting on to the places in their imaginations. The fact that the woman was a shade of brown that few in this cold clime were familiar with in their own lineages, might have been a clue for the openly curious. But, curiosity was rendered secret or at least quiet among these people.
Safely filled, the woman counted out the four coins thanked the shop keeper and said, "Good Harvest to you and your wife."
"And the same to you." The woman tucked the bags of sugar and salt into her basket and stepped into the day just begun. She loved the half-mile walk from the tiny village store to the cottage and farm where she kept a family well-tended. The smells of Equinox were clear and the sky was bright. Time passed easily, her boots striking the dirt road still dry from the summer heat.
The boy could hear his mother's walk from the doorway, he was waiting for her. The barrel of Pippins was full. He'd picked the windfalls and the fruit still clinging to the four old trees that made up the orchard in the south patch of ground along-side the cottage. The pears were already picked and made into Pear jam. The small glass jars filled the cold storage. He loved the taste of Pear jam on the soft white cheese in the winter. But it was the bags of sugar and salt his mother sought that turned his thoughts to a treat he hoped for today.
"Picked them all did you?" The woman was always happy to see that works that needed doing always got done, and knew that in the process her son would ask for something that he himself could not do, yet.
"I did. And there were so many of them, still firm and crunchy, too." His mother saw the core of two apples in the pail for feeding the goats. She smiled.
Inside the twins were busy with the games. A length of string wrapped around the one's fingers lifted as the other moved it quickly. "Sugar!" They both squealed as their brother reached for the sugar tin.
"Pippin and cinnamon pie!" The boy exclaimed chiming for his favorite Harvest food. His mother offered up a counter and looked teasingly at the two girls held with string between them, "Or, perhaps Sugar Mice a few for now and a few for hanging on the tree new cycle through."
The girls in chorus, said "Sugar Mice. Sugar Mice, or please the mice, the mice."
The boy knew his mother had enough sugar for one or the other. To feed his family and the men his father would bring when he was home from his season of war, she would bake four pies if she baked any. Not much such was needed for pie, but sugar mice were all sugar. The girls loved the confectionary, and it was a once a sun cycle treat, so they ought to have them. He had outgrown the taste of so much sweet. Weighing as was his way, the woman knew her son was balancing the needs with the long view. He was Libra and she was Scorpio. She knew.
The Pippins, such an abundance of them this year could be cut and hung into garlands and dried across the hearth and eaten throughout the winter. The elderberries saved from last year and wrapped round the apples would flavor yet a crate of the generous fruit. Pie was best baked with the set of the freshness still glowing, and there were renderings for lard for a good four pies. The sticks of cinnamon she horded for special occasions would satisfy her son and she would love to see that look fill his countenance.
"There is enough for both, pies when the men are back with the dark moon. Sugar mice tonight." The girls danced a jib of delight and went looking for the metal trays their mother used to mold the white sugar creatures. The boy smiled, hugged his mother tight while counting in his head the phases of the moon before bright Hina went dark. He could wait.
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