Page 29 of A Winter Crush
Liney looked over, waved, and turned his attention back to his friends.
Ori felt a pang in his chest. As glad as he was to see his brother healthy and independent, sometimes he missed the days when Liney couldn’t go an hour without him. The younglings started to walk off, Liney with them.
“Liney,” Ori called out. “Wait up.”
His brother paused, and Ori jogged towards him. Liney glanced at his friends but thankfully didn’t move.
“Hi, Ori,” Liney said.
“Where are you and the others off to?” Ori asked.
“Rorrin’s Peaks! We’re going to climb all night.” Liney smiled, eyes bright with excitement.
“That should be fun,” Ori said. “And you’re feeling well enough?”
Liney laughed and rolled his eyes, used to his older brother worrying about him. “I’m feeling good. I promise.” He bounced on his feet. “Can I go now? I don’t want to get left behind.”
“All right, you go ahead. But don’t—”
But Liney was already off, running after the others. Ori was about to continue to his cave, when he heard a cough. He froze.
Liney coughed again. Then he seemed to shake it off, catching up with the others. Ori’s chest tightened as he watched them disappear into the trees.
It’s just a cough. He was winded from running. Nothing to be worried about. Even healthy younglings cough.
Still, he changed the direction he had planned to go. He’d go and see Sinoe. Talk to him and ask him to check on Liney. No doubt he’d say it was nothing to worry about. After all, it wasn’t like Liney had never coughed since that first bout of illness. Still, it would make him feel better to tell Sinoe.
* * *
“Doyou want to decorate the mugs?” Wareth asked.
Ori paused. He squatted beside the bucket of dirty cloths he was handwashing. “Can I? Really?”
Wareth swallowed, trying to calm the fluttering in his chest, and nodded. It wasn’t a difficult task. Ori could do it. It was just pressing stamps into the clay. Still, his hands sweat at the idea of letting someone other than himself touch his work. This wasn’t just Ori practising on the wheel. This was Ori working on Wareth’s pottery.
“Of course,” Wareth said, trying to sound surer than he felt.
Jumping to his feet, Ori dropped the cloth he’d been using back into the bucket and dashed over.
The mugs were all lined up on a board. They’d been trimmed, and Wareth had attached the handles. Now they just needed the wordsHappy Solsticepressed into them and they’d be ready for their first firing in the kiln. Wareth had made the stamp from clay years earlier.
Ori sat beside him at the table, practically bouncing in his seat.
“All right.” Wareth picked up a mug. “Just press the stamp into the mug. Carefully so the mug keeps its form. You don’t need to push too hard.” Wareth demonstrated. Then he pulled the stamp away, showing Ori the “Happy Solstice” now indented in the clay.
“Is that human writing?”
Wareth nodded. He forgot that Ori probably couldn’t read.
“What does it say?”
“It says ‘Happy Solstice.’”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
“I guess the oreads wouldn’t understand it.”
Oreads often came to the Solstice festivities. In fact, it was meant to celebrate how the oreads had saved the humans, the ancestors of the villagers. Years ago, the humans had gotten lost in the mountains in winter. The oreads had saved them. Afterwards, the humans had remained in the mountains and built Ores. Wareth had never considered that they couldn’t read the mugs.
