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“Now come,” Navii said. “I will show you to the eating room where you can pluck your meals.”
Pluck our meals? Danni wondered what that meant. She and Bravik followed the other woman into a smaller room that had a table and two chairs—again, they looked like they had grown out of the moss-covered floor rather like the couch. There were no cooking implements or food storage areas that Danni could see, but one wall was completely covered in different colored vines and the vines appeared to be sprouting all different kinds of fruit.
“Oh, how amazing! An indoor garden!” she exclaimed, going over to admire the tangle of vines and leaves and the colorful fruit.
“Yes—though no one lives here on a regular basis, we women of the township take it in turns to come and trim the fruit wall and keep this dwelling in readiness for visitors.” Navii smiled proudly. “Most nights we feast communally but if you are hungry between feasts, this is where you may always find sustenance. Pluck as much fruit as you need—the trees will sense it if you need more and produce as much as you can eat.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” Bravik rumbled. “Do all your dwellings have walls like this?”
“Oh, most dwellings have a much bigger eating room and fruit wall,” Kozen said, smiling. “For most of us have children—many of them, for the Mother Stone makes us as fruitful as the trees.”
“That’s a blessing,” Danni said quietly, really meaning it. “I—I mean we—Bravik and I, don’t have any children.”
“Oh, are you barren?” Navii touched her arm gently, a look of pity on her face. “My dear, you have only to ask the Mother Stone to heal you and allow your husband to fill you with his seed to wake your womb to life.”
If only it was that easy! Danni thought. Though her infertility was a touchy subject with her, she tried to smile at the other woman. Clearly the H’rakens had all kinds of superstitious beliefs about this “Mother Stone” deity they worshiped. From believing that it could actually make wishes come true to the idea that it could cure infertility—apparently the “Mother Stone” could do it all.
“That’s very kind of you,” she said to Navii, knowing that the other woman meant well, even though her words hurt to hear. “Maybe…maybe I will do that while I’m here.”
Navii smiled at her.
“Well, speaking of asking your husband to fill you with his seed, let us see the sleeping bower, shall we?”
She hooked her arm through Danni’s and led her from the eating area to another room which seemed to be completely filled with an enormous bed.
If bed is the right word for it, Danni thought doubtfully. The “bed” looked more like a huge bird’s nest, made of woven limbs and vines that swept down from the ceiling in graceful loops and curves. In fact, it wasn’t anchored to the floor at all and when Navii pushed one of its supporting branches, it rustled softly and swayed like a tree limb in the wind.
“Oh, this is amazing! I’ve never seen anything like it,” Danni exclaimed. “Only…” She cleared her throat. “Only I’m not sure how we can sleep on it without, uh, falling through.”
Navii and Kozen looked at each other and went off into peals of laughter.
“Oh, my dear friend—you are not meant to sleep in the bower without a puff-ball pad!” Navii exclaimed. “Here—allow me to show you.”
She went to a closet—another door covered in vines—and opened it up. Reaching inside, she extracted an armful of something that looked a little bit like cotton balls to Danni and threw them into the middle of the tree-bed.
At once, the cotton balls seemed to take on a life of their own. They spread rapidly over the bed, moving the same way water flows, and anchoring themselves to the branches and vines. As soon as they had covered the sleeping surface, they began to grow in size and diameter until they had formed what appeared to be a complete mattress, almost two feet thick, made entirely of enormous puffy white balls.
“There now.” Navii nodded to herself in apparent satisfaction. “The puff balls will cushion you and keep you warm at night by spinning a night-blanket,” she told Danni and Bravik. “In the morning, simply tear open the blanket to release yourselves for a new day.”
“Uh, tear off the blanket?” Danni frowned. “Won’t that hurt the, um, puff balls?”
Navii laughed—she seemed to be an extremely happy person overall, Danni thought.
“Oh no, my friend! The puff balls are self-mending—just like everything in the dwelling. For everything is alive and infused with the power of the Mother Stone. So please do not worry—all will be well.”
“You had best show them the bathing room and then we must get them ready for the feast, my heart,” Kozen said to his wife. “It will be starting soon and we do not wish for our new guests to be late.”
