The good couple that has let me keep my sheep with them while I've been training has agreed to keep my sheep for a sack of feed and one of their fleeces next year. Since I keep them mainly for fun I don't truly mind.

In this much older picture you can see my three grown fluffballs. The wee one that headbutts me is still in the belly of the ewe in the back at the point this was taken.

My true beauties are my horses.

This is from when I first arrived and settled into my little glen. The one in the middle is the plowhorse which belongs to the happy couple. My favorite mare is the sleek beauty in the back who's looking across the field for adventure. We're kindred spirits, my mare and I. I don't get as much time with her as I'd like.

I'll have to make arrangements with Flidais to stable them at Inver Colpa over the winter. Mayhaps I'll allow one of my fellow Fenians to ride the gelding once in awhile. Maybe I'll just tease them with him. You never can tell what can happen upon a winter day.

Returning to her Taigh from the Fianna encampment, Aine rides slowly and contemplates the current situation she has placed herself in. This past cycle of the moon she has been in the camp honing her fighting skills and trying to interact with the others more. She has watched, she has listened and she has attempted to speak the complicated poetry but has very obviously missed the mark of bardic perfection.

As she approaches the woven pen, she notices the swatch of fabric hanging from the gate. That's the sign that the local boy leaves to let her know he's taken her sheep into the rolling hills with his own flock. With a deep sigh, she rides into the grove beyond her house to catch the customary brace of hares she and the boy's foster parents agreed upon as payment.

After a month of running through the woods and ducking under branches it's not long before she has several rabbits hanging from her mare's haunches. Her spear throwing ability has always been sharp, and now she's able to use one shot instead of wasting two or three throws and dulling her spearpoints.

Aine climbs back onto the horse and rides of with the rabbits slung over her shoulder. The slap of rabbit fur and occasional snap of bone isn't pleasant, but it's better than having them bounce on the horse's haunches and having her spooked as they fly over the fields. It doesn't take her long to reach the small farm of the foster parents, and asks as she hands over her day's hunt what direction the boy has taken the flocks. With a smile and a blessing she turns her mount and rides back across the slight rolling hills.

As she comes over the crest she suddenly sees woolen sheep scatter like clouds before a gust of wind from the sea. Laughing aloud, she slides down and helps the boy gather both his flocks and her own. She gives him a large chunk of her own bread and cheese for his trouble and pats him companionably on the back as she sits.

She lays back into the grass and heather and breathes deep the smell of sunwarmed wool and lanolin. Even their excrement is a pleasant change from the sweat of the warriors she's surrounded herself with, and she laughs aloud at the thought. The boy gives her a wary look, but she just grins and closes her eyes for a moment.

Exactly a moment, for shortly she has a wet nose pressing against her face. She snaps her eyes open and quickly shifts before a long slobber of spit drools from her ewe's mouth into her own. She shoves the sheep away with one hand then reaches in her pouch for the apple the ewe is looking for. Slicing off a chunk for the sheep, then for herself, they munch in companionable contentment. She slices off another chunck and offers it in her palm, noticing that the fleece has already covered the skin of the sheep and the lamb hiding behind his mom's rump. She looks the ewe in the eyes and says "and what do ye suggest I do to learn these poetic skills? I've no faith in me own talent to keep a room enthralled as Amlaidh, and I'm afraid I'll shame my rigfennedh. I'll not open my big mouth again if it would mean causing any loss of face for that banfianna."

Aine lowers her head and raises an eyebrow at the sheep, who promptly headbutts her as a ram would and lays her flat in the grass. Aine sputters as she chokes on a bit of apple, and sits up rubbing her head.

"What kind o' answer would that be, ye big fleabag? As if ye could litterally knock sense in m' head?!?" She can hear the boy roaring nearby and throws the rest of the apple his way with a grin. "I guess ye have, at that," Aine says to the ewe, "as I've realized that I'll never learn anything just sitting around and watching, waiting for someone to slap me in the face with it."

She whistles for her mare, and laughs again as the boy curses the scattering sheep. She rides over to him, and places a coin in his hand, tells him to spend some of it on his foster mom, and rides back towards the Fianna camp.

Aine sits outside her hut, using a drop spindle to spin some of her wool. Tis much easier to store if spun a little at a time, she thinks to herself. Thread takes up less room than fleece, after all.

She looks away from her frolicking sheep to see yet another warrior striding with purpose across the earthen ridge near her home. That makes at least a dozen that have done so since the dawn, and she wonders what they've been called for. Mayhaps its the warband recruiting, she thinks, then purposely turns back to her spinning with a frown.

She'd been riding her horse over the land more often since she first spied the warriors in their encampment. She was challenged by the guards at first, then began to bring by gifts so they'd no longer question her curiosity or reason for being there. A loaf of bread one day, first apples gathered from the tree near her home, hazelnuts stored since last winter....all given as a tribute.

Aye, she thinks as a slub slips through her fingers. A tribute to me own stupidity. I left that life behind, peace be what my soul needs now.

Unconsciously her eyes raise to the hilltop where the man's head can be seen dropping below the horizon. For several seconds she sits so, blood pounding in her head and visions of battles past swimming before her eyes.

Damn my soul then, she thinks to herself as she rises to her feet and heeds the call of the warrior. Striding into her cottage she pulls her stores away from the wall and reveals a package wrapped in hide. With a fierce pull she uncovers her wooden shield, leather covered and studded with evidence of sword damage. Behind it, slid into the straps, is a sword. Not beautiful, not as ornate as some, but hers and of such a weight as to be balanced and deadly. She picks up the shield and the leather pouch behind it and walks to her pallet.

The pouch contents are thrown on the bed, and from the pile of spearheads she takes her torc and armband and adorns herself. Each spearhead is held to the light to ensure they've not been damaged before placed back into the pouch and tied to her belt.

She pulls her cloak from the chest at the end of the bed and strides to the door. One last look and she allows herself a small grief over the domestic haven where she thought to hide herself. Aine then strides for the door and whistles for her horse.

Ears cocked, the mare hears the call and jumps the enclosure to get to her lady. Aine swings up on the mare's back with her shield resting familiarlly on her shoulders and turns toward the horizon where the young man had recently disappeared.

"Well, I guess destiny had other ideas for us, moi gra," she says with an affectionate rub on her horse's neck. With a press of her knees the mare leaps forward.

Faster! Farther! Flatter! Closer to the ground, gobble it up!

Leaning into her horse's neck Aine whispers to her, the words pulled from her mouth by the breeze that burns her cheeks and causes the horse's mane and her own to tangle together. The ride had begun as an innocent stretch of the steed's legs as well as a practice session riding sidesaddle while bareback on her mare. She promised her father she'd try and behave like a lady. Many of the women she'd seen at his hillfort rode with both legs to one side to keep their skirts demurely tucked about their feet.

Sometimes, though, you just have to capture the magic of the moment and ride like you're flying.

As they neared her taigh the pace slowed. They cantered past her doorway and the horse snorted at the sheep that were just beginning to show a haze of white on their skin. They slid to a sweaty halt at the stream. Aine leapt from the mare's back and dropped to her knees to drink beside the horse.

She threw back her head and wiped her mouth with a corner of her plaid. She looked back into the stream to see how much damage she'd done to her plaits and laughed out loud at the site that would frighten wee children. She fell back to sit on her butt and turned as the horse raised her head and shoved a soaking nose into her chest.

"I'm on t' ya now, my beauty," Aine said, scratching her between the eyes. "I was wise enou' to drink upstream from your slobberin' self."

Aine wanders towards the grove again. She often bathes in the pool nestled where the trees grow so close they look to be hugging, their branches intertwined in complicated knots. This day she chooses to stop where the brook babbles over stones instead of continuing on to the tranquility of those quiet waters.

Today, she's looking for music.

There's a spot just so, where there are two smooth stones sitting side by side. The one is slightly higher than the other so it's good for using as a table or to rest her elbows on while doing her handsewing. The light comes through in golden, diffused beams that make it ideal for long work that strains the eyes like embroidery.

Today she sidesteps the stones and seats herself on the mossy bank. The need to let the water touch her skin tempts her into removing her sandals and dipping her toes in the slight stream. The cool water feels good enough that she raises her skirts and lets her feet sink to the ankles.

She opens her little sack and pulls out a round of bread and a chunk of her favorite cheese. She had to trade some of her wool for the cheese but at the first bite she knows it was well worth it. Leaning back on her elbows as she chews she listens to the songs of the many birds above her that have found shelter from the heat of the day as she has.

A small bird, one that looks like it just came from the nest, hops about on the opposite bank, turning it's head this way and that as if to get a good look at her. Aine breaks off chunks of her bread and throws it to the wee thing, smothering a laugh when it flaps and runs away. Slowly it hops back and, realizing the morsel is food, snaps it up and sings for more. Aine breaks off a few more pieces and tosses it to the opposite shore as the bird entertains her to earn a noonday meal.

The morning after Aine has washed the sheep she comes singing to the grassy enclosure with her shears. Tucking her skirts up into her belt she grabs the largest sheep first, her stallion of fluffballs, and throws him onto his back. Holding his front leg so he can't get away she begins to cut the fleece away from his skin as quickly as she can without nicking him. After practicing on her father's flock for many years she's able to finish quickly and lets him bound away.

"You're not lookin' quite so tough there, boyo" she calls after the naked sheep as he runs to the farthest corner away from her.
She gathers the fleece and throws it over the woven side of the enclosure, then turns to her favorite old ewe and does the same. This task is done as quickly as the washing yesterday, but it yields plenty of fleece for one person to dress herself in.

Aine walks to each sheep and caresses them in turn, making sure there are no nicks she may have missed and that they understand there are no hard feelings. When she reaches her ewe she kneels down before her.

"I'm sorry I fleeced you so late this year," she says, "but with the moving of you here it was easier for you to carry it than me. You've still plenty of time to develop a coat of your own before the winter sets in."

She leaves the pen, gathers up this day's harvest and takes it inside to start the carding. That should take up many a lonely summer evening, she thinks to herself.

Aine has wandered away from the hill and towards her little corner of the earth. The sheep in their pen are bleating, their filthy woolen coats staining their white fur almost to blend them into the brown earth.
"Oh well, the sky'll be clear enough to start m' wooling" she sighs.
One at a time she separates one of the sheep from the pen and half drags, half drives them to the stream to wash the mud and lanolin from their fleece. As the mud drifts away with the current it's as if Aine is struck with the feeling of washing away the storm clouds that have chased her from her father's land. Putting them into the second pen of sweet grass is like placing her own white islands in a blue-green sky.
Since there are only four sheep in her small flock the task is not a long one, and when finished she looks up with a filthy, though happy face. She goes back to her cairn to gather clean clothes and supplies for a bath of her own.

I seem to have wandered back to this place after many travels to strange and not-so-wonderful lands.

In reality, my employers decided that I should work for a living instead of pursuing my thirst for discovery and knowledge. Thank the gods of your choice that they've relaxed in the belief that I should earn my keep. Only the oracles know when this may change again.