part 1

[smackenzie]

"Toast!" Hazel called. "Come on, boy, where are you? Toast!"

"One day he's going to wander off and you'll never see him again," Marcus commented.

"He's teasing the goat," Hay said. "Hey, Toast! Leave my goat alone!"

The goat had been tethered outside away from his fellow goats. Hazel had muzzled him to keep him from licking the poultice off his leg, and they could just hear him bleating sadly. They couldn't hear the dog.

"Don't move," Hazel said to Hay, stabbing a finger at him to make her point. He looked meek. The goat had bitten him on the arm, and as Hazel went outside to get her dog, Hay picked at the bandage to see how bad it was underneath.

"I said don't move!" she yelled through the open door.

"I didn't move!" he yelled back.

"Don't pick at your bandages, either!"

"Get used to it," Marcus said, grinning at the farmer. Hay sighed and shrugged. His parents acted like that too, and so did Hazel's aunt and uncle. He'd resigned himself a long time ago to being badgered by his future wife. But he loved Hazel and she took care of him, so he didn't mind so much.

"What are you doing out here, you silly dog?" she was asking Toast, whose teasing of the goat seemed to be mostly sitting just out of reach and grinning. Anyone who said dogs couldn't grin had never met Toast. Hazel was convinced he'd somehow been born with a human soul, because he had a very human range of expression. Most people just told her she was seeing things.

But Toast was definitely grinning now, his tongue hanging out and his tail thumping the dirt. The goat seemed to pout. Hazel almost felt sorry for him, being tied up away from his fellow goats and forced to wear a muzzle besides, but she knew if his mouth was free he'd have eaten the poultice off his leg by now, and then it wouldn't heal, and he'd still be a cranky goat. And he'd probably bite Hay again, and that was just entirely unnecessary.

"Don't tease the goat," Hazel told her dog, grabbing him by his collar and urging him back towards Hay's parents' house. He barked this time, which made Hazel laugh and the goat bleat again. "I'll take that off you eventually, stop complaining," she called to the goat over her shoulder. She let go of Toast's collar and patted him on the butt, and he trotted inside the house. She followed and closed the door behind her. Hay was sitting at the table, right where she'd left him, although his bandage looked like he'd been picking at it, even though she'd told him not to.

"I didn't touch it," he said, interpreting her look to mean I said not to mess with your bandages.

"Uh-huh," she said, unconvinced.

"He was very well behaved," Marcus said.

"Uh-huh."

Toast barked and sat his ass down on the floor in front of Hay's chair. Hay leaned down to pet him.

"He really does grin," Hay said. Toast barked again.

"Give me your arm," Hazel told him, pulling over another chair and sitting in it. Hay held out his arm, she peeled back the bandages, and Marcus murmured instruction while she gently poked the muscle around the bite marks. Hay gritted his teeth and tried not to whine.

Hazel Vine was almost twenty-four years old and had been training under Marcus since she was sixteen. The first few years she'd mostly followed him around and learned to mix simple potions, treat cuts and bites, and make splints. He fancied himself something more than just a hedgewitch, not just a village healer but the local wise man, alchemist, philosopher, soothsayer, interpreter of signs and portents and omens. Half the time Hazel thought he was entirely too impressed with himself, but sometimes his farseeing actually came true. He'd accurately predicted eclipses and crop failures, and he'd known the last time there was a terrific storm that nearly washed away a low-lying farm.

Of course, a bunch of farmers and shepherds had known the storm was coming too, but Marcus claimed he'd known first.

Hazel was just learning how to listen to the wind and what she could read in the sky. She could read patterns in the stars, but then so could a lot of people, and she was getting more and more proficient with diagnosing and treating ailments for both man and beast, and when he had time her uncle Vine was teaching her how to track, which had turned into a useful skill because her dog had developed an annoying tendency to wander. Toast never strayed that far, but he did stray. He was a yellow short-haired retriever, but in fact the only place he never wandered was into the river. He didn't even like puddles, and rainstorms made him quiver.

Toast was six, give or take, and Hazel loved him more than any other living creature that had four legs. He slept in her room, sometimes on her bed, unless the weather was fine. Her aunt Adymary thought there was something very wrong with that because dogs belonged outside, especially when they were healthy. She'd tried to lock Toast outside, but he only barked and scratched and whined and barked some more until she let him in. She could swear he looked reproachful the next morning, in a "why did you leave me outside in the cold and the dark?" kind of way, but dismissed that as a manifestation of her own guilt. Hazel, of course, said Toast WAS looking at her aunt reproachfully, because Adymary had locked him outside when he was used to sleeping in the house.

The other love of Hazel's life was Hay, the farmer boy who tempted goats to bite him. He was tall and broad-shouldered and not the brightest star in the sky but not entirely stupid either, and he loved her back. He was cute and responsible but he could also be silly, and he was a terrible dancer and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket and would inherit his father's farm when his father either died or just gave up and gave it to him. Hazel had no more ambition than to marry him, raise a family with him, and if possible surpass Marcus in hedgewitchery.

But first she had to teach her dog to stop teasing other people's goats.

words: 1078
total words: 1997

Comments

[smackenzie.livejournal.com]

goat: ^_^

toast: *wagwagwag*

me: ^_^