Re: Wren + Ana: woods
No one expected a woman and that, Ana had learned over a century. Full moons and fur and working alone and it had been the last stretch of years where even living alone was not cause for rumor, for whisper, for sideways glances in streets. No one expected a woman even here where she had carved out a piece of the woods for her own. Ana's smile was full, a secret shared naughtily out here where no one could see. She wiped a streak of clay onto her temple in pushing back her hair.
The woman who trailed sweet scents like powdered sugar footsteps, she was unexpected. People lived closer, were more aware of the woods these days, no? But the woman reminded her of her own dresses years back, when pretty and clean was required to keep your reputation. She had been warmth and sweat and scandal for as long as she'd been an American.
"I live here." Ana's own voice held the smoke and cadence of Portuguese, of French. She supposed she had spoken it so long in formative years, the American neutrality hadn't stamped out the postmark of her own origins. She heard a foreign tongue in the woman's voice, enough of a footprint to see a pattern. And she inhaled, long and steady and without her gaze shifting from Wren to anywhere else as she breathed in sugar-wrapped familiarity and parsed it for truth. It was unsettling, no? She knew that too. Small woman, wiry, who stared without apology.
"Where is it you are from?" Ana didn't mean beyond the woods.