Re: Wren + Ana: woods
Ana had family. She had blood in her veins that ran in others and she knew what it was to be without them. She knew, and it was enough, no? To know what it was you lacked, to feel it beneath your breastbone. She stood alone, with her hands palm-up and creation in her studio and stared at the woman with her soft cheeks, her gentle eyes.
Her name in the woman's mouth was like caramel, it yielded to accent and bent willingly. "I am attached to it," she said, dry but warm. Ana didn't say thank you, because she had done nothing to earn it. The name had been given her, and she liked it. It was comfortably her, and it persisted over the century, despite moving from place to place.
She was not visibly startled by Wren's list, and in truth she was unfazed. Pleasure was a necessity like any other and there had always been women who wielded it. Pleasure was a gift or a weapon or a bargaining chip, and Ana thought God an old man who was more forgiving than church had made him.
"I like the warmth, the people, but they are distraction when you are making pots." She did not describe her own work as art; it was not brushes, it was not canvases, it was not grand, no? Ana's fingers were warm and hard, and she didn't linger, she touched. This woman smelled like home and she imagined something of her mother's jaw to that face and that blood of hers, it ran in veins. Fancy and imagination, and perhaps she was lonely, yes?
"When it gets too empty here, I go into town." Ana's smile was small, but deft, and it drew itself like a secret into the corner of her mouth. "But some of them who live there, they think I'm mad, living out here. They whisper, and it is entertainment for them if I don't come in too often. A small gift, but I give it." A small shrug that looked like it could have been laughter, if she'd let it.