The young girl ran on tiptoe across the recently swept courtyard

 of  the two story inn and tavern, the largest building overall in the entire

 nearby area consisting of farms and small villages. It sat not far from a major

 crossroad, on its east-west road, the oldest in origin, of which sections were

 still partially paved for some distance in either direction across the green

 lowland countryside.  The young girl, slender in body, with brown eyes and

 skin, with shining black hair as bright as a raven’s wings,  having been just

 finessed with branji seed oil, was in the third year of her early womanhood.

  She was and had been called pretty but it was not an earth rattling beauty.

 Rather, as one of the other older young women who worked and resided

 at the inn had said “ she would be easy to watch.”  She skipped-ran

 over the smooth stones in the courtyard as if to leave little trace of her

 presence outside this early sunrise.  Above her in the wakening sky, her

 birthstar, bright still with its companion in the cloudy morning air, the

 right half moon : two aristocratic ladies on a grand promenade, so had said

 her special one that previous star and love lit night. Proud little rasles on a

 tour, observing all there was from each earthbound mortal’s exposed

 dreams, hates and loves.    Thandie, the youngster’s name, hugged herself

 at the memory of her beloved one’s words spoken so softly, feeling so

 much, so, so much to her like the warm breezes when slowly, lightly kissing

clean and oiled skin.    Usually by this time she would be doing some task

    about the inn, whatever the other three older girls hadn’t done but now!  

Now it was Mamma Egede, her lumbering hill shaped form glistening with sweat that made what seemed like darkened great sodden maps of

ounknown islands on her dajaua or top blouse. Greasy beads dropped down

 from her broken pod of a nose and too small chin, her lower jaw seeming to

  have belonged to someone smaller in girth and bite.    Her baby faced fat

  husband, Shosohul  limped about the inn on thin legs. Both of their

 odd sinister forms and their contemptuous attitudes towards both help and

 behind their backs, of  patrons, gave rise to the story, the one young woman

   known to all as “Darling” Yenisahe, told to beer soaked customers growing 

lusty, most especially those travelers who were not from the nearby area with

a desire to play but not pay what Yenisahe considered enough. The two inn

oowners firmly believed, she’d whisper, just out of reach of grasping hands, in

ggetting what was owed them from an under funded guest, in ways least

hhealthy for the reneger.

 Whatever the true relationship was between the inn’s hardened scrabbler

mistress, her mate and his odious lazy brother, towards their surroundings for

they spoke in a quick clipped manner compared to the broad,loud                 

ddrawls  of the majority of patrons was never clear to Thandie.  They 

misused the girls, particularly if a customer complained about something the

t girls had no control of, such as the prices for rooms and the care of their

a  animals in the thatched roof stables. This included beatings of Thandie and

 a fat, sullen goat faced cacao bean shaded young woman named Lologgue .

Except for “darling Yenisahe” who was a regular customer favorite being both

buxom and greedy for coin and attention.

          Knowing this, she worked Mamma, so that the day to day upkeep of

 the inn and its tavern/kitchen became beneath her status. Any mishap in the

 tavern that happened to her or she did on purpose so she could be cooed and

petted by Mamma and Shosohul was put on Lologgue, who glared at the spot

 they stood, her left cheek twitching briefly before she took her two long steps

to earn three slaps from Mamma Egede before backing away very slowly, her

head bowed.  Her large hands she kept balled inside her dajaua as if upon the

hilts of her clan knives as her far off female ancestors once had done in the

past when their clans had swept down from the Jouneau Plateau and the girls

and women finished off those unlucky enough to be wounded or unwise to

have surrendered to the male reavers of the Khiv tribes when they were all

independent of the Ne Varii rulers.