“No, she was not really a witch! Have those imbeciles been right even once? And even if she was, she hadn’t done anything to them. I swear they are trying to wipe out the entire village! It has gotten so bad, I have decided to go back to my inn and abandon the whole lot of them!”

Brunda studied her sister while rubbing long fingers across her own knotted chin. “And what of this tyke that you’ve brought to my house? Do you plan on taking her with you when you go?”

Druzelle smiled congenially. “Well, that’s where I need your help, sister dear.”

Brunda’s response was a cutting, “hurumph!”

Undaunted, Druzelle continued. “It will take me several days to set things up at the inn. In the meantime I need to leave Luena somewhere secure. She certainly is not safe back in that town with those bloodthirsty savages running rampant!”

A frown creased Brunda’s face. The look in her green flecked brown eyes was not a welcoming one.

“What am I going to do with the child? I’m not the motherly type and have no wish to be so!”

“Brunda, the poor little thing has no where else to go,” Druzelle spoke beseechingly. “I could take her with me, but until the inn is in order, there is just no place for her there. I’ll be living in a crude, grass hovel and in Luena’s state of mind, I do not think that is the best place for her.”

Luena had heard every word. Brunda’s reluctance to keep her cut at her heart. She would rather stay in the grass hovel with the sweet tempered Druzelle than with the ill-tempered Brunda. But Luena did not voice her misgivings. She merely sighed and gazed down at her hands. Perhaps it didn’t matter where she was; the ache in her heart was so overwhelming the less she did in any capacity, the less she felt.

Luena sat statue-like in the wooden chair where Druzelle had left her hours before. The only sign that the little girl was still alive came from the steady rhythm of her breathing and an occasional blink of her eyes. She stared toward a bowl of porridge that Brunda had sat in front of her for lunch and watched, as it became ice cold. Her stomach rumbled terribly, but Luena did not have the strength of will to reach out and pick up the spoon.

Brunda quickly lost patience with the child when she would not even try to eat.  The old woman stalked off in a huff to, “be about her business.”  Adding that she hoped Luena wouldn’t just sit there and starve to death.  “Druzelle will not be happy if she comes back to collect a pile of dried up flesh and bones!”

(Continued… https://creativemusingsoflediar.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/tales-of-nightshade-daughter-of-the-silvery-moon-part-four/)

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