Coffee Stained Pages. Volume 1. Лилла Сомн
do in any big city. If you do not benefit the place and its inhabitants, no one will register you as a citizen or give you temporary accommodation. Parasites are not wanted anywhere. And as an ignoramus, you will soon find yourself back in the Kantine.
Again and again.
There is enough work for everyone. Agrarian Kantine has plenty of jobs, as one of the largest city-states. And, of course, the most boring.
According to Ami.
Of course, there are other options. Zeth, Lim and… just a deep Forest. Here, without society as the main source of constant stress, she feels much calmer.
She feels kind of loved and supported here. Finally. Strange things she never knew and barely can feel and name.
All these jumps, antics and attempts to escape or settle down now look simply ridiculous.
She knows it. Everything will be the same in Omill and everywhere else.
She will bring herself and her depression everywhere. It will never be easier anywhere she goes.
New attempts to catch on and adapt, new awkward situations that contribute to uniformly covering oneself with shame from head to toe. Not as plentiful as on the first visits… but still in a fairly thick layer.
There’s no magic land and no perfect people. She will always be just a rejected weirdo everywhere. Maybe except this Forest. Because it is how it is. She rejects herself. What to say about other people? They just follow.
So it is fine. It is fine here, and it will be the same everywhere.
One could come to terms with all this. At least something worked out. At least she has a home. Everyone is comfortable. Her relatives have the workforce, and Ami has some stability.
In the sense, she is not disgracing herself more than usual, in new and unfamiliar ways. She is still a kantinian and also values comfort and safety. More than abstract things.
She almost convinced herself, but suddenly one big hairy BUT appeared on the horizon.
This damned medium-urgent appointment to Omill.
How did she feel when the opportunity she was looking for came to her and poked her into her hands?
Grief. The most real grief. Intense bitterness and all-consuming resentment.
And now, more than anything else, she would like to throw this unsolicited handout from fate back into her maliciously laughing face.
“Take it and choke. Why even bother?! Why now?! I accepted my way and my life. I’m weak and tired. And desireless. There’s no joy in it. It's pure mockery.”
But… Don’t be so bitter. It’s a small mockery. Just for half a large cycle. That’s enough to make gnats laugh.
What can be accomplished in half a cycle? Ah… really. What?
Well… for example…
Admire the wonderful giant landmark mushrooms, lovingly grown in the city by witches, softly shimmering in different colours at sunset.
Drink refreshing drinks with local water… By the way, the difference is striking! Sacred water, revered even by elves Amelia have never seen, gives all omillian dishes and drinks a special, unique fresh and slightly sweet taste. You won't find anything like this anywhere.
… May it all fly away with gnats and swampers…
An amazing huge lake of delicious life-giving water under the mountain near Omill inevitably made this city the capital of drinks and a place of pilgrimage for all those who care and adore. Mainly people came here for the coffee.
… And let it all fall into the swamps…
Of course, the famous Omill green and ground coloured coffee was delivered to all the cities of the Mainland… But it lost a huge share of its flavour bouquet and witchiness, being served not fresh, just picked, not with local water and not according to any old selva recipe. And, on her own behalf, Ami would add that without being drunk at a street table in one of the many coffee shops in Omill under a huge landmark mushroom decorated with coloured lanterns. And also without local sweets – pressed from wild nuts, cereals, and berries.
… Eat all the six-mouthed monsters…
Admiring the dark-skinned, smiling, joyless and slightly arrogant selvas, the vast majority of whom were also very good-looking, and it’s an additional pleasure. And, as if this were not enough, they sing and dance beautifully, weave fabrics with mesmerizing patterns and… all of them are witches.
Isn't this a reason for envy? Definitely it is.
These witch people do not live in Kantine, and Ami still remembers how surprised and enchanted she was the first time she met a living selva. It was rude to stare like that, but the pictures in the textbooks did not give any idea of what the selvas were really like.
It's… Like the difference between a map and a landscape. It’s easy to stare in admiration here, losing control of yourself and your manners.
So, as it seems, despite the violent internal protest and seething hatred, there were always many more reasons for going to Omill.
What made Ami especially happy was that she would supposedly leave Kantine before the start of the Fertility Festival, hated to the point of gnashing teeth. It was worth a lot. It was even possible to simply go to Omill under this pretext and return again to rot here.
At least minus once the stupid songs, for the planned forced fun, accelerated by ale, unfunny jokes and inappropriate and unpleasant signs of attention, stupendous dances and literally sickening round dances!
… What could be better for the psyche than the absence of odes to one’s own unwanted fertility.
‘It’s not the city’s fault that you feel bad here. And not people. They get along well with each other. It’s like you’re something foreign here.’ – she reminded herself.
Alrighty, but still, in order to try to avoid one day of fertility, one could agree to almost anything. Also because these days made Ami’s mother nervous and even more withdrawn.
But this did not bring them together with their daughter. Yvette simply locked herself in her room with a supply of food, tea, and a hygiene bucket. And no amount of screaming, threats, or persuasion could lure her out of there.
However, persuasion-threats-screams were another holiday tradition, repeated from cycle to cycle, as stable as the very presence of a swamp holiday. Everyone loved this swamp theatre.
Even the dialogues have not changed over time. Immortal recognized classic. Nobody got tired of this unfresh scenario. The mother was asked not to disgrace herself in front of her neighbours. She answered in a calm voice that she would not disgrace herself, since she would not be able to greatly harm everyone who congratulated her on her still fertile age and the ability to reproduce further. She only went out at night to empty the manure container and threatened to douse the contents of this bucket on anyone who interfered with self-isolation.
Ami winced.
Every cycle of her life she felt as if she had already been watered from this same bucket. Desire to quickly tear herself away from home and the glorious traditions, ancestral memory and great city was almost invincible. And to find herself as far as possible from the concentration of those things.
From the comfort of home. From the family bonds. From the mother with this permanent verbal and non-verbal hygiene bucket.
Her behaviour was understandable. It was probably painful for the older failed tramp to see her ridiculous reflection. No matter how hard she tried to forget who she was before, she had to look. She had to look at this. Her past mistake.
Mistakes, in fact, Amelia was one of three… mistakes. She made them systematically. For what’s sake? One never knows.
Maybe she wanted to be accepted here. But she didn’t succeed either.
She wanted her daughters to be respectable plant workers and respected mistresses of the fields, she had never been herself. The failed family.
Though…