Ossard crowded at the Cassaro River’s mouth, the river’s waters passing through the city after snaking along the valley that stretched out to the east. Its chill flow ran for days through the rugged Northcountry, marked on its way by rapids, waterfalls, and a wild and icy source up amongst the interior’s snow-capped peaks.
Those mountains rose up not just inland, but all about the Northcountry. They were dotted with exhausted silver mines – the same mines that had long ago fuelled the city’s growth. Today, they hosted the miners’ graves, along with gangs of bandits, and a thick spread of impoverished farming hamlets.
Once the Northcountry had built Ossard, now it fed it.
And just as the land had once brought riches to the city, now the sea likewise delivered. Its deep grey waters, Ossard’s lifeline, brought food, trade, and on occasion even refugees.
The Flets, my people…
My family and I are descendants of refugees, from the thousands upon thousands who fled a war waged against our people by the Lae Velsanans two centuries before. Those dark days, Def Turtung, The Killing, lay behind our people, but far from forgotten.
We Flets are proud survivors of such catastrophe. In truth, if such calamities were omitted from our history little else would remain.
Today, the Flets of Ossard met passing Lae Velsanans with animosity and distrust, but preferably not at all. In such a climate, violence between our two peoples wasn’t unknown.
Myself, I’d never seen any blood spilt in the feud, but for that matter I’d never even seen a Lae Velsanan in the flesh. I’d been told that they looked like us, but stood taller, leaner, and, it was grudgingly admitted, finer. I found it hard to picture such beings as Flet-hating beasts.
Since arriving in Ossard, our family’s bloodline had mixed on occasion with our more numerous Heletian hosts, but our roots remained obvious – as they did for one third of the city. My family, with its blonde and blue-eyed Flet heritage, had never been able to climb above the rank of a relatively successful mercantile family, even with a good portion of luck. As I grew older, I realised that my birth had marked the end of that good fortune.
My mother had suffered a terrible labour delivering me, something that had threatened her life, savaged her health, and brought bloody ruin to her womb. My parents needed sons, not a solitary daughter. Even before I’d taken my first breath I’d failed them.
Despite the disappointment of having only one child, and a daughter at that, our household was still full of love.
Our family stood as one of the most successful within the Flet community, we had not only wealth, but also respect – being generous benefactors to the Flet Guild. Due to our family’s well-known civic nature, we even shared some goodwill from the Heletians, but in the end, to them at least, we were still Flets.
Growing up in a place where one’s people are victimised can be a cruel experience, but also builds character. As my coming of age approached, and with the lotus warming me to the idea, I became determined to catch a man’s eye that would help my parents. Simply, I had to marry a Heletian, specifically the son of a powerful family or a wealthy widower.
In Ossard, coming of age happened on a young man or woman’s seventeenth birthday – a year late compared to most Heletian League states. As with so many things, Ossard was slightly out of step with the rest of the League, partly due to its Flets, but also because of its isolation. Regardless, when the day came I was ready.
At seventeen I stood slightly above average height with long arms and legs, all of it topped by blue eyes and wavy blonde hair. It was often said I had been blessed with the attractive looks of my mother.
Politeness is double-edged.
It’s true that my skin lay smooth and unblemished, but it’s also true that my face hung only neat and plain on an unremarkable frame. At the time I hoped it would grow into something worthy of the compliments. It never did.
It was the day of my first outing, an Ossard tradition at a young lady’s coming of age. In essence, I would be dressed up, reminded of my manners, and then put on show with a chaperone. An outing’s new lady was referred to as a Mint Lady, meaning fresh.
Wearing a new dress gifted to me by my proud parents, I was to be escorted out by a young group led by a distant cousin. On that sunny afternoon, my father and beaming mother saw our two open-topped coaches off at the door with Sef.
My father had arranged for us to go to a fine establishment that overlooked the sea north of the main port. The venue, Rosa Sorrenta’s, was the place for the young of the Heletian upper ranks to be seen. In all, it was an outing someone such as myself should aspire to, but never too seriously expect to achieve. That I was going at all was a gift in itself.
We were all dressed in finery; in the lead coach my cousin and his new wife, and another relation with his betrothed. Also accompanying us were two family friends, both Flet Mint Ladies in their own rights. We three mints sat in the final coach.
I was so dosed up on lotus – courtesy of my anxious mother – that I kept forgetting my companions’ names. Lost in that haze, I just knew that my objective was to find a husband, and looking at the competition, I felt that I wouldn’t be hindered despite being so plain. Forgive my unkind honesty, but one sat as burdened as a heifer, while the other had the face of a horse – an old horse fed on lemons. We spoke little, those nameless girls and I, but we all knew the truth of the day. Following the coach of our chaperones, the three of us sat studying each other and exchanging the most cordial of pleasantries, Horseface, Heifer, and me – Plainface.
The three of us wore similar dresses in the fashion of the time. They were all substantial, well covering, of rich fabric, and showed off a little of the curve of the hip and bosom – a taste if you like. White lace showed through in places as a symbol of our purity, but lay amidst the strong colour of the main body of each dress; mine a deep blue, Heifer’s an emerald green, and Horseface’s a brave violet that verged on burgundy. No one wore red; that would have sent out a whole new round of messages, none that our families were ready to associate with.
The main streets of Ossard were cobbled, seeing our meandering ride towards the northern district in the late summer sun as one of lazy pleasure. Before long we were earning glances from men alongside the road, all flattering and good-natured. Our duties of maintaining fixed, polite, but disinterested smiles in response to their looks and whistles became a challenge in itself. The longer it lasted, the more we gave in to quiet giggles as the iciness between us melted.
During our progress through Ossard’s streets another challenge brought itself to my attention; my undergarments were too tight. Some of the lacings felt as though they were cutting into me, a thing made worse by the constant rocking of the coach. I began rehearsing the conversation in my mind, the one that saw my mother scolding me for bleeding inside my dress. My reply would be that she shouldn’t have laced me up quite so strictly just to hide one of my more popular attributes with the gents, my breasts.
The streets flew by, the buildings changing in nature from the stout stone buildings of the market quarter, all signed and well kept, to the less affluent districts that would never be as successful as those on the high ground and main streets. Here the buildings were predominantly wood, some little more than daub-and-cane.