Si'Wren sat under the shade tree in the midst of what little fallen grain Geth had harvested in showing her how to reap with the scythe, her eyes round with fear as she thought of all the great and truly savage beasts that were known to stalk this wild land. She stood and looked around fearfully, but all seemed quiet and peaceful enough. Several birds flitted across the field, and a pair of jet black ravens could be seen gliding in the distance.
Moving with slow, unsteady progress, she walked up the gentle slope to the top of the low hill. There, she craned her neck as she shifted her position several steps over, and found a slightly elevated place to stand, peering over the tops of the gently undulating field of grain at the others. Should she even dare to scream, would they arrive in time if a wild beast should suddenly try to savage her?
She turned her head, taking in the land on all sides, and decided that if she remained alert enough, perhaps she would have just enough time to flee and so thereby possibly safeguard her life, should anything try to come and get her.
Thinking better of it again, she found renewed appreciation for her compulsory separation from the others, the better to escape their sullen, silent persecutions. To be amidst them, and not work, would be to invoke their supreme contempt and irritation, and leave her feeling so low as to wish she were already dead, and that on top of her status as the lowest of the low for her reputation as an idol-breaker.
Si'Wren considered all, and felt renewed remorse at what terrible fate had befallen her. As long as she could remember, Si'Wren had always been a hard worker, and a willing one too. Just like Nelatha, whose comforting, characteristic voice she missed so desperately.
But now she was to be in constant fear for her life, alone in the world, and alone among men. All by herself now, she peered expressionlessly across the wild landscape, as the wind blew strands of dark hair across her eyes, and began weeping for fear and loneliness.
Her eyes, blurred by tears, swept the nearby foliage, seeking anything that moved. Was not a swift hunting beast's charge always a surprise to the victim? Who could resist such an advance? Or how could such a one as she manage to resist even so loathsome and demeaning a danger as the attack of a mere pack of scavenger dogs, with their many snapping jaws? What of the giant dire wolves, or the huge roaming bears, and fierce prowling wild cats, and other even more unspeakable monsters such as she might not even dream of? She remembered the trophies of the hunters, and such were the stuff of nightmares, and she found that her harvest field had become a place of terror.
She wiped at her tears, and looked down at the place where the sickle had fallen. She walked down the slope and stood over the ungainly reaper's scythe, fighting back the demons of the unknown. Finally, quelling her terrors somehow, she knitted her brow as she stooped to kneel down beside the scythe. Then, with exceeding care, she touched her finger lightly to the feather's edge of the blade in all of it's wicked keenness. Sniffling and wiping ineffectually at her face with the back of her forearm, she examined the sharp scythe, and considered how pitiful and inept a fighter she must portray to any animal.
Was she not but a girl, scarcely one-forth the size of a good fighting man and as nothing to one of the human giants? Could she make as ready use of whatever came to hand, or of her own muscles if necessary, to settle an argument as brave Habrunt might do? Thinking unhappily on all of this, she felt disconsolate to such a degree as never before in her short life. Turning from the heavy scythe, she decided to go and seek relief in the shade of the trees overhanging the dank and shadowy banks of the wide, peaceful stream.
The gurgling of the water over heavy stones partially blocking a narrows downstream was a pleasant sound to her ears. The backup of water from a beaver dam had created a wide pond in front of her.