Young Kaylith

Kaylith sat on the cold hearth while the cat Dregs bumped his head insistently against her hand. She stroked his fur without looking, for she was watching the scene in the hallway with the same intensity a mouse might show, were it to watch Dregs consuming another of its kind. The hearth room was a good place to watch from. The wide arch of the doorway opened into the sunny hall, while Kaylith herself was left in shadow, unobserved. She could not hear the words, but it was enough to see the graceful menace in Datura’s posture. Another suitor was being ousted.

Datura was sister to Kaylith, not by blood but by Kevel law, which said that children without protection were bound to each other and to the monastery. Kaylith idolized the older girl. Datura was clever and cruel, awe-inspiring and imposing. Her skin was tawny and so was her hair; she was like a lion from the distant south, only in the shape of a young woman. When there were gatherings of other young people, she presided over them with the air of a sleeping predator. She had a bevy of followers, hopeful, fearful, and almost as worshipful as Kaylith. Suitors were a constant source of amusement for Datura, who enjoyed accepting their favors and luring them into complacency. Then she picked an imagined slight and turned them into outcasts. If they were properly ashamed, she let them return. Otherwise, they left the city.

Kaylith was too young to be accepted into Datura’s crowd. She crept after them when they went carousing through the sand covered streets, only to be caught by the Good Doctor and chided for foolish behavior. He lived in a little house by the monastery, and he kept an eye out for the scrawny, disheveled girl. Whenever he heard the din of Datura’s crowd passing through the streets, he sighed and left the parchments on his table to go find Kaylith, who inevitably tried to slip out the gates to follow them.

“It is not foolish to want to join the company of others,” he said now, “But Datura is not safe. She is poison, in the end, to any who follow her.”

Kaylith just muttered something about ‘my sister’, and swung her feet. She was sitting on the Doctor’s table, eating an apple from a basket by the door. She had been apprehended this time at the far gate, which led more directly to the populated areas of the city. The section around the monastery had been carved from stone, and city dwellers had long preferred to live near the silted grounds of the river valley. Kaylith had never been to the river; she had lived most of her life in the stone halls of the monastery. Except on rare occasions when she evaded capture and wandered aimlessly amongst empty stone houses, the river was nothing more than a green haze in the distance.

“It’s good,” she said, after a long silence. The Doctor looked up. He had given up trying to talk to her for the day, had expected her to remain sullen until Datura showed up again. She was still wasn’t smiling, but at least she wasn’t scowling any more. The apple core was held delicately between her thumb and forefinger, and she was staring at it.

“The…apple,” Kaylith said. “It wasn’t like the ones we get.”

“You liked it?” he asked, nearly incredulous.

She treated him to an equally incredulous expression. “Have you ever had one of the apples they give us? They’re all wrinkly and squishy.”

“I suppose,” he murmured, considering what to do now that his adopted charge was speaking to him. “From a corner of the valley, near here. There’s an orchard.”

Kaylith looked confused. “Orchard?”

“Apple trees,” the Doctor explained. “You could go have a look. It’s not far.”

Kaylith scooted off the table. “Which direction?”

“North,” he said. He was answered by the sound of the door shutting. He half expected to see her sneak away to the south, to the city, but when he went out later, small footprints made a line in the sand to the north.

That night Kaylith was back on the hearth, watching Datura through the door. She did not watch so intently, though, for every now and then she reached behind her, stroked Dregs (still trying to get attention), and picked up an apple from a small pile.

---Is point of view or chronology a problem in here?