Mairy was up to her elbows in suds. Sweat clung to her brow and slipped in beads along her hair line, tangling in her long auburn locks. She deparately wanted to wipe the rivulets away, but had learned from experience that the lye would sting her eyes if it got any closer to her them. She lifted her head to the sky and tried to shake the perspiration back, then held her head up carefully as she finished pushing and prodding the pot of laundry with the long paddle. Och, but there had to be an easier way to get the muck out of their household linens and clothes. Twas surely a good thing that she only did this type o' deep cleanin' a few times a year. Satisfied that she had pressed the greatest amount of filth out of the laundry she began to transfer the linens to the boiling pot of water in the kettle to her left, careful to keep her hard work from touching anything but the searing hot water along the way. She let the kettle roil and strode over to use a bit of cool water to rinse down her arms and hands and finally, blessedly wipe her face. "What would I give to live the life of a pampered woman? Ta' have all me hard work taken care of fer me? Aye, there are times I think I would throw in the lot of this life for a taste o' that." She sighed, and moved on to muck out the stall for their single remaining cow and feed the pigs, chickens and sheep. They had been lucky to get the sheep this last few years. Not that they had a whole flock of them, but they had 5 of them now and that was a start. She was not looking forward to shearing them, but she was looking forward to having the wool. She stood staring at their broad backs, smiling just a bit as she imagined the fine sweater she could make for Thom with the wool once it was boiled down and spun out. Perhaps she would even make an effort to weave the grey and ivory together. Aye it could be quite a fine sweater. "Perhaps I am, no so ready to give it all up afterall," she mused aloud. That thought brought her back to her laundry with a quick start, she ran back to the kettle, hoping she had not boiled the cloth too long.
After the laundry was wrung out and put out to dry, Mairy completed her rounds of chores and retired to the small cottage she shared with Thom. It seemed so empty with him and the hounds gone. She had hoped he would leave Conn with her, but of course, as he had always said, a hound's place is on the hunt. So off Conn had gone. She picked at her skirt, it was odd how like his namesake the pup was. He seemed to be able to sense when she needed him around, and he loved to be read to, just as the first Conn had. She could still remember when Thom had come home with the two strange hounds, the wilder grey one and the taller blonde. Coll, the grey had mated with Cait. As the she-hound had swollen with the weight of the pups, Mairy had come to care deeply for the blonde. Conn was just so attentive and somehow aware of her. She felt like the hound actually understood what she said. She knew that was beyond loony, but she had felt so connected to the big brute. She was crushed when Thom had gone off on the hunt with him. She had such a bad feeling about it. And then Cait had started to whelp the pups; she had almost bled out to have them. Mairy knew when she saw those beautiful pups that she would not see her Conn, nor Cait's Coll again, as their miniatures had just been delivered into the world. And then Thom had come bursting in, the look in his eyes confirming her intuition. But all in all she was a lucky woman, she had her Thom and the young Conn, and of course young Coll, even if he was a handful. It was no' such a bad life, tho' it was lonely at the moment.
She stood, time to stop brooding and get on with day. She had supper to tend to and then it would be time to bring in the laundry.
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