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# The Wandering Wisewoman

## Prep

### Questions

  * Name: Gege
  * Gender: Female
  * Abilities: Creation, healing, destruction, organization
  * Broom: A broom of wood and sticks
  * Favorite season: Growing
  * Leaving behind: War
  * Greatest desire: A garden
  * Setting: Fantasy inspired by real-world elements

### Note

  * The seasons in this game are Rainy, Growing, Harvest, and Dry

## Gameplay

### Rainy season: In the Mountain Village

  * Location: Mountain

#### Preparation

I hang out new awnings before the cave entrance in deep blue and red, like a little banner advertising the presence of a new herbalist and wisewoman.
I sweep through each room, lighting herbs in each to sweeten the air and to show the spirits due respect.
In some of the caves I find dead things which I pray over and bury outside, with extra purifying herbs burnt to help the spirits on their way.
The rooms swept and blessed, I put away my things--colorful skirts and headdresses, oil for my hair, a little extra food, washcloths.

One token I always carry is a spindle whorl of stone, from my mother's old spindle.
It is a symbol of the momentum that keeps the spindle spinning, and the thread coming.
The threads connect me throughout time, and through ties of blood and soil and memory, keeps me grounded.
I place warm ashes and embers from my fires on the altars, always keeping it warm with the life of cooking and flesh.

#### Scene: The outlook

  * King of Cups: New favorite place

In my wanderings for herbs and forage I come upon a goat on its own, and follow the fleet-footed creature up the slopes.
It leads me up to a rocky outcropping where I can see for many birds'-flights around, the fields of the village spread beneath like colorful patchy skirts, the lands beyond that I have traveled, the grasslands, the swamps, going out to endless unseen horizons.
A herder comes out to greet us, it turns out the goat was part of his herd.
He is older but strong as rushing water, and carries himself with the comfort of one who knows who he is and how he fits into the world.
He invites me to his home when the rains start up again, and it soon becomes routine to go up to the outcropping to watch the view and then drop in at the goatherd's cabin for beer and conversation.

#### Scene: The discovery

  * Four of swords: Nostalgia-inducing item

In one of my explorations of the caves I find a fetish, a bone pierced through with feathers, curiously close to the ceremonial items from my home village growing up.
It must be a person of power who left it here.
Could they have been from my home region?
I need to ask around about this.

#### Scene: The rebuilding

  * Seven of pentacles: The village gathers to help a community member

I get my chance soon enough when parts of Oke's compound washes away in the rains and the village helps him rebuild.
I am there to light the fires, organize the women, and tend to or prevent any sickness and wounds.

During the meal and singing after a day of building I am told of another village wisewoman from long ago who might have had such an item. 
As the villagers talk over each other and argue about dates and personages, their collective memory passing over other subjects to circle on to one, I am gradually struck by the realization that the one who left the feathered bone behind must have been my mother, long gone now and close-lipped in life about her time going from village to village.

Told that she moved on after spending a rainy season here, I sense it is my time to move on as well.
The spindle spins, the thread is drawn.
I must follow in her footsteps and walk the path of her story.
I take their directions on where she went next, make my good-byes including a quiet afternoon drinking and talking with the goatherd, and look out on from the outcropping a last time before I descend into the view, back on the road again.
My spindle whorl I leave on the altar, and take up the feathered bone on my travels.

### Growing season: Among the Mangrove Forests

#### Preparation

After many days of travel I walk into the forests where the river meets the sea in a constant pull and tug.
The village women come over to help me clean up a small hut at the outskirts, used for guests, hunters and others coming through when the local homes are not enough to lodge them.

They bring food to tide me by while I settle in, and we exchange seedlings and sprouts from my stay in the mountain village and on my way here.
Who knows if they will take root here, but sometimes strange soils can make for hospitable homes.

I pat down the little patch of land around my hut and plant the gifted seeds, just on the edge of planting season in this rich, dark chikoko soil of the riverlands.
I don't know how long I will stay, but perhaps I can start something here before I leave.
The feathered bone I place on the home altar alongside ember-warm ashes, a reminder both of why I came and the path I follow.

#### Scene: Cultivating roots

  * Nine of wands: Strengthening abilities

Living near the main cluster of houses means more visits with the villagers, especially the women, something I fear I am out of practice with after my solitary and wild habits on the roads and in the mountains.
Oftentimes I let their talk wash over me while they sit spinning and weaving as I grind up roots and leaves for infusions.
I am sometimes reminded that I have to talk, and knowing that a traveler is a valuable source of information I try in my halting way, though my words may peter away like the tail end of rains when I focus on what I am doing with my hands.

"There was a knowing-wife like you who did not talk much," laughs Ajoke, pulling one of the children into her lap and gently taking its hands away from the spindle she is working. 
She holds and kisses the little hands, to the little one's squirming delight.
"I only saw her when I was little, but you remind me of her!"

When asked, she says her grandmother in another village might know more and promises to take me there when she visits.

#### Scene: Visiting Grandma's village

  * Knight of cups: Needing help

Ajoke's brother-in-law takes us on his boat to the village, traveling down the meandering shaded streams that seep like veins throughout these lands before sailing along the coast to our destination.
He is a taciturn young man, gentle with the children who squeal in joy at the sights and the movement, courteous and obliging to the women who ply him with food and ask him to make stops here and there for forage and herbs.
His gaze lingers on me at times and I lower my gaze, unsure what to do.

As we step off at the other village the boat rocks from a stray wave of water and I stumble, almost falling into the water.
He catches me for a long-short moment when we look too closely into each others' eyes before we both startle away, to the laughter of the women.

When Ajoke's grandmother comes out to greet us along with the other villagers she pauses at the sight of me and calls me by my mother's name.
We talk a little while as I look to her coughing and pains while the village bustles around us from the visit, and in between instructions and incantations I hear snatches of my mother's time here, how she cursed away the king's men who overfished and overlogged the shorelands.
By the end of it more of the village are sitting around pitching in with details, how the storms raged along the coasts, boats were overturned and men fell sick until they left with offerings promising never to let their shadows touch these shores again.

It is a terrible story, and hard to believe that one person could have made such a working.
Surely it was the gods moving through her, and what marks would such an undertaking have left on her?

And indeed she did not stay long afterward, for the people feared her as much as they thanked her.
They say she headed to the greater ports where the ships sail.

#### Scene: Closure & Parting

  * The Hanged Man: A sacrifice to move forward

Though the king's men may have been gone some years they left behind a wasteland that yet remains, a gray blight among the deep brown and green of the coasts.
It takes days of talking and pulling a lot of different straining skeins, but we start planting on the gray sands, kokisa and other shrubs that can take the sour salt of these soils and maybe, in time, start bringing back the sweet-salt chikoko to these areas.

I will not be here to see it, however. 
I leave the feathered bone on my home altar to greet the next inhabitant.
When Ajoke's brother-in-law Harun rows me to the next port over we speak very little. 
Before I step off he hands me a sprig of one of the waterberry sprouts the village planted in the wastelands, the light reflecting off the purple-red leaves, a promise of tomorrows that lie beyond the sight and knowing of those who planted the beginnings.

### Harvest season

#### Preparation

I get curious glances as I walk down the road into the port and fishing town, but when I squat down at the edge of the market with herbs and seeds laid out the folk understand what I'm about.
A woman comes by on an ox-drawn cart with servants keeping pace on foot, and requests a cure for dry cough.
This seems to be who I need to impress to have a stall here, and when I steep a brew for her she takes a sniff and invites me to her home.
She turns out to be the senior wife of a local chief and the meal is good with harvests of fruit and grain, along with the season's migration of fish coming in.

When the chief's wife offers me a room to stay I don't refuse. 
It gives me protection and would give her a measure of prestige as well to be hosting a wisewoman.
The waterberry sprig I was gifted from the swamps has its place next to the other fetishes and offerings on my altar of carven wood.
Some of the glances on me lingered beyond just curiosity; perhaps I will hear more about my mother here.

#### Scene: The Festival of Ships

  * Ten of cups: It's a holiday. What sort?

The ships come in, sails swollen and oars creaking as they glide into the sheltered bay, the songs of the sailors and the songs from the shore melting into one as the distance closes and the ships bump to a stop.
The goods are a procession from the docks to the market borne on baskets and carts and the backs of draft animals through the streets with dancing and singing on either side, grains and cattle and bolts of cloth and spices and more from far away, the air charged with the joy and anticipation of plenty, of good times to come.

I have much to trade at the market, my good luck charms and poultices particularly popular with seafaring men. I end up with cloth in lovely blue and yellow for a new dress, exchanged seeds, savory leaves to cook with, and more. 
The dancing goes on late into the night and a woman who came in with the ships meets my eye.
Her smooth head has a proud perch on top of a long neck, and her smile is knowing.
We float closer to each other in the dances until we dance face to face, drinking each other in, the smell of faraway waters strong on her.

Leaving the dance hand-in-hand feels natural, as does kissing behind the bushes on the way to my home.
There is a little chill in the air but I do not light the fire, we do not need it, oh, when we burn so.

Before dawn she leaves with a lingering kiss, leaving a scent and a few petals from her garland on the pillow.
I stay longer in bed than is my wont, drifting between sleeping and waking, lost in a sweet little dream and not wanting to find myself, not yet.