26 Ymiden 720
Horse-apples dried into disks of fuel burned in Dan's small hearth, giving a thicker, muskier, scent to the rising smoke than woodsmoke offered. More disks sat on a makeshift rack in the sun, drying into more fuel, the output of a good morning's work. He'd parked his open cart and pitched his tent upwind of the hearth to reduce the risk of fire, and the slight breeze rippled the hanging sides of the tent. His two ponies, Cloud and Smoke, as grey as their namesakes, grazed nearby, tails swishing occasionally to ward off flies.
Dan himself was seated on the ground near the fire, ruefully examining the worn out sole on one of his battered shoes and hoping he could manage to patch it somehow. His only other footwear was his boots, and although they were cosy and comfortable in Zi'da and Cylus, they were rather too warm for the Hot Cycle. He sighed, and fetched one of his cured rabbit skins, as well as his leather-working kit, and reminded himself to keep an eye on the sun - he needed to check his snares while there was still light to see by. There was a bowl or so of bone broth left in his pot from yesterday that he could reheat for tonight's meal and as yet, only scant food stored for the leaner, colder seasons, that he would rather not dip into during a season of plenty like this one.
He carefully traced the outline of the shoe onto the cured hide with a bit of burnt twig, and cut round it with his knife, trying not to spoil the hide by wavering off the traced line. The leftover pieces, he cut into thin thongs to use to fasten the new sole to the old upper part of the shoe. This meant poking small holes in both the sole and the upper with his leather-working awl, and then poking the thong through the holes and pulling it tight. It was harder than it looked. The pieces kept sliding against each other so that the holes went crooked, and the thong wasn't the easiest thing to thread through the holes in the first place. Sinew might have been easier, but he was almost out of decent sinew. When the weather cooled enough that the meat wouldn't spoil before he processed it, he'd try hunting deer again, and success there would re-supply him. For now, he made do with what he had, tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration. He was three-quarters of the way round the shoe, when Cloud snorted and he looked up.
Both ponies' heads had come up. They definitely heard something out there, coming closer to his camp and they had their ears forward in interest rather than back in fear, which meant people, or horses, or both. Dan dropped the shoe well clear of the fire, and snatched up his spear as fear curdled deep in his gut. People always meant judgement and expectations he couldn't meet. He shaded his eyes and peered out across the grass for whoever it was. He must look a sight, he knew, with his cloud of pale hair like the dandelion clocks he'd named himself after and the scars lacing his tanned skin, barefoot, wordless, and wary in leggings and a ragged shirt under the afternoon sun.
