[Gitana Chumomisto]

It was late in the rarti when next she saw the woman. She was alone, one hand cradling a cup of the spiced wine they were drinking and although Gitana herself was a little dizzy with what she had drunk, the woman seemed steady and calm, a hand tapping rhythmically against the skin of her tambourine, resting on her knee, in time with the other instruments singing their songs into the stars above.

Emboldened by the wine and because she would have otherwise seen no harm in it either, Gitana, bari lavuta in hand, strode over to the woman and called out to her in polite greeting. The woman did not turn to look at her, but this was no surprise for Gitana did not know her name. She settled for sitting beside the woman in the empty space on the overturned log. It was then the woman looked at her with bright green eyes and the same friendly smile she'd flashed her way earlier.

"Sastimos, bor! An odjus rarti, avrah?" She stopped her tapping on the tambourine to lift her cup in good health and drank from it. Gitana would have done the same if she'd still had cup, but Haldo had taken it away from her--the blackbird did not need to fly that rarti. "I am Simza. You are the chikni of Nicoleszra and Emiliano, avrah? Gitana?"

Gitana swayed a moment, mostly because of the alcohol that she had consumed, but because she had not expected the woman to know her name. She grinned, perhaps stupidly, and because she did not answer right away the woman laughed.

"I know because I spoke with your dadrus whilst you kel your bari lavuta, not because I read your name with my mind," the woman teased her, pat Gitana's knee in reassurance. "You kel misto, but your dadrus says you do not enjoy it much, avrah?" The woman was older than she, so it looked, by a good two decades, with a shine of silver in her black hair and a hint of wrinkles at the corners of her pleasant eyes. Still, she was pretty and not without some semblance of youth. Perhaps it was her smile.

Gitana frowned, wondering if her failure to embrace the bari lavuta somehow made this woman unhappy. She did not seem so, but the alcohol fuzzed her mind a little, she knew. "Ah, keck, I have no trouble with it, rawnie, but it is not like riding a groi! It seems so much more...restricting."

"I see, a rakli who likes to fly! Then is it Drifting for you, Gitana?" she asked politely.

But Gitana shook her head, black hair slipping about her face. "Keck, rawnie--I trash the feeling unsettles me a bitti," she admitted with a grin and a shrug of dismay. "I was hoping, perhaps, to learn the talvia..." She trailed off, hopeful, wondering if the woman would know that it was her who had been watching the woman earlier.

But she laughed, amused. "I see! You would wish me to teach you, avrah?" she asked.

Gitana sat mute for a moment, then nodded. "If you would, rawnie! My baba made me a talvia some moons ago, only I've not yet had the chance to learn how to use it. Would you teach me?"

"Avrah, Gitana. Avrah! But not this rarti, I think, nor the next divvus, hmm? I think your shera may need rest. But in two divvus, I will teach you. How is that?"

For Gitana, that was enough and she thanked the woman and it was good they had finished this line of thought for soon Caldo was there, winking at Gitana and ushering the pretty, older woman away for a dance, joking and carrying on in a good-natured fashion. And then her dadrus was there, willing her to play her viola and fused with wine though she was, she lifted her bow and played.