thelostnorth: переводы

→“Oh yes, because a gryphon would really come and take one of his skinny cows.” I snorted.

→Placing his fingers to his lips Michael whistled sharply twice, with a longer note at the end. Hale shuffled her feet, and Michael reached out to blindly ruffle her fetlock. “Not you Hale.”

→I hugged him back and let go when Brooks came over to nose my free hand with his cold muzzle. I knelt to stroke him from his crown to his tail, as Michael turned to scan the field a final time. From a pouch on my belt I produced a bit of jerky for the dog to gnaw at. He could hunt small game if he got hungry enough, but I couldn’t help but spoil him.

→“Miser.” He crossed his eyes at me as he gave me a side-hug.

→I shook my head in amusement, riding out to meet him as he gathered his belongings into a satchel and used his crook to stand. When I was within a few feet of him I arched my eyebrows in mock disbelief. “Don’t tell me you already ate all you packed for the day?”

→He looked up at the sound of Hale’s hooves. “Taryn!” He pitched his voice to carry across the hills so that he might as well have been standing next to me. “Have you got anything to eat?”

→There were thirty sheep in his and my brother’s care, and they were mincing their way around the rocks that jutted from the grass, picking at tufts of green and brown grass. Their “bahs” sounded like crying as they talked to one another.

→Getting to the pony stalls felt like wading through a river of feathers. One goose nosed my hip with his flat bill, as though he expected me to share my packed midday meal. I shooed him. Mother would have fed them all before she left for town.

→The barn was a short walk from the house, the dark stained wood barely showing through the trees that separated it and the paddock from the house. Great double doors stood at the front for when the sheep had to come inside. A smaller one served for normal entrances. Inside a flock of geese milled about, honking and beeping at me.

→“It’s a work day,” I warned her. “We’re not going anywhere fun. We’re only going out to the field.”

→Once I had eaten, I shod my feet, donned my cloak and bag, and left the house, through the door at the back of the kitchen. My clothes were a nod to the crispness of the autumn weather that met me as soon as I stepped out the door. My feet were jammed into thick tights, with wooly socks layered over them. A moss green skirt was ideal for masking the stains of sitting on the grass and dirt all day, and a knitted sweater with a high neck that had once been black but now was more of a charcoal gray would keep me toasty, so long as I stayed in the sun. Within the house the clothing had been almost oppressively warm, but now that I was outside I was grateful for them.

→“I didn’t chase you out of your tree!” I called back at them, but it didn’t seem to matter. They continued to admonish me, their tiny dark eyes as serious as the town’s priest’s. I shrugged. “Suit yourself!”

→It was strange to me that Michael had opened his window at all last night. Even with the small hearth in my room, I’d soon have to get up earlier to heat the water if I wanted to wash without pain. Michael’s room, which relied on the heat which leached through from my hearth and the one in our parent’s bedchamber, tended to be even colder.

→I scrubbed my face and arms with the water in the basin by my dresser, wincing at the crisp air on my skin, and dressed hurriedly. The bite of the cold water reminded me that soon I wouldn’t be able to leave a pitcher overnight.

→With a last wistful look, I turned away from the spectacle outside. By this time Michael would have already been out with our family’s sheep for hours. He had taken the dawn watch, but I was to relieve him at noon. If I didn’t hurry now, I’d be late.

→Absentmindedly, I drummed my fingers against the cold glass of my window. Every one of the gryphons outside froze, hyper alert. Seven sets of dark eyes scanned the yard for the source of the noise. Flighty creatures that they were, their alarm did not last long. After a short pause, they dismissed the threat and returned to their foraging.

→The offended crow-gryphon had stalked stiffly away from the rest of his flockmates. He preened busily, as if pretending to ignore them, a leg stuck straight in the air as he ran a wicked sharp beak through the soft white fur of his underbelly.

→It dawned on me that it had been the noises of their arrival that had woken me the first time. If only mother had told me! Had I known it was gryphons I would not have tried to get back to sleep. I loved when they migrated south off the mountains, as it marked the true beginning of autumn in my home country of Somerlarth.

→Most of these gryphons had their wings tucked against their cat-like bodies as they pecked and rooted through the grass, but not all. I leaned closer to the cold glass, barely containing a loud chortle as one runtish specimen with the brown coloration of a sparrow, flared his wings out and sprung upon a neighbor of the same variety. Chirping furiously, the two tumbled end over end, locked together in battle.

→Outside, a small flock of lesser gryphons had settled themselves on the cold earth of the yard. There had been a few sightings of their ilk in town throughout the past week —presumably scouts for their flocks— but this was the first full flock of lesser gryphons I had seen around the house this season.