A Lick of Foresight

Ananya bit her cheek just hard enough for the salty sweetness of blood and saliva to wash across her tongue. The pain and swelling receded as she released the flesh to meditate on the flavours that skimmed across her tongue.

“Eat, child.” Velka’s scolding was muffled through Ananya’s cotton-stuffed ears. “You will never learn the flavours of the world if you do not experience them.”

Ananya focused on the coolness of air flowing across her tongue as she quelled her frustration with a deep breath. She was one-and-twenty this past spring. No longer a child, though the news had yet to reach Velka. 

Eyes still closed, Ananya reached for a bowl in front of her. She’d caught a glimpse of the offering before she’d taken up her place in the small ceremonial hut, though that glimpse offered no clues. Each bowl bore a hodgepodge of foods that had been mixed and mashed and mixed again until its contents took on a shade of brown, grey, or beige. Ananya’s task was to identify the ingredients within each dish; to attune to the flavours of the world. Once she had distinguished the flavours and their sources, she would meditate on clan Gartvrung’s future alongside Velka and Naritsa. As one of the clan’s three oracles, their meditations would guide their dreams. Dreams that, if carefully nurtured, would steer Gartvrung from danger.

Ananya was honoured to be an oracle. The Sensati—oracles of the five senses—were only born to the northern clans, and only one clan one hundred years ago had ever claimed all five senses among their Sensati. But Ananya was a Linguata, a Sensati of the tongue, and it was well-known that taste was the most useless faculty through which to divine a clan’s future. That did not stop Velka—the clan’s long-standing Aurata—from chastising Ananya to eat. Velka attuned to her divinations by listening to the fire crackling, cloth and skin chafing against the rough rugs on the packed-dirt floor, and the chatter of clansfolk passing by outside. Ananya’s attunement was not so pleasant.

Holding her breath, Ananya took a delicate sip of the soup-mush in one of the bowls.

She gagged. 

There was something fatty and lumpy to the mix, a dried herb like thyme or rosemary and…she gingerly moved her tongue through the sickly silky mixture. 

Yes, there was definitely something rancid in there, lending a sour, musky flavour to the slop that clung to her breath as she inhaled. It would not be the first time that the clan’s cook tossed a mish-mash of inedible scraps and long-forgotten dry goods into one of Ananya’s attunement soups. Hoping that Naritsa, the Vidata, was looking elsewhere, Ananya did her best to quietly spit the food back into the bowl. 

Someone snorted—undoubtedly Naritsa—and Ananya felt heat crawl up her neck and cheeks.

“If you are laughing, then you are not attuning,” Velka said with practiced disdain. “If you are not attuning your senses, child, then you are risking the safety of all that depend on you. What will you tell our people when someone lies dead because your sight was consumed elsewhere?” 

“Forgive me, elder,” Naritsa whispered.

Velka scoffed. “Ask not for forgiveness from me, but from Gartvrung.”

“How do I—”

“Shush, child! Focus on your attunement and stop disturbing mine.”

Ananya did her utmost to conceal the smile blooming across her lips. She could not know if Naritsa saw but—

“Eat, child!”

Ananya prepared herself for dreams just as she did every night. She bathed with the other Sensati in the hot springs, plaited her hair, and stuffed her ears with cotton. Once the candles in her family’s hut were snuffed out, she began the Linguata meditations: drawing her tongue from cheek to tooth to palate. As she did so, she was meant to dwell upon the clan’s future: Would Gartvrung’s stores last through the coming winter? Would allies or enemies poison their elders or leaders? 

For Ananya, the practice felt utterly futile. Assuming she predicted something more pivotal than a future meal, she had few means of determining when a prediction would occur. One year, she successfully predicted that the cook would serve stale bread for a feast. She realized the prediction was manifesting moments after the bread was served to over a hundred of their closest allies. She informed the cook, triggering an argument between said cook, who wanted the bread removed, and the chieftain, who didn’t want to appear disorganized or sloppy. Ultimately, Ananya and the cook were the only two who noticed the bread was stale. The chieftain had done his best to ignore her since.

So, this night, when Ananya’s thoughts drifted away from clan matters, she held very little concern that it would lead to the Gartvrung’s downfall.

In any case, her thoughts weren’t terribly unrelated to the clan’s future. Simply put, rather than meditating on the taste of her own mouth, she meditated on the taste of Darvik’s. The chieftain’s son had kissed her two days ago, and the memory of that kiss still glazed her tongue even as she drifted off to sleep.

For as long as she could remember, Ananya tasted the future in her dreams. As a baby, she dreamt of the warmth and creamy sweetness of her mother’s milk. When she got older, she tasted dirt and snow and all the other things that young ones stick in their mouths. For the last five days, she had dreamt of herbal stews, the delicate sweetness of watered-down mead, and sour berry tarts drizzled with syrup. These predictions were always correct: the clan’s cook had served the same meal for dinner the past four days. 

Tonight, though, she dreamt of something else. A salty, warm, musky flavour that coated and filled her mouth in an unfamiliar way. It clung to her tongue and palate long after, and was only washed away by a sweet, burning acidity that left her tongue numb. The numbness lingered for some time, until a burst of salt, heat, and metal washed her senses. The dream repeated itself twice more than night, broken once by her usual dream this week—this time with particularly tart berries and watered-down syrup, which indicated that the cook was finally running out of the provisions required for this week’s meals. 

Ananya spent most of the next day puzzling over the new dream and each flavour it conjured. Her inspection of the cook’s stores revealed very little, though she was certain the second flavour was a particularly strong brandy concealed behind three barrels topped with bushels of sage. Ananya nearly missed the bottle, which, she surmised, must have been the goal: there was no dust on the bottle and it appeared half-drunk. This small victory gave her hope, but the other two flavours remained mysteries despite her best efforts.

She considered speaking with Velka—the older woman had surely tasted many things in her fifty years—but that conversation would inevitably lead to an examination of Ananya’s thoughts and meditations. While this would not usually be an obstacle, Ananya would be forced to admit that she had not meditated on the clan’s future in quite some time. Unless, of course, the elder considered Darvik’s dimpled smile and broad shoulders to be of critical importance to Gartvrung’s future.

No matter, Ananya’s dreams and predictions had never held any importance for the clan. She sorely doubted that would change anytime soon.

Darvik returned from the hunt two days later. He was covered in blood, grime, and a dusting of snow, but Ananya saw only his beaming smile and the redness that dappled his cheeks. He winked at her as he passed, and she nuzzled into her scarf to hide the blush it elicited. She forgot the strange dream that plagued her sleep, her mind consumed with the curve of Darvik’s lips and the strength of his arms. That evening, as the sun gilded the snowcapped mountains and glittered across the frosted ground, Darvik led Ananya into the woods.

“I’ve been thinking of nothing but you for the last four days,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers as he reclined against a towering pine far from the village outskirts.

Ananya tasted his breath as it clouded the small space between them, the memory of their kiss a flurry across her tongue.

He cupped her cheeks and brushed his lips against hers. Ananya’s heart fluttered like prairie grasses caught in the late autumn breeze. 

“I want more, Ananya,” he said.

Seduced by the savoury tang of his mouth and the heat radiating from his body, she nodded. She hadn’t a clue what ‘more’ entailed, but how could anything objectionable arise from something as sweet as this?

Her breath caught as he traced her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “I want you to taste me, dream about tasting me,” he muttered, his breathing skimming her neck and jaw.

A coy smile tugged at her lips. “We’d have to do a lot more kissing.” Her breath caught as he nipped her earlobe. 

He chuckled into her ear. “It’s not my mouth I want you to dream of.”

Ananya smoothed her skirts and ran her hands along her hair, patting away her frayed edges. She took a breath and sucked her tongue at the lingering taste of him. He’d taken his pleasure with her and then claimed business elsewhere, leaving Ananya hungry and wanting and empty. She swallowed her shame and picked her way back to the village, all the while mulling over their tryst with a hollow heart. Darvik was more interested in her dreams than in her. 

That evening, as the other clansfolk prepared a feast, Ananya joined the Sensati in their attunement. She was just as distracted now as before, and despite Velka’s prodding and scolding, ate very little of her grey sludge. The elder shot her a look of concern before slipping out of the hut and into the dancing lights and music of the village centre. 

“Let me guess,” Naritsa said, joining Ananya in the doorway. “Darvik lured you into the woods to act out one of his little fantasies?”

Blood rushed furiously to Ananya’ cheeks.

“There’s no shame in it. Well… not for you. He did the same to me last month.” She heaved a sigh. “I suspect that if Velka were a decade younger, he’d have tried with her, too. I swear that boy’s mother dropped him as an infant. If only I could see the past as well as the future, I would prove it.”

Ananya snorted. “He does have a rather oddly shaped head.”

Naritsa smirked and covered her mouth to suppress an obscene giggle. “That’s not the only part of him that’s oddly shaped.”

At the feast that night, Ananya and Naritsa sat on a log by the bonfire, trading swigs of brandy stolen from the Cook’s kitchen and grimacing as it seared its way down their gullets. With time and inebriation, their snickered gossip about Darvik and the other young men of Gartvrung grew boisterous. 

Eventually, Darvik could no longer pretend to ignore them. He appeared flattered, at first, but it soon became clear that they were not fawning over, but ridiculing, him.

“Ladies,” he said on approach, sizing up the small women from the log they slouched on.

“Sensati,” Naritsa corrected, drawing out the word. Ananya held back a drunken giggle and snorted loudly instead.

Darvik noticed. “Sensati.” He began anew. “Whatever you are talking about seems unbelievably amusing. I’m sure we would all like to join in your merriment, if you would tell us what it is you find so entertaining.” He beamed as he spoke, but the stiffness in his eyes and jaw betrayed him. 

“You would not find it so amusing,” Ananya said, her jaw clenched as stiff as ice.

“Oh?” Darvik said, crouching down before them to meet her eyes. “Why so suddenly upset?” A wry smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “Something leave a nasty taste in your mouth?”

Ananya’s nostrils flared, her heart raged against her chest, and she opened her mouth. The words on the tip of her tongue would have soured his mood and seared his pride.

But she didn’t speak them.

Because, suddenly, there was an arrow protruding from Darvik’s throat, his blood spurting into her mouth, across her chest, and over the glowing, fire-lit snow.

Naritsa shrieked.

Ananya froze, every hair raised at the familiar warm, salty, metallic flavour that coated her tongue. Darvik clutched at his throat before crumpling to the ground. As the chaos quickly unfolded around her, Ananya had a brief burst of pride: she’d finally predicted something useful.