Drip
Drip
Drip
It never stopped.
Drip
Drip
Drip
Watching; it never slowed.
Drip
Drip
Drip
She blinked, and for a moment: the water stopped.
Drip
She sighed, and for a moment: the noise stopped.
Drip
If she did both, would that make the water just... vanish? Would it no longer drip from one pot to the next? No longer pool and fill to the long faded lines marked along the insides in worn char?
Would time stop, then, if they no longer had a way to tell?
Drip
No, it wouldn't, and she knew that. Maybe, when she was younger, she'd dared to dream that, for quiet moments of sweet silence, it ever could. That if the water was made to stop in some way, it wouldn't just be her job to fill it up again.
That there wouldn't be a need to use the pots. That if she hid them away like a silly little filly once had, time would not stop, and the noise would.
Drip
She sighed again, though she knew the noise wouldn't stop for it. The noise wouldn't stop for anything short of running out of water, and the river made sure that would never happen. No, she was only sighing because she felt like it.
Because it was easy. Because sometimes, just listening to the water wasn't.
The water that never stopped. The noise that always kept. The cycle that could never break.
Perhaps she'd been leaning without realizing, or maybe her mood had tipped the balance, because a stray lock of her normally brushed and tidy mane fell from its place to swing about in the center of her vision. Blocking only a tiny sliver of the big-as-her, off-brown pot she sat staring at, but well enough to break her focus.
She huffed as her eyes crossed: the noise disturbing the other-than-dripping silence, and doing even worse to the deep sense of peace she'd gathered. Now, the constant sound of dripping was once more that: a constant. Noise made nearly deaf to her ears; worn and rubbed by the time the shaped clay dutifully kept.
She shifted from her spot held close to the floor, and brushed the long strands of pink out of the way, to lie where they should: behind her ear. All was right again.
Except, of course, for her focus.
It was hard to say why the noise captivated her so, or maybe it was just hard to admit. She certainly held no love for the ceaseless patter: always in the background, following her in her sleep, always playing its too-empty, too-dissonant tone.
It may have been the sound of home, the sound of life, but its persistence hardly dulled the sharp noise. It was even; measured and calculated to the removal of fault. If anything else, it was exact. It was perfect. It had to be.
It was... centering.
She tried, again, to listen to the water. From the pot perched on a plank affixed to the wall: dripping through a tiny hole in both surfaces to land in a constant tic into the mostly-identical pot on the floor below it. One drop by another, listening as she drifted off, until she awoke after sleep to an empty pot over a full one.
The endless cycle. The flow of time. The ebb of life.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip-
"Dear, are you in there?"
The call came nearly as she'd lost herself in the sound again. So close to the trance of water hitting water, and the long stretch until dinner and bed made short. So close to that needed calm of quieted still.
The time had worn on her as she'd sat idle, and it hurt to stretch as she pushed herself up from the floor. Her short legs, though; the floor could only get so far away.
Even as whatever peace she'd gained sloughed away, it was hard to get mad at the formless voice. Hard to deny the soft feeling of warmth it brought her. Hard to admit how much she'd missed it, even if only for the short time it'd been gone.
She turned to the imposing wooden door at the back of the room, where the voice had resonated out so muffled-yet-clearly from. It was almost as if the door itself had spoken to her, but she knew that wasn't true. The voice, with its soft-tone-even-when-raised, was more than familiar: it was unforgettable.
"Yes, mother, I'm here!" she called out, only slightly raspy as she'd not had a chance to drink since she'd woken. There was always the option of drinking from the pot, but she knew from second-hoof experience how the taste would sting.
Her mother had returned from her day in the garden, and now she returned her call: voice slightly tired, slightly edged as it came quieter for a moment, then louder.
"Oh, dear... Would you please go out and find your sister? She's run off again, and lunch will be ready soon."
The sharp-but-soft sound of stone on hard wood. The faint-but-distinct smell of smoke; a fire beginning in the hearth.
She frowned, only because she knew her mother couldn't see it. She called again: feeling for a moment that it was rude to keep shouting through the door, but not strongly enough to open the door. "Where is father? Wasn't he watching her?"
Father often took the burden of watching her sister; a duty she would never for a moment envy. She felt sometimes that it was... a little less than fair that he would spend his scarce free time managing such disaster in familial form, but there was little to do or say about it.
Not without seeming childish, at least.
Her mother's voice came again: seeming even tired-but-busier still, as the once-silent sound of cutting grew louder then quieter in time with her passing voice. "Oh, he'd been watching her, yes. But I needed help with a stubborn tree root that had grown over an edge of our carrot patch, and when he turned his back..."
A sigh. A quiet, tired sigh. "Well... you know how she can be."
Yes, she did know her sister well.
She blinked, and turned back to the bottom pot. She took a step towards it, and a bracing step onto its edge to raise herself higher; peering down into its clear-but-colored-brown shallow.
Sixteen large, black gashes painted in long, rough strokes along the inside, and one half-sized gash in between each. The water, ever slightly rippling, lay an unseen quarter gash above the half gash marking the midway between seven and eight.
Lunchtime, or near enough.
She backed away and turned, not to the door now behind her, but to the door now in front of her. Where one lead to the kitchen and the woods beyond another door, the front door simply let right out. This was the door she stepped towards now.
"I'll be back with her before lunch is ready!"
The shout over her shoulder was met with silence, and the world seemed a little too quiet in her ears for a moment before she blinked it away.
Her mother was busy, that was all. Always busy. Always working. Always cooking, or digging, or planting, or off... somewhere.
No, it was okay. There was no reason to be dramatic about it; her mother loved her very much. And so did father.
Father, who never seemed to spend as much time with her as he did with... her.
The dizziness she so often associated with a running mind shifted the world under her hooves for a moment, and she stopped just short of the door to shake her head roughly. She stopped: with her gaze on the worn wooden floor, as her hoof rose to rest on the edge of the door's frame.
She blinked, and for a moment: the dizziness stopped.
Another, and it was gone.
Her mind set itself right with another quick shake, and she raised herself to push firmly on the door. One long creak, and the world outside greeted her with the immediate sights and smells of too-green-to-stand.
She thought about turning, to cast a forlorn look back into her home where her mother was.
That would have been a little silly, though.