Heartstrings, Part 1

She stood up from the mushroom-laden log near the road. She listened to the sound of hooves on dirt and creaking wood and faint voices, stood listening like a deer scanning for a predator, or a wolf homing in on prey. She waited. The caravan came around the bend.

Large men on large horses, one coarse wagon and one fine. She watched them ride past, only their horses seeing her with wide eyes and wide berths. She narrowed her eyes, and concentrated on picking out the threads between them, the Sight-given sensitivity to the bindings between hearts. Only the faintest of threads connected most of them to each other - a silver thread of duty, agreement, money, easily broken. Thin little gossamer strands. A few had slightly stronger strands of affection or camaraderie plied with the silver threads; mostly yellow twine, hurried and unrefined but strong enough to show up. One pair of proud men had a red wire running between them, binding and choking them, and anyone with even a little of the Sight could have seen the hate that bound them as strong as any love. A young man had a puffy pink cloud of roving that disappeared into the distance - a soft and sweet affection for some lovely person, joyful but not spun into anything lasting, not yet. Another, older man had a great big rope of gold with many plies tethering him to something beyond the forest, a well made and well tended cord. He...