"I noticed there was a lot of loud noises coming from your family's quarters."
"Oh, yeah. I yelled at the kids a bit."
"You shouldn't yell at your children."
"And my children shouldn't roughhouse in the kitchen while I'm using sharp things to prepare ingredients next to an open flame. We're all working on it."
"...ah. I see." -- Anon Guest
It's not merely yelling at children. It's how or when one chooses to raise one's voice. One who yells in fear of their child's safety is completely different to one who yells in unjustified anger at a child's behaviour.
"Aie, Mari, no!" Goodie Ella Harlowe pulled them away from the hearth. "Hot hot, my love."
"P'etty," cooed Mari, pointing at the pops of colour in the flames. Colours caused by random elements in the firewood that Ella had been able to scavenge that day.
"Aye, it's pretty," She put her knife down so she could pick her toddler up. "It's still a fire, my love. I don't want you hurt. Stay away, please." She gave a kiss and gently shooed Mari from the kitchen with a pat to their butt. Ella had just a bare space of time to get back to chopping vegetables before Dru and Neem entered in the middle of a game of wrestle-tyg.
Ella barely had time to scream, "STOP!" She lifted the knife high above her head before someone could get an accidentally cut. "AWAY FROM THE FIRE, GODSDAMNIT!"
Which was the exact wrong moment for Nada Irontoe to be at her door. Whatever she was seeking initially, she now came to deliver an opinion that none had ever wanted. The village busybody, she sought out every speck of dirt on everyone living there, and never let a single person forget any one of their mistakes.
Her face was like looming thunder had met with the cat that had found the canary in the cream. "One really shouldn't yell at one's children," she said. "If I were magistrate, I might judge you insufficient for the purpose of being a mother."
Everyone knew that she had the ear of the local magistrate. When ze rode through town again, she would have a long list of complaints with sweet words stirred in to make hir swallow them whole. This menace could not be ignored, but she could be convinced.
If Ella could convincingly out-bitch the woman.
She put the knife down and harried the children into the yard, giving them jobs to do since they had so much energy. "You're not a mother, nor a wife, let alone a widow," she began, re-enforcing the common knowledge that no man alive wanted Nada because they all knew the measure of her character. The only thing stopping her from being the village strumpet was she traded in power rather than coin for access to her body. "You can't possibly know that some matters require an urgency of importance. Some volume is necessary to get a child's attention."
"There are better ways," sneered Nada.
"Oh please do demonstrate. Get Jorgi out of that tree before she falls and hurts herself." She added a little smirk. "I'm certain the magistrate would love to know how you purposely neglected a child in peril." And everyone knew the roaming magistrate was easily swayed by sweet comforts and desperate women.
Know-it-alls absolutely despised being called out on their horseshit. Nada scowled as she strode off to the tree and Jorgi bouncing on a branch far above.
The village was growing accustomed to Nada's little power plays, and they could strike back in kind.
[Photo by Jose Tebar on Unsplash]
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