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SGA fic: Grain Daughter
Title: Grain Daughter
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 3900
Summary: When autumn came and her people were still missing, Teyla planned to go back to New Athos alone. But her team wouldn't let her. Late season four, after "Trio" but before "Kindred".
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wildcat88 for the Three Space Shows and a Movie Gen Minithon, for the prompt "Cultural Exchange". Crossposted on AO3.
Five months after the Athosians went missing, Carter accosted John in the hallway, stumping along on her crutches with grim determination. "Teyla emailed me a request this morning for a trip to New Athos. She'd like to leave this afternoon, Atlantis time."
John blinked and tried to remember what the rest of his day looked like. "Fine; that's not much lead time, but it's Teyla. I'll start clearing my schedule —"
Carter shook her head. "She asked to go alone. She wants to spend the night and come back the next day."
"With Wraith out there, and Bola Kai, and Michael and God knows whoever's responsible for her people disappearing? Yeah, no."
Carter lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. "You're her team leader. I'm just informing you."
"Do you know where she is?"
"The email was sent from her personal computer." Carter used a crutch to point down the hall in the general direction of the transporter. "I assume she's in her quarters."
And she was. "John," Teyla said when she opened the door for him, a bit warily. Her normally tidy quarters looked like a hurricane had hit them; there were piles of things everywhere. "I thought that you were doing weapons drills with your Marines."
Sometimes John suspected that she paid more attention to his schedule than he did. "Lorne's handling it. Carter said you wanted to go offworld?"
"To New Athos, yes."
The way she said it was guarded; John was aware, once again, of the distance that had grown between them since he'd taken her off active duty. Still, he forced a cheerful note into his voice. "I'll round up the team. We could all use a day or two of downtime."
Teyla's shoulders stiffened. "My request was to go alone."
"Uh-huh," John said. "No. Sorry. You know why."
"John —"
"Don't fight me on this, all right?" He let some of the desperation leak through, just a little bit. "Look, I'm not kidding about a team vacation. If whatever you have to do is private, me and Ronon and Rodney can just find a place around the village to hang out, and you can do your thing. I won't even let Rodney peek, I promise."
Teyla turned away, and she began briskly folding an afghan; her usually graceful movements were jerky and sharp. "It is not private," she said at last. "I would be honored if you would accompany me."
She didn't sound especially honored, but at least she wasn't fighting him.
******
They stepped out of the New Athos gate into a waist-high field of wind-ruffled yellow grass. Already the path to the village had an overgrown, abandoned look to it. Since John had last been here, summer had rolled into autumn; stands of trees along the path stood naked against the clear, pale sky, while red and gold leaves rattled in the branches of others. When the wind gusted, swirls of leaves blew across the path.
Rodney hunched in his leather mission jacket. "No one said anything about freezing to death."
"Canadian, huh?" John said, but he tried to ignore the way his fingers were going numb on his P90, and wished he'd thought to ask Teyla what sort of weather they were likely to encounter.
Teyla, however, silently delved into the embroidered shoulder bag she was carrying, and brought out three pairs of knitted gloves, which she passed around. Ronon refused his, but John and Rodney took theirs gratefully.
"See, this is why I like traveling with you," John told her. "You think of everything."
Teyla gave him a little sideways smile, but didn't say anything. She'd been very quiet ever since he'd told her she wasn't going back alone — not sullen, exactly, but subdued. When Ronon offered to carry her bag, she just drew it more tightly to her side and ignored him.
The village looked more or less like it had the last time John had seen it, although now the cleared space between the houses was drifted with leaves, lending an air of desolation to the place. A little shiver passed through him as he realized that it looked just like dozens of abandoned villages they'd passed through on dozens of worlds — culled by Wraith, depopulated by plague, or simply abandoned for reasons they would never know.
From Teyla's rigid spine, John thought she might be thinking something similar. But he'd never been good at finding words, and it was even harder now, when miles seemed to lie between Teyla and the rest of the team. "So, um," he said. "We'll just find a place to stay, then, why don't we? And you can go do your thing."
Teyla laid her bag down at the doorstep of one of the larger tent-houses. "This was Halling and Jinto's house. I used to stay there when I would visit. It would be a good place for us to stay, I think. I will join you shortly."
With that, she walked off towards the stream where the villagers had drawn their water. Beyond it lay the village's fields, and beyond that, the woods. John watched until he was sure that nothing was going to jump out at her, and then turned to find Rodney and Ronon dragging big rocks away from the doorstep, where the rocks had been pinning down the heavy curtain covering the door.
Looking around, John saw that the other houses had been treated similarly — stones, short sections of logs, and even baskets of dirt held down the doorflaps. The village's common area had also been cleaned up: the usual semi-organized clutter of cookpots, gardening tools, weaving supplies, drying racks for clothing, and other remnants of the village's daily life were nowhere in evidence.
John had a brief, disoriented moment when he wondered if the place had been visited by the Pegasus version of Merry Maids, but then he realized that the answer was obvious. Teyla had done this, and she must have done it between missions, alone, during the weeks before she'd been grounded.
You should have asked, he wanted to say. We would have helped. But maybe she'd felt like she had to do it alone, just like she felt that she had to do today's activity alone, whatever it was. He looked across the circle of houses towards the creek and had a momentary heart attack before she straightened up in the field of grain, wobbling awkwardly and then adjusting to her altered center of mass. She was just looking around, not doing anything obvious yet. John made himself turn away; she was armed, she was within easy shouting or radio distance, and furthermore, she was Teyla. Even pregnant, she could probably still kick his ass.
The interior of Halling and Jinto's tent was close and musty. Ronon pinned up the door flap to let in some air, and Rodney helped John drag out the guest bedrolls; they'd all spent enough time as guests in Athosian houses by now to know exactly what to do. John chased a mouse out of the pile of bedding, which, luckily, Rodney didn't see, and John wasn't about to mention it to him.
"So," Rodney said as they shook out the colorful, woven blankets. "Um, Teyla. Is she? You know?"
"Is she what?" John asked, tucking the edges of a blanket under a straw mattress that had seen better days. "Pregnant? Hungry? You'll have to be more specific."
"I think he's wondering if she's all right," Ronon said, strolling over to join them.
"Yes! Thank you! What he said. And," Rodney added in Ronon's direction, "why don't you just stand there without helping, while we make your bed for you; that's really appreciated."
Ronon grinned, but the levity dropped away when he looked at John. "Is she? All right?"
"Why do you guys expect me to know?" John said, more sharply than he intended.
Ronon and Rodney looked at each other. "He's got a point," Rodney said. "I mean, he's our fearless leader, but he's also ...."
"Him," Ronon supplied.
"Yeah."
"Hey," John said.
A shadow fell across the doorway, and they all straightened up with various guilty looks as Teyla stepped inside. She studied them quizzically, then said, as the penny obviously dropped, "You were talking about me? Carry on. I will only be a moment. Have you seen any baskets? Ah." She headed for a stack of baskets in the corner.
"You know, if you'd tell us what you're doing, we could help," John said.
Teyla was trying to squat down to pick up one of the baskets, without much success. Ronon took two quick steps over and lifted the top one off the pile. "Thank you," Teyla said quietly, and her hands lingered on his for a little longer than necessary before she took it. "Well ... perhaps." Her gaze took in the other members of her team. "There is nothing secret about what I'm doing," she said. "It is simply ... a little hard to explain, I suppose. I need to go back to the fields — would you like to come with me? Bring baskets."
The three men looked at each other, then each picked up a basket and they trooped out after her into the brisk autumn afternoon.
"Each autumn, the growing season ends in a rush to collect and preserve the winter's harvest," Teyla explained as she led the way back to the stream. "Like the planting season, the harvest season is one of the focal points around which our year is planned."
"Harvest festivals," John said. "Most cultures have 'em." Or so the anthropologists claimed. They'd certainly attended more than a few over their years of traveling through the Stargate. In fact, they'd been to some of the Athosian ones, come to think of it, though mostly he just remembered feasting, singing and dancing. Should they have brought more food? Why didn't Teyla tell them these things?
"That is true," Teyla said, as they crossed the creek on a narrow plank footbridge. "Or more or less true, anyway. Every temperate land, at least every one that I have visited, has its own festival with its own particular customs. However, the purpose is mostly practical. It is necessary to take in the crop for the coming winter, and it is also necessary to collect the seed grain for next year's crop. Otherwise, there will be nothing to plant in the spring."
John thought he could see where this was going, especially when he looked around him at the field of what looked like some kind of wheat. He was no expert on grain by any means, but even he could see that a lot of the stalks had broken over under their own weight, the seed heads lying in a blackened tangle on the ground.
"Wait a minute," Rodney said. "We're here to harvest grain? I've never —" He subsided when John scowled at him. "But, on the other hand, I'd be happy to learn. Learning new skills is good for the brain."
"We do not need a lot," Teyla said. "It will be possible to trade for seed grain in the spring from other worlds. But this is ours — our own Athosian variant, passed down season to season on Athos for many generations. We only need to harvest enough to keep the breed alive. We were not able to take much with us when we fled Athos, either, or when we were forced to leave Old Lantea, but we have multiplied it each time." She fell silent for a moment, leading John to reflect on how many times the Athosians had been forced to start over in the past few years — and how fragile, indeed, was the hope that they would be back to start over in the spring.
It was Rodney, again, who broke the silence, but this time he did it with a hopeful smile. "So tell us what to do?"
Teyla smiled back, a little tremulously. "There are some sticks over there by the stone wall. Get them."
The field was crisscrossed with stone walls, but John found a pile of short, polished sticks leaning against one of them. "These?"
"Yes." Teyla handed her bowl to Rodney, who accepted it with a faintly confused look, and then she selected two of the sticks. John couldn't help noticing the resemblance to bantos rods, not only in size but also in the way she held them.
"All you need to do is beat some grain into your basket," she said, hefting a stick. "We do not need a whole lot."
All three of them looked at her blankly.
Teyla sighed and and gestured to Rodney with her right-hand stick. "Hold the basket under the seed head for me. Yes, like that." She used one stick to bend the seed head over the basket, then gave it a brisk whack with the other. Seeds pattered into the basket with a sound like rain on a shingle roof. "Like that," she said.
They split into pairs, one holding a basket and the other using the sticks. Rodney and Teyla took one row of grain, John and Ronon the next row over. John quickly took over grain-knocking duty when Ronon turned out to be so enthusiastic with the sticks that grain kept getting into John's hair and up his nose.
There was definitely something to be said, though, for a harvest method that basically involved hitting things with sticks.
"I thought you were supposed to use a scythe or something. Like a grim reaper scythe?" Rodney asked. "Isn't that what they're for?"
"If we wanted the straw, we would cut the whole plant." Teyla efficiently trundled down the row, whacking each seed head with her sticks while Rodney tried to keep up with the basket. "But this is much simpler, since we are not trying to harvest the whole crop. In this particular case, the grain that falls back to the ground will naturally reseed itself. But this will ensure that we have some seed saved in a safe place, in case the seed in the field is wiped out by birds, blight or weather."
"Sensible," John said. His arms were starting to ache. This was definitely work. And he'd been right — it used a lot of the same muscles as Teyla's bantos forms did. It seemed pretty obvious to him that the bantos fighting technique must have developed out of something similar to this, and it did make sense. You're out in the field, harvesting grain, and the Wraith show up, he thought. What could be simpler than beating the snot out of them with the only weapon you have at hand?
The baskets filled up more quickly than he'd expected. Since they'd brought four baskets to the field, one apiece, they swapped the full baskets for empty ones, and did it again. By now John was happy enough to take the risk of getting grain in uncomfortable places and let Ronon do the threshing duties; his muscles were starting to burn. Teyla and Rodney had traded off as well, and as they went up and down the rows, John kept getting glimpses of Rodney being politely but firmly schooled in proper harvesting technique by Teyla, especially after Rodney almost clipped her ear with one of the sticks. John was startled to hear Teyla laughing, and after a moment, Rodney joined in.
Teyla had relaxed noticeably since they'd been in the field. John wasn't sure if it was the familiar activity, or the company, or just the fact that she was doing something concrete to help her people after months of dead ends. But he didn't really need to know the cause of her brilliant smile; all he needed to know was that she was happy, for possibly the first time in months.
By the time the second set of baskets were full, they were all sore and exhausted, even Ronon. The sun glinted at them through the trees, sinking in a ruddy sky, and there was a sharp bite to the wind.
"Are we done?" Rodney asked, wincing as he leaned over to pick up the jacket he'd shed when the exercise had warmed him. "Please tell me we're done."
"We are nearly done, yes." Teyla stretched, her hands planted in the small of her back. She looked as tired as the rest of them, perhaps more so, but John thought it looked like a good kind of tired — the way she looked after a workout session, rather than the beaten-down look that she'd developed over the last few months.
"I'm sorry, I thought you just said nearly."
Teyla finished stretching, and took out her field knife from the sheath that was buckled, somewhat awkwardly, under her pregnant belly. She looked, John thought, a little embarrassed. "This will only take a moment." Quickly, she sliced through some of the stalks, until she had a small bundle. "There, I am done. We can return to the village now."
"What's that for?" Ronon asked her, picking up a basket of grain under each arm before Teyla could reach for one.
Teyla got that particular defensive, not-quite-belligerent look that John had noticed on the occasions when she'd had to defend her culture's practices against someone on the Atlantis expedition. "It is for the grain daughter," she said, bundling the stalks together. "This is where the grain's soul will live until spring."
John thought that if Rodney said anything, he was going to have to kick him, but Rodney managed to keep his mouth shut, although John could see he was having to work on it.
Somewhat buoyed, perhaps, by the general acceptance by her teammates, Teyla continued talking as they walked back to the village, the men with the baskets of grain and Teyla with her bundle of stalks. "In truth, I am not sure how many of my people wholeheartedly believe in a literal grain spirit that dwells in the stalks. I am not even sure I believe in it myself. But it has always been done, and —"
"And why take a chance?" John said. "It's like walking under a ladder or — or stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Why take the risk if you don't have to?"
"When I was in Grade 2," Rodney said, "I decided to step on every crack in the sidewalk in front of my elementary school to prove to the rest of the school body that absolutely nothing bad was going to happen to me."
They all had enough experience with Rodney's anecdotes to have some idea where this was going. "So what happened?" John asked.
"What happened was Dana Johnson and her bright pink little racing bike. Lived four houses down the street from me until they moved away in the middle of — Grade 3, I think it was? Cute pigtails. Anyway —"
"She ran over you," Ronon said.
"She claimed it wouldn't have happened if I'd been looking where I was going rather than staring at the sidewalk. Little pigtailed hoodlum." Rodney snorted and shifted the basket of grain in his arms. "I always figured that in later life, she'd end up knocking over a liquor store or wiping out on a rain-slick road while doing a hundred and fifty on her Harley or something like that. I, meanwhile, got to visit the school nurse and get four stitches in my chin. I think it left a scar."
"You do not have a scar on your chin," Teyla said.
"Are you sure? It was there for years, I know it was. I could see it." Rodney tilted his head up. "Come on, it's right to the left of —"
He stumbled, and nearly fell into the creek, but Teyla caught his elbow. Somehow he managed to keep hold of the basket of grain.
"The pigtailed hoodlum is still trying to kill you from beyond the grave, Rodney," John said, straight-faced. "Watch where you're walking."
"Thank you for the advice. I hadn't figured that out on my own."
Back in the village's central courtyard, Ronon kindled a fire while John went to get water. When he came back, he found Teyla emptying an entire feast out of the depths of her shoulder bag. She'd obviously raided the mess hall before coming down to the gateroom. There were various cold meats and cheeses, a big covered container of that incredibly tasty stew the kitchen had concocted last night, fruit, bread, pies — the list went on. John had no idea how she'd fit all of that into the bag.
"I hope you weren't planning to eat all of that by yourself," he said to cover his astonishment.
Teyla smiled. "Of course not. I was planning to spend the night by myself, have a simple meal, and meditate until dawn."
"Sorry." And he was. He still had no intention of letting her go offworld by herself, but it must suck to have made plans to do something on her own and then have her team go all overprotective-parent on her.
"John. Please. I am an adult. I may have had other intentions, but I recognize the sincerity of your actions, as well." Teyla reached out to clasp his hand briefly, then gripped Rodney's too, since he was the next closest. "Anyway, the harvest is not a time to be alone. It is a time to celebrate with friends and family, and it has always been so. Maybe this is a sign that my plans were in error."
Ronon brought a pot to heat the stew over the fire. Rodney made coffee, and John laid out the food (not without sneaking a few nibbles). While they did that, Teyla leaned back against the house's door-post and braided together wheatstalks with swift, practiced ease.
John was vaguely expecting the "grain daughter" to look like a cornshuck doll when she was finished, but it didn't. It was a braided, interlocked series of loops with a long tassel hanging from the bottom. It looked a little bit like something that might be used as a table decoration at Thanksgiving, but more — sincere, somehow. There was nothing kitschy or fake about it at all.
"Now what do you do with it?" Rodney asked, leaning forward to look more closely.
"I will take it back to Atlantis and keep it in my quarters. In the spring, it will be plowed into the field when the soil is dug for the spring planting, and it will carry the spirit of the grain back to the land. And then it will be the grain mother, the progenitor of next year's grain daughter."
"Cool," John said, to forestall any comments Rodney might be working on. Besides, it was cool.
Ronon leaned forward to stir the stew. "Dinner's done."
In the chill of the autumn evening, they stuffed themselves by the campfire's glow, and told stories of their own cultures' respective autumn festivals — Sateda's late autumn Percalia feast, Earth's Thanksgiving and Halloween. It was nothing like the other Athosian harvest festivals that John had attended, which had all featured music and dancing and way too much of Halling's homebrewed beer. But when Rodney told them all how he'd dressed up as the rear end of a moose for Halloween, and Teyla laughed so hard that she fell over, John thought it just might be the best one ever.
----
Author's notes: The grain daughter is based loosely on the pagan European custom of the corn-dolly, and Teyla's grain-beating technique is derived from wild rice harvesting methods. (Thank you, Youtube! *g*)
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 3900
Summary: When autumn came and her people were still missing, Teyla planned to go back to New Athos alone. But her team wouldn't let her. Late season four, after "Trio" but before "Kindred".
Notes: Written for
wildcat88 for the Three Space Shows and a Movie Gen Minithon, for the prompt "Cultural Exchange". Crossposted on AO3.Five months after the Athosians went missing, Carter accosted John in the hallway, stumping along on her crutches with grim determination. "Teyla emailed me a request this morning for a trip to New Athos. She'd like to leave this afternoon, Atlantis time."
John blinked and tried to remember what the rest of his day looked like. "Fine; that's not much lead time, but it's Teyla. I'll start clearing my schedule —"
Carter shook her head. "She asked to go alone. She wants to spend the night and come back the next day."
"With Wraith out there, and Bola Kai, and Michael and God knows whoever's responsible for her people disappearing? Yeah, no."
Carter lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. "You're her team leader. I'm just informing you."
"Do you know where she is?"
"The email was sent from her personal computer." Carter used a crutch to point down the hall in the general direction of the transporter. "I assume she's in her quarters."
And she was. "John," Teyla said when she opened the door for him, a bit warily. Her normally tidy quarters looked like a hurricane had hit them; there were piles of things everywhere. "I thought that you were doing weapons drills with your Marines."
Sometimes John suspected that she paid more attention to his schedule than he did. "Lorne's handling it. Carter said you wanted to go offworld?"
"To New Athos, yes."
The way she said it was guarded; John was aware, once again, of the distance that had grown between them since he'd taken her off active duty. Still, he forced a cheerful note into his voice. "I'll round up the team. We could all use a day or two of downtime."
Teyla's shoulders stiffened. "My request was to go alone."
"Uh-huh," John said. "No. Sorry. You know why."
"John —"
"Don't fight me on this, all right?" He let some of the desperation leak through, just a little bit. "Look, I'm not kidding about a team vacation. If whatever you have to do is private, me and Ronon and Rodney can just find a place around the village to hang out, and you can do your thing. I won't even let Rodney peek, I promise."
Teyla turned away, and she began briskly folding an afghan; her usually graceful movements were jerky and sharp. "It is not private," she said at last. "I would be honored if you would accompany me."
She didn't sound especially honored, but at least she wasn't fighting him.
They stepped out of the New Athos gate into a waist-high field of wind-ruffled yellow grass. Already the path to the village had an overgrown, abandoned look to it. Since John had last been here, summer had rolled into autumn; stands of trees along the path stood naked against the clear, pale sky, while red and gold leaves rattled in the branches of others. When the wind gusted, swirls of leaves blew across the path.
Rodney hunched in his leather mission jacket. "No one said anything about freezing to death."
"Canadian, huh?" John said, but he tried to ignore the way his fingers were going numb on his P90, and wished he'd thought to ask Teyla what sort of weather they were likely to encounter.
Teyla, however, silently delved into the embroidered shoulder bag she was carrying, and brought out three pairs of knitted gloves, which she passed around. Ronon refused his, but John and Rodney took theirs gratefully.
"See, this is why I like traveling with you," John told her. "You think of everything."
Teyla gave him a little sideways smile, but didn't say anything. She'd been very quiet ever since he'd told her she wasn't going back alone — not sullen, exactly, but subdued. When Ronon offered to carry her bag, she just drew it more tightly to her side and ignored him.
The village looked more or less like it had the last time John had seen it, although now the cleared space between the houses was drifted with leaves, lending an air of desolation to the place. A little shiver passed through him as he realized that it looked just like dozens of abandoned villages they'd passed through on dozens of worlds — culled by Wraith, depopulated by plague, or simply abandoned for reasons they would never know.
From Teyla's rigid spine, John thought she might be thinking something similar. But he'd never been good at finding words, and it was even harder now, when miles seemed to lie between Teyla and the rest of the team. "So, um," he said. "We'll just find a place to stay, then, why don't we? And you can go do your thing."
Teyla laid her bag down at the doorstep of one of the larger tent-houses. "This was Halling and Jinto's house. I used to stay there when I would visit. It would be a good place for us to stay, I think. I will join you shortly."
With that, she walked off towards the stream where the villagers had drawn their water. Beyond it lay the village's fields, and beyond that, the woods. John watched until he was sure that nothing was going to jump out at her, and then turned to find Rodney and Ronon dragging big rocks away from the doorstep, where the rocks had been pinning down the heavy curtain covering the door.
Looking around, John saw that the other houses had been treated similarly — stones, short sections of logs, and even baskets of dirt held down the doorflaps. The village's common area had also been cleaned up: the usual semi-organized clutter of cookpots, gardening tools, weaving supplies, drying racks for clothing, and other remnants of the village's daily life were nowhere in evidence.
John had a brief, disoriented moment when he wondered if the place had been visited by the Pegasus version of Merry Maids, but then he realized that the answer was obvious. Teyla had done this, and she must have done it between missions, alone, during the weeks before she'd been grounded.
You should have asked, he wanted to say. We would have helped. But maybe she'd felt like she had to do it alone, just like she felt that she had to do today's activity alone, whatever it was. He looked across the circle of houses towards the creek and had a momentary heart attack before she straightened up in the field of grain, wobbling awkwardly and then adjusting to her altered center of mass. She was just looking around, not doing anything obvious yet. John made himself turn away; she was armed, she was within easy shouting or radio distance, and furthermore, she was Teyla. Even pregnant, she could probably still kick his ass.
The interior of Halling and Jinto's tent was close and musty. Ronon pinned up the door flap to let in some air, and Rodney helped John drag out the guest bedrolls; they'd all spent enough time as guests in Athosian houses by now to know exactly what to do. John chased a mouse out of the pile of bedding, which, luckily, Rodney didn't see, and John wasn't about to mention it to him.
"So," Rodney said as they shook out the colorful, woven blankets. "Um, Teyla. Is she? You know?"
"Is she what?" John asked, tucking the edges of a blanket under a straw mattress that had seen better days. "Pregnant? Hungry? You'll have to be more specific."
"I think he's wondering if she's all right," Ronon said, strolling over to join them.
"Yes! Thank you! What he said. And," Rodney added in Ronon's direction, "why don't you just stand there without helping, while we make your bed for you; that's really appreciated."
Ronon grinned, but the levity dropped away when he looked at John. "Is she? All right?"
"Why do you guys expect me to know?" John said, more sharply than he intended.
Ronon and Rodney looked at each other. "He's got a point," Rodney said. "I mean, he's our fearless leader, but he's also ...."
"Him," Ronon supplied.
"Yeah."
"Hey," John said.
A shadow fell across the doorway, and they all straightened up with various guilty looks as Teyla stepped inside. She studied them quizzically, then said, as the penny obviously dropped, "You were talking about me? Carry on. I will only be a moment. Have you seen any baskets? Ah." She headed for a stack of baskets in the corner.
"You know, if you'd tell us what you're doing, we could help," John said.
Teyla was trying to squat down to pick up one of the baskets, without much success. Ronon took two quick steps over and lifted the top one off the pile. "Thank you," Teyla said quietly, and her hands lingered on his for a little longer than necessary before she took it. "Well ... perhaps." Her gaze took in the other members of her team. "There is nothing secret about what I'm doing," she said. "It is simply ... a little hard to explain, I suppose. I need to go back to the fields — would you like to come with me? Bring baskets."
The three men looked at each other, then each picked up a basket and they trooped out after her into the brisk autumn afternoon.
"Each autumn, the growing season ends in a rush to collect and preserve the winter's harvest," Teyla explained as she led the way back to the stream. "Like the planting season, the harvest season is one of the focal points around which our year is planned."
"Harvest festivals," John said. "Most cultures have 'em." Or so the anthropologists claimed. They'd certainly attended more than a few over their years of traveling through the Stargate. In fact, they'd been to some of the Athosian ones, come to think of it, though mostly he just remembered feasting, singing and dancing. Should they have brought more food? Why didn't Teyla tell them these things?
"That is true," Teyla said, as they crossed the creek on a narrow plank footbridge. "Or more or less true, anyway. Every temperate land, at least every one that I have visited, has its own festival with its own particular customs. However, the purpose is mostly practical. It is necessary to take in the crop for the coming winter, and it is also necessary to collect the seed grain for next year's crop. Otherwise, there will be nothing to plant in the spring."
John thought he could see where this was going, especially when he looked around him at the field of what looked like some kind of wheat. He was no expert on grain by any means, but even he could see that a lot of the stalks had broken over under their own weight, the seed heads lying in a blackened tangle on the ground.
"Wait a minute," Rodney said. "We're here to harvest grain? I've never —" He subsided when John scowled at him. "But, on the other hand, I'd be happy to learn. Learning new skills is good for the brain."
"We do not need a lot," Teyla said. "It will be possible to trade for seed grain in the spring from other worlds. But this is ours — our own Athosian variant, passed down season to season on Athos for many generations. We only need to harvest enough to keep the breed alive. We were not able to take much with us when we fled Athos, either, or when we were forced to leave Old Lantea, but we have multiplied it each time." She fell silent for a moment, leading John to reflect on how many times the Athosians had been forced to start over in the past few years — and how fragile, indeed, was the hope that they would be back to start over in the spring.
It was Rodney, again, who broke the silence, but this time he did it with a hopeful smile. "So tell us what to do?"
Teyla smiled back, a little tremulously. "There are some sticks over there by the stone wall. Get them."
The field was crisscrossed with stone walls, but John found a pile of short, polished sticks leaning against one of them. "These?"
"Yes." Teyla handed her bowl to Rodney, who accepted it with a faintly confused look, and then she selected two of the sticks. John couldn't help noticing the resemblance to bantos rods, not only in size but also in the way she held them.
"All you need to do is beat some grain into your basket," she said, hefting a stick. "We do not need a whole lot."
All three of them looked at her blankly.
Teyla sighed and and gestured to Rodney with her right-hand stick. "Hold the basket under the seed head for me. Yes, like that." She used one stick to bend the seed head over the basket, then gave it a brisk whack with the other. Seeds pattered into the basket with a sound like rain on a shingle roof. "Like that," she said.
They split into pairs, one holding a basket and the other using the sticks. Rodney and Teyla took one row of grain, John and Ronon the next row over. John quickly took over grain-knocking duty when Ronon turned out to be so enthusiastic with the sticks that grain kept getting into John's hair and up his nose.
There was definitely something to be said, though, for a harvest method that basically involved hitting things with sticks.
"I thought you were supposed to use a scythe or something. Like a grim reaper scythe?" Rodney asked. "Isn't that what they're for?"
"If we wanted the straw, we would cut the whole plant." Teyla efficiently trundled down the row, whacking each seed head with her sticks while Rodney tried to keep up with the basket. "But this is much simpler, since we are not trying to harvest the whole crop. In this particular case, the grain that falls back to the ground will naturally reseed itself. But this will ensure that we have some seed saved in a safe place, in case the seed in the field is wiped out by birds, blight or weather."
"Sensible," John said. His arms were starting to ache. This was definitely work. And he'd been right — it used a lot of the same muscles as Teyla's bantos forms did. It seemed pretty obvious to him that the bantos fighting technique must have developed out of something similar to this, and it did make sense. You're out in the field, harvesting grain, and the Wraith show up, he thought. What could be simpler than beating the snot out of them with the only weapon you have at hand?
The baskets filled up more quickly than he'd expected. Since they'd brought four baskets to the field, one apiece, they swapped the full baskets for empty ones, and did it again. By now John was happy enough to take the risk of getting grain in uncomfortable places and let Ronon do the threshing duties; his muscles were starting to burn. Teyla and Rodney had traded off as well, and as they went up and down the rows, John kept getting glimpses of Rodney being politely but firmly schooled in proper harvesting technique by Teyla, especially after Rodney almost clipped her ear with one of the sticks. John was startled to hear Teyla laughing, and after a moment, Rodney joined in.
Teyla had relaxed noticeably since they'd been in the field. John wasn't sure if it was the familiar activity, or the company, or just the fact that she was doing something concrete to help her people after months of dead ends. But he didn't really need to know the cause of her brilliant smile; all he needed to know was that she was happy, for possibly the first time in months.
By the time the second set of baskets were full, they were all sore and exhausted, even Ronon. The sun glinted at them through the trees, sinking in a ruddy sky, and there was a sharp bite to the wind.
"Are we done?" Rodney asked, wincing as he leaned over to pick up the jacket he'd shed when the exercise had warmed him. "Please tell me we're done."
"We are nearly done, yes." Teyla stretched, her hands planted in the small of her back. She looked as tired as the rest of them, perhaps more so, but John thought it looked like a good kind of tired — the way she looked after a workout session, rather than the beaten-down look that she'd developed over the last few months.
"I'm sorry, I thought you just said nearly."
Teyla finished stretching, and took out her field knife from the sheath that was buckled, somewhat awkwardly, under her pregnant belly. She looked, John thought, a little embarrassed. "This will only take a moment." Quickly, she sliced through some of the stalks, until she had a small bundle. "There, I am done. We can return to the village now."
"What's that for?" Ronon asked her, picking up a basket of grain under each arm before Teyla could reach for one.
Teyla got that particular defensive, not-quite-belligerent look that John had noticed on the occasions when she'd had to defend her culture's practices against someone on the Atlantis expedition. "It is for the grain daughter," she said, bundling the stalks together. "This is where the grain's soul will live until spring."
John thought that if Rodney said anything, he was going to have to kick him, but Rodney managed to keep his mouth shut, although John could see he was having to work on it.
Somewhat buoyed, perhaps, by the general acceptance by her teammates, Teyla continued talking as they walked back to the village, the men with the baskets of grain and Teyla with her bundle of stalks. "In truth, I am not sure how many of my people wholeheartedly believe in a literal grain spirit that dwells in the stalks. I am not even sure I believe in it myself. But it has always been done, and —"
"And why take a chance?" John said. "It's like walking under a ladder or — or stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Why take the risk if you don't have to?"
"When I was in Grade 2," Rodney said, "I decided to step on every crack in the sidewalk in front of my elementary school to prove to the rest of the school body that absolutely nothing bad was going to happen to me."
They all had enough experience with Rodney's anecdotes to have some idea where this was going. "So what happened?" John asked.
"What happened was Dana Johnson and her bright pink little racing bike. Lived four houses down the street from me until they moved away in the middle of — Grade 3, I think it was? Cute pigtails. Anyway —"
"She ran over you," Ronon said.
"She claimed it wouldn't have happened if I'd been looking where I was going rather than staring at the sidewalk. Little pigtailed hoodlum." Rodney snorted and shifted the basket of grain in his arms. "I always figured that in later life, she'd end up knocking over a liquor store or wiping out on a rain-slick road while doing a hundred and fifty on her Harley or something like that. I, meanwhile, got to visit the school nurse and get four stitches in my chin. I think it left a scar."
"You do not have a scar on your chin," Teyla said.
"Are you sure? It was there for years, I know it was. I could see it." Rodney tilted his head up. "Come on, it's right to the left of —"
He stumbled, and nearly fell into the creek, but Teyla caught his elbow. Somehow he managed to keep hold of the basket of grain.
"The pigtailed hoodlum is still trying to kill you from beyond the grave, Rodney," John said, straight-faced. "Watch where you're walking."
"Thank you for the advice. I hadn't figured that out on my own."
Back in the village's central courtyard, Ronon kindled a fire while John went to get water. When he came back, he found Teyla emptying an entire feast out of the depths of her shoulder bag. She'd obviously raided the mess hall before coming down to the gateroom. There were various cold meats and cheeses, a big covered container of that incredibly tasty stew the kitchen had concocted last night, fruit, bread, pies — the list went on. John had no idea how she'd fit all of that into the bag.
"I hope you weren't planning to eat all of that by yourself," he said to cover his astonishment.
Teyla smiled. "Of course not. I was planning to spend the night by myself, have a simple meal, and meditate until dawn."
"Sorry." And he was. He still had no intention of letting her go offworld by herself, but it must suck to have made plans to do something on her own and then have her team go all overprotective-parent on her.
"John. Please. I am an adult. I may have had other intentions, but I recognize the sincerity of your actions, as well." Teyla reached out to clasp his hand briefly, then gripped Rodney's too, since he was the next closest. "Anyway, the harvest is not a time to be alone. It is a time to celebrate with friends and family, and it has always been so. Maybe this is a sign that my plans were in error."
Ronon brought a pot to heat the stew over the fire. Rodney made coffee, and John laid out the food (not without sneaking a few nibbles). While they did that, Teyla leaned back against the house's door-post and braided together wheatstalks with swift, practiced ease.
John was vaguely expecting the "grain daughter" to look like a cornshuck doll when she was finished, but it didn't. It was a braided, interlocked series of loops with a long tassel hanging from the bottom. It looked a little bit like something that might be used as a table decoration at Thanksgiving, but more — sincere, somehow. There was nothing kitschy or fake about it at all.
"Now what do you do with it?" Rodney asked, leaning forward to look more closely.
"I will take it back to Atlantis and keep it in my quarters. In the spring, it will be plowed into the field when the soil is dug for the spring planting, and it will carry the spirit of the grain back to the land. And then it will be the grain mother, the progenitor of next year's grain daughter."
"Cool," John said, to forestall any comments Rodney might be working on. Besides, it was cool.
Ronon leaned forward to stir the stew. "Dinner's done."
In the chill of the autumn evening, they stuffed themselves by the campfire's glow, and told stories of their own cultures' respective autumn festivals — Sateda's late autumn Percalia feast, Earth's Thanksgiving and Halloween. It was nothing like the other Athosian harvest festivals that John had attended, which had all featured music and dancing and way too much of Halling's homebrewed beer. But when Rodney told them all how he'd dressed up as the rear end of a moose for Halloween, and Teyla laughed so hard that she fell over, John thought it just might be the best one ever.
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Author's notes: The grain daughter is based loosely on the pagan European custom of the corn-dolly, and Teyla's grain-beating technique is derived from wild rice harvesting methods. (Thank you, Youtube! *g*)