Prompt: One character says very little (just a word or two per line) while the other does all the talking.

Marjie bounced up the stone walk to where her grandmother was weeding the herb garden. Fragrant lavender, sunny daisies, pungent mint, pink roses.

“Gramma! Gramma!”

The old woman sat back on her heels and squinted at her granddaughter. Lines bunched around her eyes. “Yes?”

Marjie slowed and clasped her hands behind her back, her catching her lower lip between her teeth. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked tentatively.

The older woman nodded. She turned back to her weeding, but held out a weeding fork to Marjie.

Marjie sighed and grabbed it, then shoved it into the soft earth. It smelled of her grandmother, all warm and earthy and green and flowery, maybe with a hint of leather from her gloves.

Marjie glanced at her grandmother out of the corner of her eye. She wanted the older woman to press her, but as usual, her grandmother just waited for Marjie to speak.

“A few of my friends were going down to the river,” the younger girl said, “and I…I was wondering if I could go with them.”

She held her breath. Her grandmother looked at her with those x-ray eyes narrowing, searching poor Marjie’s soul.

“Who is going?”

“Just me and a few friends,” Marjie said, studiously turning her eyes to her work, though her attention stayed on her grandmother. She barely felt the warmth of the soil under her fingers. Even though she couldn’t see her grandmother’s eyes, she could feel them on her, boring into her like twin lasers.

“Who?”

“Abi, Geira, Fiyel…”

“Three girls, going down to the river? Alone?”

Marjie withered under that knowing glare. No one went down to the river without good cause, let alone four adolescent girls with no business down by those hungry waters. Without training in how to deal with the water spirits, they’d be sucked down to the murky riverbed and eaten.

“Herken, Dev, and Loeyl might be coming with,” Marjie said reluctantly.

“Ah.”

Marjie threw up her hands, tossing small clods of dirt showering around them. “What do you mean, ‘Ah’? We weren’t going to do anything! We just wanted to go see some things.”

Her grandmother set her weeding fork aside and brushed off her gloves.

Marjie huffed and jabbed her own fork deep into the soil a few times. “Why are you like this? I never get to do anything fun. It’s not like we weren’t going to be careful. The boys have been down there plenty of times! Loeyl said his father–”

A sun-browned hand rested on the youth’s forearm, stopping her tirade. Marjie glared up at her grandmother, who was smiling and holding out a short gardening knife about as long as Marjie’s hand.

“What’s this?” Marjie asked, her breath catching.

“For nymphs,” her grandmother said, “and handsy boys.”

Her eyes crinkled up in silent laughter. “Don’t be late and don’t be stupid.”

Marjie launched herself at her grandmother, wrapping her arms around her. Then she carefully took the knife and tied it to her belt. A second later, she was gone, almost skipping away down the path.

The grandmother hummed softly to herself as she returned to her work.