Never Idle

She left the library - in secret a place she visited on her own, again and again.  To look at the maps, and study the pictures.  And in truth, to look over the words in the books, though she couldn't decipher what they said.  Surely nearly everything she wanted to know lay in those pages, she thought with wonder.

Down the Scholar's Stair, with a glance behind to make sure no one trailed after her before she made the turn.  The winding alleys, growing ever more puddle-strewn and dirty.  The corner she turned into was barely a two rooms strung together with a pile of blankets in the corner.  Her nose wrinkled a bit at the smell, but there was nothing for it.  No worse than the horse stalls she frequented, she told herself.

An hour later and the floor was swept.  The dirty blankets replaced with newly washed ones, and a basket of a couple of pies and some biscuits hung from the ceiling where the rats would have a harder time getting to it.  She sighed, as she looked around, and then made her way to the door.  It would have to do.

She wanted to sit at the Pony, like Ryheric had suggested.  Watching people, as they reveled or socialized.  Perhaps even joining in, she'd thought.  Each time she met with him, or even with Silver (Sairona) she nearly had more questions than she'd come in with.  What might normally have frustrated her exhilirated her instead.  Opening up a whole new world, different than what she was used to.  A feeling like maybe she wasn't as alone and strange as she'd always thought she was.

Instead, she retrieved Petunia and walked her through town to her camp.  She chose a sight the other side of Combe, high above where the bears liked to frequent and overlooking a lake.  Setting Petunia to graze, she set up her firepit for the evening, and then drew out the stakes to her tent.

At Silver's suggestion, she'd bought a tent.  She'd even mostly slept in it, for one night, before the small enclosed space drove her out into the open.  That night she'd sat and looked at it for an hour or so, remorse written in the purse of her generous mouth.  People who wandered camped, and they sought the shelter of tents, she reasoned.  It was like a small house, it was enclosed for a purpose.  Still, she couldn't talk her body into sleep within the thing.

The next day she took out her thin tailoring blade, and took it apart.  A day it took her, meticulous and testing, to work out what she wanted instead from the parts.  The impetuousness of youth didn't make her impatient in this, and she took it apart and put it back together several times before finally, she settled in the middle, satisfied.

Three walls of the thick fabric, V'd together in the middle so she could see the stars above and the campfire ahead.  The top, unless she employed the canopy constructed, was open to the stars, and the air.  And the intrusion of Petunia's nose on occasion over the side where she contentedly ate the meal provided for her.  Yet again, done her own way.

She drew her long legs up to her chest, head tipping back to contemplate the stars.  She couldn't help the smile on her face, the contentedness she felt.  Despite all the questions and few answers, for the first time she felt like her life belonged to her.  And that was as heady as the kisses shared.

She wondered if he felt the same thing she felt, when he kissed her.