Celia stepped out of her cottage, the door closing behind her as the rain fell like long, thin daggers, pattering lightly but relentlessly on her hooded woolen cloak. She pulled it around her body and clasped it in her hands close to her, as protection from the misty, dewy cold. The world was gray, covered by dome-like gray clouds, the grass a stronger, deeper green, the mountains in the distance obscured in the mists, their peaks rising up above the clouds. Her nose ran, though the air in her lungs was cold and pure. She couldn’t tell whether the cold that reached her bones and spirit was from the freezing rain soaking through her cloak, or the chilly mist extending its icy tendrils into the front of her cloak, but even through her shivers she felt a warmth in her heart and chest and melancholy hope.

The smoke from her fireplace rose over her head, drifting and being driven further into the sky, the vision a memento of the comfort she was leaving behind. The house had been her aegis, her source of comfort and warmth and protection through all of her childhood years. Her last meal there was still hot in her stomach, the smell of the hearty stew that her mother cooked lovingly for her still filling her nostrils. From her childhood she remembered thoughts of a future that never included her leaving that cottage, blurred visions of days helping her mother to knead bread or prepare meals in the oven when she would have been content to do so for the rest of her life. The warm oven had kept her spirit warm through those years, for to her it meant a warm, loving home and her mother’s gentle smiles that reached deep into her heart. But now she must leave, half of her soul longed to remain in the cottage, but the other part of her longed for adventure and unknown lands. She could not imagine living without either, and since she had never known adventure and wandering, she decided to leave home against her own wishes to remain.

She ran towards the path that ran beside the mountains, from far to the south and continuing to the north. Both were foreign to her; no matter where she went, she would be going into the relatively unknown. But while she had heard tales of the north and its isolation, the lonely castles on the outskirts of the known world, she had also heard of the grand kingdoms to the south, giant castles with their banners hung gladly and bustling cities about them. She had known isolation for all of her life, and though she cherished it and would gladly embrace it again, she wished to be amidst the greatness of civilization that she had never known. Her eyes traced the path, and beyond, to the south. Her boots, slightly too large for her feet, splashed heavily through the water and the wet grass swished along her boots and skirts.

She saw the rider advancing along the path, his horse at full gallop and his long cloak blowing behind him. His eyes were set forward in determination to watch the path, and he did not see her; she was in front of him and to his left, and they were converging towards a cluster of bushes where she had been told to wait. She watched in awe the powerful dark brown flanks and muscular, sure-footed legs of his horse, the mud and water splashed about in its path. As he neared the cluster of bushes and trees he drew his horse a few metres up the steep hill and glanced about, his upraised eyes catching sight of her through the heavy rain. She ran up the steep hill, almost falling once, her foot slipping forwards in the slippery mud and grass, and she reached out her hands half-instinctively to catch herself, but she reached the horse and rider, and glanced up. Her eyes searched his face, gray and dark, gentle blue eyes, almost colorless to match the gray clouds in the sky, but before she could notice more and before she even realized that she was looking up at him he reached down to her, grabbing her hands and pulling her up onto his horse. Her feet fumbled, slipping on the horse’s wet flanks as she realized that there were no stirrups. Then her vision flew from the powerful, wet horse to the tall, snow-capped and forest-covered mountains in the distance. She caught for the blink of an eye the sight of a stone castle or fortress set within the forest, its turrets rising above the trees and its banner waving at her in the wind, and then she heard askance a slap and a shout and a jolt and the horse was bolting down alongside the path to converge with it, and the castle eluded her vision as she gazed back into the deep forests from which the horse and its two solitary riders grew more and more distant.

The road was long and changing in nature: at times it was flat and straight as it ran over meadows that spread far off into the distance, and Cecilia would hold closely to the rider, no longer uncomfortable from the horses galloping and the constant weaving and bobbing up and down as it had ran over small hills and bumpy dirt paths. For now this had stopped, and the horse was trotting at a pace neither leisurely nor fast, and Cecilia could not tell whether the world was speeding by or taking its time, each tree on the distant end of the meadow waving to her its goodbye, the grass and flowers offering farewell. The rider was silent through most of the trip, a polite and well-maintained air of one who is not unkind in leaving one alone because of coldness or pride, but of one who wished not to trouble her, lest she be sick or tired or unwilling to speak. However Cecilia was still nervous to venture to speak to the rider, for fear that she may distract him from the thoughts that she imagined were swirling in his mind. For a time she forgot why she was here, she forgot her quest, and remembered only that she was riding with a quiet man and looking out over the meadows.

At length he did speak to her, waiting until they were on a vast plain before turning his head. Now that she could see his face she noticed his black hair, which surprised her; she and her mother had taken in a wayfarer long ago, and that man had lighter hair and eyes, as well as a childlike appearance. That man had certainly been past his twentieth year, and even in his manner had he seemed like a child. She laughed as she remembered the clumsy, tottering man knocking over a water vase that her mother had set on the table as he sat down to eat. He had been overly talkative, eager to begin a polite conversation that had no importance, and at that time she had been glad that she had been born in the north where people kept to themselves more and were not over gregarious. But he was the only person she could remember from outside the borders of Dunomia. Certainly this man was different, with his quiet demeanor and dark hair and darker eyes, he could ride a horse as if he was a centaur and the horse’s body was his own. She giggled imagining the clumsy man trying to ride a horse, and saw him flung into the mud, only partially a result of the horse’s annoyance with him. Would he talk to a horse as much as he had talked to her and her mother? But these thoughts came to her in a brief instant, as the rider turned his head part way, so that he could watch the path, though the horse was only cantering, as he spoke to her.

Her cloak had during the noon hours, when the warm sun shone down on them through the misty skies. She noticed as they rode on that the land became less vegetated, and when they passed wayside fields their crops became more and more interspersed with weeds, or dryer soil that yielded no vegetation. It was to her great dismay that the rider halted his dark steed at a place where two roads crossed each other, turned around as far as he could, and spoke to her the words that left her with a great sense of loneliness far afterwards, though she had long known what would come at this point. He had agreed to take her this far, but afterwards he would attend to his business in another part of the country where it was not her intention to go, and so they would separate at this point. The sparseness of the vegetation and growing distance between the homesteads filled her with a sense of emptiness, as if she would gain nothing no matter which direction she chose; each road led onwards between dry, dusty fields into the blue, cloudless horizon. Trying to hide her faltering courage she leaped off of the horse, and would have lost her balance, falling onto her knees in the dirt had the horseman not stretched out his arm to catch her. He looked into her eyes, his now brighter than before and seeming to convey an image of hope that pierced her own sense of emptiness, as if dry air had been mixed with rain, if the two could coexist, and as he rode off hot tears came from her eyes, burning her face, and her body shook with tears as her legs lost their strength and she finally fell to the earth.

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