Winter's Wake

[Sjira]

She had stayed too long to the north.

So long had the small woman been gone that many thought her dead, captured, or gone back to the barbaric and nomadic lands of Llothgar.

The truths were far more mundane, and far more things of life that had not grand story for the telling. No magic, no hero, no mystical monster.

S'jira illness, recovery, seeing to Trygg. As well, she had training a new colt from gangly gait to running with Trygg and s'jira to run the open meadows and fields. Trygg need companionship that was not human, not s'jira. She knew this. She had seen how the herds ran large and wild on the plains in her homelands. She knew that horses needed that fire and friendship of another horse or they might eventually wither away and their spirit dwindle.

Sometimes, venturing into the heart of the great city, within its high and wonderful walls was hard for her. She remember Panther often. She remembered many, many things. Friends and loves lost. And if she thought too long it, the young woman's heart would feel the cuts.

Instead she had stayed away until the colt had good footing and s'jira could bear to smile and dance without heartache felt. Duties at the docks were still seen to, but she had not been seen in the Red Dragon Inn for months. Six of then, but the passage of time on RhyDin's calendar.

The small one hauled the heavy old cloak that used to belong to another, pulled herself up onto Trygg. The night was cold but it would be a far warmer one at the inn and other places near it. There was need to be there. There was need to have hands busy again with cleaning some of the inn's rooms and mending the clothes of its patrons.