Lialith Nare'ya

Seated, slumped, with her hands supporting her head and her
feet tapping at two separate tempos, Lia’s gazed past the unnecessarily long
table she was seated at, past the adjoining room to the main door. Its heavy
wooden, intricately carved surface gleaming as the lowering sun shined through
an impeccably clean window.


“He is coming soon..?”


The old dwarf sitting near the fire chuckled to himself as
he turned a page of his worn, leather bound book.


Lia slipped off of the chair she was seated on and shuffled
out the door, closing it perhaps harder than she intended, as the old dwarf
paused from his reading, shaking his head with a sigh.


Stepping from the spacious porch, she leapt onto the thick
stone fence surrounding her home and walked along it, one foot carefully and
quickly placed in front of the other. A nearby bush shook and a stone quickly rolled
from underneath it. Without looking, Lia rolled her eyes and hopped off the
fence.


“Sean, you best watch yourself!”


The youthful lad, readying another stone couldn’t help a mischievous
smirk.


Her recollection was interrupted as Ahnvae, the raven she
had taken to caring for swooped away from its perch. Lia shifted her position
on the rock she sat on and slowly closed her eyes, attempting to return to her reminiscing.

Huddled in the corned, her eyes fixed upon the door across
the dirty tavern room. She found herself flinching at each strike against the
locked door. A muffled yelling could be heard beneath it. Deeper than it once was, but undeniably Sean’s.


“Comon, Li. Come on. OPEN THE DOOR!”


The strikes that shook the door ceased abruptly. Instead came the shifting and clicking sound of fine tools at the keyhole.
Trembling with fear, the tears trailed down her face easily.

Lia forced herself from the memory. Living through it once was enough. She stood up and meandered through Wayrest, headed back to Dagger Falls.

Past the gates, past the stationed elves and roaming sentries. Padding silently, following the trail, though just off of it. Where she could slink about the trees and their shadowed shade. Her hands letting arrows fly into orc hide, her form weaving with their blows, though her mind was elsewhere.

So used to traveling. To starting over. Each town, each city, a new opportunity. Now, however, she faced something foreign to her. The prospect of staying. That is what people do. Isn’t it? They settle down, have a family and live prosperously till the end of their days. Would the Falls make for a good spot for that? Raising a half-elven child next door to that.. Reiber?

Logic yields to emotion. For Draccan she would …Right?
Releasing an arrow into the charging orc’s neck she nodded resolutely. Right.