View Single Post
Old 07-19-2015, 07:24 PM   #65
Firefoot
Illusionary Holbytla
 
Firefoot's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 7,646
Firefoot has been trapped in the Barrow!
Cerwyn - At a West Emnet Farm

Going to Edoras! Cerwyn still could not believe her luck, though it had been a full two days since her father had given her permission. Clothes and supplies were strewn everywhere, none of them in her pack: she could not decide what to bring. Probably she did not need to bring so many things, but she had never been more than a few leagues from home before and did not know how to pack.

Perhaps Father really was changing, she mused. It had taken long enough – more than half her life, since mother had died. She did not remember well how it had been before then. Léof had and he used to talk to her about it. Even her memories of his stories had started to fade, though: it had been five years since he’d left. At first, she’d been terribly lonely without him. They had been each other’s greatest ally and friend. Now, she’d grown accustomed to his absence, and no longer felt such a great emptiness at home. She had friends, of a sort, in the village nearby, but Father discouraged her from spending much time there. He did not often grow violent any more – but she had also gotten better at not getting caught. She knew when he was likely to miss her.

So now, to let her go to Edoras! Not alone, of course. She would be traveling with Everild, a widow of three years, and her oldest son. Theirs was the cabin closest to Cerwyn’s, and the two families had been of great help to each other during the harsh winter. During that time, it seemed Cerwyn’s father had formed quite a connection with Everild, and they had announced their intention to wed just a few weeks ago. Cerwyn thought that she must be the only woman for leagues around who wasn’t put off by her father’s drinking.

Then again, maybe she was changing him. Already Cerwyn was seeing it.

Maybe Léof could come home.

She knew, or thought she knew, two things of Léof since he’d left. She’d received one letter from him, long ago, and in it he’d said he’d taken up a post with the new Eorl in Edoras. She did not know why he’d stopped writing, and it rankled with her, but mostly she missed him too much to be truly angry. Then, sometime later but still now a couple years ago, she had happened to be in town when a traveler passing through was discussing this same Eorl, and how he’d moved his Hall to a place called Scarburg, somewhere east of Edoras. She guessed that Léof would have gone with him, and hoped that he might still be there.

This might be the one chance she had to find him. He would not come home on his own, she felt sure of that by now: he was far too stubborn. And their father, in turn, would never seek him out to invite him back: even if he wanted to, he was also too stubborn. In this, at least, did Léof take after him.

Well, neither would she be deterred. Already she had a plan. She was sorry already for the worry that she would cause Everild, but unrepentant of her plan. Once they reached Edoras, she had no doubt that she would be able to learn the whereabouts of this Scarburg, and then she would sneak away and go. This brought to mind the first thing she had to pack.

She went over to Léof’s old trunk of clothes and possessions and sifted through it. Father had never touched it, and when Léof left he had been about the same size as she was now. She found a serviceable pair of breeches, a shirt, and a hat, and stowed them at the bottom of her pack. A boy travelling alone would be less remarked upon than a girl, and a disguise would make it harder for anyone trying to come after her.

She was so eager to put this plan in place that she did not even mind that once she was caught her father would probably never let her leave the cabin again – at least not until he married her off, a possibility that loomed increasingly likely now that she had passed her eighteenth birthday and now that her father was remarrying, thus gaining a wife to care for his home as his daughter had for so many long years. She wouldn’t have it. She had not yet thought of a suitable resolution to this problem, but pushed it to the back of her mind for now.

She had to finish packing.
Firefoot is offline