And so it went, going from town to town, learning to live on her own and how to defend herself. Despite the daily reminders to herself, Esmeralda was surprised to find herself actually making it through. As long as she avoided trouble and kept her dagger handy when it found her, it didn’t seem to be a problem. She didn’t have to use it terribly much. Looking like she knew what she was doing was enough most of the time. The only people who insisted in bothering her were drunks or unusually creepy men. With drunkards, it was easy to push their interest on to someone else, generally in a way that would cause fights she could sneak out of. With creepy men, well, she had no problem putting a dagger in their thighs. She certainly wasn’t going to be at the end of a strange alley by herself with no protection. She was alone while she was in a room she paid for, and on the path to Penance, but that was only during the day. Sometimes the villages were just too far apart for that, but there were always at least outposts for the guards. She tried passing one by, and she ended up sleeping the day away once she got to a village. She was never going to do that again.
Slowly the towns became less sketchy and more welcoming, and it was the path that worried her. The path through the swamp was more heavily guarded, because of the wild natives. Once she was out of the swamp, it was her and the wild animals, and either the outposts were getting further apart, or she was slowly plodding along. Either way, it was starting to hit sunset before she found shelter.
One day, when she had been thinking about how close Penance must be (a thought she had been having regularly for the last week or two. She had lost track of how far along she was, and determined it wasn’t important enough to ask someone), Esmeralda looked up and it was one night. She noticed the sun was starting to set, but she could have sworn she had more time. She looked for lights to tell her a village or outpost was coming soon, but the path curved, and the trees were too dense to see what was ahead of her.
She tried not to worry (an outpost couldn’t be that far away), but it wasn’t long before she heard a howl. She kept her dagger ready, but she wasn’t confident that her knifing skills could take down a pack of wolves. Wolves weren’t a big problem for the caravans, were they? Maybe the path wasn’t in their territory. Isn’t that how wolves work? Maybe? Esmeralda regretted not paying attention in school whenever they talked about nature. She moved toward the side of the road as she walked, in case she suddenly needed to climb a tree. Eventually her paranoia got the best of her and she started to sprint. It didn’t last very long. She caught her breath and settled for walking really quickly, hoping to see lights soon. It took forever (fifteen minutes) before she saw any lights, and she started running.
She had completely exhausted herself by the time she got to the village, falling asleep as soon as she got herself a room. She considered staying for a day or two to relax in a nice, locked room, but in the end decided that she wanted to get to Penance and stop traveling. In truth, she was not in as much danger as she suspected. Not only do many animals tend to avoid people, the ones that don’t would not go anywhere near Esmeralda. People have an awful sense of smell, but anything dangerous in the woods knows not to hurt anything that smells like her.
Esmeralda kept moving until she finally reached a gate to a big city that could have only been Penance. She knew it wasn’t as big as Fishery, but Fishery felt like ages ago. Now, she was here, and there was this grand wall that disappeared into the trees (she was glad when she got out of swamps and into real forests), with a small river (creek?) running alongside it. Past the gate she could see a full tavern, and looking down the streets, she could see all the wonderful shops that were closed for the night. It was exquisite. She had so missed being in a big city. The voices of her schoolmates telling storied about the dangerous Penancians echoed in the back of her mind, but that was a different time. When nothing bad had ever happened to her. Perhaps because she lived in the Upper Ward, perhaps because people knew who her siblings were and thought they might protect her. But she still patted her dagger to make sure it wasn’t too far away as she went through the gates of Penance, and put up the hood of her cloak on the way into the popular tavern.
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