And so it went, going from town to town, learning how to defend herself and discovering what it really meant to live on her own. Despite having to give herself the daily encouragement, Esmeralda was surprised to find herself actually making it through. As long as she avoided trouble and kept her dagger handy for when it found her, she didn’t seem have any problems. She didn’t have to use it terribly much. Looking like she knew what she was doing was enough most of the time. Not an easy task for a less than confident girl from a rich family. Esmeralda figured that as long as she could make it through the first few stumblings of the trip, the rest would work itself out.
She practiced in the taverns, hoping that slowly, she’d feel better about all of it. She’d have made sure the guards were there in case anything went wrong, but for the moment she was ignoring the existence of guards. She still felt a natural inclination to respect authority, but had not resolved that particular internal crisis. And anyway, the practicing just involved sitting down with a drink, pretending like she wasn’t out of place and she did this all the time. She really wanted more feedback than ‘Nobody tried anything with me.’ She suspected that it was good for her anyway. ‘Just remember,’ she told herself, ‘that I have a dagger, and I can use it if necessary.’ She never felt she really got the ‘Don’t mess with me’ vibe down, but she did start to feel comfortable. After the incident, her heart would be racing, and she’d be vigilantly watching every individual she came across, wondering if one of them might want to hurt her. Now she could sit back, sipping her beer slowly as the night went on. It was even relaxing.
Soon she started taking on personas as she thought of them, although her favorite was the mysterious stranger type with a deep dark secret. Not her actual secret of course. A secret that would say that she’s been around, seen things, gotten into trouble. A secret that would make her pull the cloak over her head such that her face was bathed in shadow, pretending to ignore everyone while being attentive to make sure “that person” didn’t come to get her. Or maybe she was running from the law! Who knows? That’s the point of the mysterious stranger. It allowed her to entertain herself, and do nothing else, besides enjoy her beer—well, enjoy was too strong a word. Tolerated. She chose beer because it seemed least likely to make her stick out. She was getting used to it, slowly (both the beer and the world).
The only people who insisted on 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, 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; she ended up sleeping the day away once she got to a village, after nearly collapsing on the road. 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. The breeze was welcoming at the day’s warmest, but quickly became too chilly and crisp for her taste. The forest was so much colder than what she’d been used to. There was also the new sounds. Particularly the relaxing rustling of the wind through the trees. It was an entirely new world, being in a forest. Fishery didn’t contain much in the way of trees, and certainly not this majestic. It was stunning, and if she wouldn’t get so lonely, she might consider staying out here after learning a bit more about it. She wrapped herself in her cloak as tightly as she was able, and continued, trying to go a bit faster now. It was starting to hit sunset before she found shelter. Either the outposts were getting further apart, or she was slowly plodding along. She was worried soon she would not be able to find any before she needed sleep.
She tried to distract herself with better, happy thoughts. When she had been thinking about how close Penance must be (a thought she had been having regularly for the last week or two, having lost track of how far along she was, and determined it wasn’t important enough to ask someone), Esmeralda looked up and learned that it was 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 don’t have the sense to tell these things, but anything in the woods knows not to approach anything 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 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 missed being in a big city. The voices of her schoolmates telling stories 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. Nothing dangerous, at least. 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 for her own comfort 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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