The dawn light here was too pale. It didn't lance into your eyes with streaks of violent red and orange like it did on the free plains, where nothing, no mountain, no tree, stood between you and the sun. That kind of over saturated blaze bled the body of fatigue, coloured over regrets from the night before, left you with a clean burn and no time for second thoughts.
But monastery mornings? All weird, sallow fog and dewy green. They made you hover too long on the edge of the day, sip your coffee instead of slam it. Left too much space for questions and doubt. And Jhima disliked a damp morning as much as she disliked dwelling on why she made promises. She just tried to keep them -- or found a good enough excuse not to.
She couldn't remember much of her night at the Knoll. Whoever tended the bar plied her well. She knew her tongue had the fuzzy feel of too much whisky and not enough water. She also knew her voice had a painful wheeze to it, so she'd probably laughed too hard at something stupid. There was a vague memory, though: her, offering to take one of those young, green knights on a trail ride. Something about helping with their seat. Whether there’d been more intention behind that -- that was the part she couldn’t recall.
Not that it mattered, unless they showed up. In hindsight, promising to meet at the stables in the morning had been pointless. Jhima was going to be there first thing anyway, promise or not, and most of the monastery folk who knew her even halfway knew that much. Thankfully, they didn’t know her well enough yet to be sick of her. And somehow, the Elum were the same. Maybe she was losing her edge.
As if.
“Mmkay, boy. Not a great morning to fight me on the bridle,” she muttered, glaring at the stubborn gelding in front of her while her stomach groaned. Didn’t trust herself to eat anything just yet, afraid of how it might sit, so she sucked on a mint leaf pilfered from a garden instead. “Don’t flap your ruddy ears at me, damnit.”
Eventually, the headstall settled into place, and the horse, too preoccupied with gnawing on the snaffle, took kinder to Jhima’s slower, nauseated approach to tacking, which required several pauses. During one of these, she leaned back, took a deep breath, and rubbed some feeling back into her cheeks with the heels of her palms.
That was another thing to hate about the North -- cold mornings, colder than they needed to be. If only the knights who called this place home weren’t so ambitious and beautiful, her fatal undoings, she’d have packed up and left after the first night she passed out in a muddy hay bale, flowers in her hair, the air reeking of shroud. Whatever other foolish charm they’d worked on her, it had stuck.
Yeah. That settled it. She’d spent enough time already thinking, delaying. She stretched her arms, felt the blood surge back through her veins, and addressed the bratty bay with resolve.
“Well, Pecker. Unless our trail buddy shows up soon, it’s just you and me.”
@Gruki
But monastery mornings? All weird, sallow fog and dewy green. They made you hover too long on the edge of the day, sip your coffee instead of slam it. Left too much space for questions and doubt. And Jhima disliked a damp morning as much as she disliked dwelling on why she made promises. She just tried to keep them -- or found a good enough excuse not to.
She couldn't remember much of her night at the Knoll. Whoever tended the bar plied her well. She knew her tongue had the fuzzy feel of too much whisky and not enough water. She also knew her voice had a painful wheeze to it, so she'd probably laughed too hard at something stupid. There was a vague memory, though: her, offering to take one of those young, green knights on a trail ride. Something about helping with their seat. Whether there’d been more intention behind that -- that was the part she couldn’t recall.
Not that it mattered, unless they showed up. In hindsight, promising to meet at the stables in the morning had been pointless. Jhima was going to be there first thing anyway, promise or not, and most of the monastery folk who knew her even halfway knew that much. Thankfully, they didn’t know her well enough yet to be sick of her. And somehow, the Elum were the same. Maybe she was losing her edge.
As if.
“Mmkay, boy. Not a great morning to fight me on the bridle,” she muttered, glaring at the stubborn gelding in front of her while her stomach groaned. Didn’t trust herself to eat anything just yet, afraid of how it might sit, so she sucked on a mint leaf pilfered from a garden instead. “Don’t flap your ruddy ears at me, damnit.”
Eventually, the headstall settled into place, and the horse, too preoccupied with gnawing on the snaffle, took kinder to Jhima’s slower, nauseated approach to tacking, which required several pauses. During one of these, she leaned back, took a deep breath, and rubbed some feeling back into her cheeks with the heels of her palms.
That was another thing to hate about the North -- cold mornings, colder than they needed to be. If only the knights who called this place home weren’t so ambitious and beautiful, her fatal undoings, she’d have packed up and left after the first night she passed out in a muddy hay bale, flowers in her hair, the air reeking of shroud. Whatever other foolish charm they’d worked on her, it had stuck.
Yeah. That settled it. She’d spent enough time already thinking, delaying. She stretched her arms, felt the blood surge back through her veins, and addressed the bratty bay with resolve.
“Well, Pecker. Unless our trail buddy shows up soon, it’s just you and me.”
@Gruki
