Barriye in the early morning light was a view that was worth watching. Of course, so was Barriye under a full moon and Barriye bathed in the scarlet colors of sunrise and sunset- if you had a high vantage point, any city might look beautiful. In Ekhrash, it was the sandy colors of the houses interspersed with the brown wooden beams and colorful pieces of cloth used to cast shade upon the sweating pedestrians that gave the bustling city its own unique touch. Renate would have like to draw it, perhaps, but she'd never held a pen herself and certainly didn't trust her chilly hands to do the view justice. Better to keep the image in her mind and call it forth when necessary: that was something she was good in. She smiled vaguely to herself and sat back. After Durandel had left to travel back home, she'd taken residence in one of the palace towers, keeping her own company with a pile of books. Mostly, of course, because hardly anyone wanted anything to do with her. The kitchen had given up resistance and set up a chair in a quiet corner where she could sit if she wanted and soak up the noise, smell and sheer sense of bustling life that filled it. Once, she'd tried to bake a loaf of bread. It hadn't been particularly successful, and obviously nobody wanted to taste, but she'd tried.
And then she'd found the library, a treasure trove for lonely people like herself. In the beginning, of course, it'd been useless because Renate couldn't read- spending your entire life in a place where there were no books would do that to you- but she had learned. Started to learn, at least, and she could now read slowly if she followed the lines with her finger carefully. Sometimes, those select people who didn't mind her company even helped her, if she found them and asked about particularly complicated words. Alma-Diah had been very nice, as had Amile. They were the two primary people who even wanted to talk to her now that Durandel had left and Sakari had disappeared mysteriously. Lacking better company- and certainly not especially willing to venture out into the city itself except late at night, when most people were sleeping-, Renate had opted to spend her time in the tower, where she could read if she wanted, or look down on the bustling city below if that pleased her. There was a somewhat disturbing likeness between her and some of the fairytale princesses locked in towers, she found, except of course that she could theoretically leave at any time. Theoretically, that was the important word. If she did, people would most likely freak out.
So Renate remained mostly alone. The most exciting things she'd done recently was being dragged by Amile, one of the palace servants, into the nightly dark streets of Barriye to find a shop that dealt in clothes. As a result, she now wore a significantly nicer dress and even had her very own hairbrush, a possession which she had come to treasure quite significantly. She'd taken to keeping it fastened to her belt, always ready to use after she'd done something particularly exciting, like running through the palace or its gardens. With the extra care, her raven-black hair had even managed to attain a semi-live shine, so the only things that truly told her for being... well, not quite alive, were the color of her skin and the coolness of her body. There were some other pointers, of course, like how she didn't need to blink, but she'd practiced that one and remembered most of the time.
And now there were excited steps on the stairway leading up to her little room, and Amile's voice calling out good news- "She's here!" Renate looked up slightly confused. Just a moment later, her friend had arrived at the top of the stairs and gotten her breath back enough to continue: "The new overseer of Ekhrash! Straight from the capital, she says!" This, at least, got some speed into the smaller girl, who finally rose from her spot and then, accompanied by a little bit of giggling, raced Amile down the stairs and out on the lawn, where she almost ran into a fairly tall woman whose face she didn't recognize, which meant that it probably was exactly the person she'd come to see. Suddenly cautious and, to be completely honest, a little shy, she stopped short. Torn between curiosity and carefulness, she looked up at the woman with one half of her face being obscured by hair. ❝ Hi! What's your name? ❞
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Location: Barriye Palace | Feeling: Careful | Company: Amile, Lindara
Knight Cadman Halstatt of Olborvonne
