The parchment was crumbled from the gripping of her fingers, and spotted from a few errant tears that had rebelliously escaped her eyes. Even though she had read the words at least a dozen times, she read them once more. It didn’t matter how many times she read them, however, but she felt the knife driving deeper.
It was over. She tried to read between the lines and see some hidden message, but there was nothing. How could it be anything but done and dusted, with a message like this?
Nat had joined the Tower to be nearer to him, to not lose him, and yet now this wretched place had torn him from her. She was miserable, doing work she didn’t want to do and learning things she didn’t want to learn, and the reward that she had expected at the end of it was not even going to be here.
It was over.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she crumpled the paper up for good and tossed it to the corner of the room. Her roommate wasn’t there, and all for the best. She didn’t need witnesses for this.
In the small trunk at the end of the bed were the few possessions she had come to the Grey Tower with, and she packed them up now. Still wearing her Drin’far’ji uniform, she slipped out of her room and down the hallway. It was quiet now. The Drin had their free hour, and the warm weather had everyone outside. It made it easier for her to slip through the corridor unnoticed.
Twilight had wrapped the Tower up snugly, and she used it to her advantage to make her way out of the Tower grounds and into Hama Valon.
It wasn’t hard to remember the old arts, it seemed. Although she had only exercised them in little cons and little tricks here and there, she still had it when it counted. And right then, it counted a great deal. It let her out of this terribly place, where she could put M… Where she could put him behind her, since he was so resolute in “protecting” her.
It was nearly dark by the time she got to the depths of the city. She contemplated what to do from here… She had no coin. A few quick jobs, a little con or a little trick, should set her up well enough to get on her way. Natlya would go back to the live she had led before; she had done it before she ever met Morgan, and had been quite good at it.
Her mind was not as focused as it needed to be, however. She wound through the quieter alleys of the town, because she wanted to avoid any of the elder Tower members or the guard who might be around. Those were the types of meetings she didn’t look for while she still wore the obvious greys of the Drin’far’ji. That was first up on her list: changing out of this uniform and into something more suiting to her and the life she would achieve.
“‘Ey, pretteh,” a voice slipped out of the shadows.
Nat gasped as a hand landed on her shoulder, connected to an arm and a body and an oily voice she hadn’t even noticed. She spun around and jerked back. His fingers dug into the fabric and the top tore at the weak point: the shoulder. It ripped with an audible sound and bore her shoulder as she staggered back a step.
“Nae, dun be like ‘at,” he continued, a grizzly face melting out of the shadow. “Et ain’ so unus’al fer teh girls tae be back ‘ere, af’er all. An’ we all know wha’ they be ‘ere fer.”
“I’m not one of those women,” she replied levelly. Inwardly, she cursed herself for her lack of awareness. She had never been like that before! Trying to take a step back, she found his hand grip more tightly on her upper left arm.
Setting her feet, she flowed into a move that she had been shown during one of her training sessions. (Later, she would scarcely be able to believe how easily she remembered it and did it, but since she was catching him unawares, it made him an easy target.) She crossed her right hand across her chest, grabbing onto his wrist. With her left hand, she shoved her hand up and cracked into his elbow.
His grip weakened immediately and fell away. Wasting no time, she bolted and didn’t stop running until she reached the Tower walls.
* * * Sneaking back in had proved more difficult than sneaking out. Funny thing, that. This was why she now stood before the desk of the Master of Training. Her hands clutched behind her back and her head down, she listened. Her bare shoulder through the tear in her uniform stood as mute testament that something had happened.
Ravak Gaidin wanted to know why she had run away.
“That’s my business.”
He wanted to know why her uniform was torn.
“An accident.”
Her tone was not disrespectful, precisely, but there was a clear, quiet defiance born of the anger and hurt she felt deep down. How one could be defiant and broken at the same time, she would never know. Yet somehow she was.
Why had she come back here?
She could have run deeper into the city to escape, but she didn’t. Natlya didn’t seek out a kind innkeeper, or anything else. She didn’t try to flee the city entirely. No, she had come back here, because her mind had said there was...safety here. Why? She hated this place and all the things she had to do here. So why did she come back?
He had spoken. She’d been too lost in her thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Ravak Gaidin,” she mumbled, her eyes still on the floor.
The conversation did not improve from there and soon, every free hour--excepting the grueling training, eating, and sleeping--was filled with the moving of stones. Stones, some small and others at the edge of what she could carry, were to be moved back and forth between piles. Not for any purpose, to which she felt that must have been part of the punishment. She was directed to do this until she wished to reveal what happened, why she ran and why she came back. Her continued refusal led to this continued task.
An Accepted bearing the Master of Training’s name came to pry it from her.
It did not work.
So, she moved rocks. She ate with the enthusiasm of a piece of wood, and she collapsed into bed every night. But she would not talk. She thought. She remembered. She dreamed. Her roommate asked her what had happened, but she did not wish to reveal it. The redheaded Drin was still too confused by what had happened; at least, why she’d come back...and the things she was beginning to feel.
After seven days, she was released from this punishment. It was amazing how much introspection could take place during hours of lugging rocks around. She couldn’t understand all of what she had thought or felt, but she knew one thing:
Something had to change.
But what?
OOC: The punishment segment was written with review/permission of Craig.
