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After assuring Ser Leo of your comfort on the road, you settle on a compromise to find an inn further along once you have made suitable progress. You are of the Rainwood. A few nights beneath a hedge or under a crofter’s roof is of no great trouble. Even so, you do not wish to enter your lord uncle’s hall dangling twigs and leaves from your hair. A night of rest before announcing your return from the grave feels appropriate.
As the city gates near, you steal glimpses backwards of the great dome of the Starry Sept Would that this were a visit for pleasure. It has always been something of a dream to see the great wonders here and in other cities beyond, a dream that you had buried at some point during your wedded years. And yet now some adventure of sorts, if only a brief one, does feel within your grasp. So long as you are still on the road, you are free. The notion puts you in remarkably better spirits. To be sure, this may all come to a grinding halt when you return to court. You have no notion of how you will be received by your uncles or even your father, but those are worries for another day.
Tears come to your eyes unbidden as you leave the city behind, making you grateful for the inattentiveness of Ser Hightower and his squire. Your lady mother spoke fondly of these lands in your youth, but you never had chance to travel them. The rolling green pastures and plains beneath the clear blue sky is a sight you have never seen before. Your ancestral home is far greener, but it is a wild place. Here, this is peace distilled. You feel a genuine smile strain at your cheeks and quicken the pace of your riding. The other two riders are quick to match you, and you proceed together at a carefree trot.
Your thighs ache when you dismount for the evening, finding a clearing in the hedges in sight of the road. You are surprised to find your legs don’t feel like jelly as they did after riding in your youth You have the strength enough to insist on helping with Ser Leo’s tent, more a small grey pavilion suited for a bachelor knight attending a tourney ground.
“Do you ride in tourneys, ser?” you ask while trying to turn their dried meat into an edible stew. You were politely suggested to this task by Ser Leo’s young squire, a Garth Westbrook, after mostly getting in his way with the pavilion.
“I have dabbled. It has been a couple years, though. You are this tent’s savior, my lady. Any longer and the moths would have had it,” Ser Leo answers, less enthused on the topic than you expected. Being the keeper of many sore secrets yourself, you don’t pry overmuch, instead making small talk over family relations. You find he is the only son of a branch broken off from the main line of House Hightower.