Squire Hayseed

Leopard Spots

Perhaps she fell asleep, perhaps Gavin was quicker than she expected, but when a hand landed upon her back Hayley jerked in surprise. Her knight shifted away as she tried to stagger up. The man who'd had her stabbing and riposting all day steadied her waning form. For a moment he looked into her face, trying to catch her eyes or perhaps see how many swears she had saved up back there. It was a lot.

"Please tell me rest is next," Hayley mumbled. Her body swayed towards the well, but she lashed a hand out to keep herself from pitching down it.

"Yes, though...I think food is called for."

At the mention, her stomach snarled for anything to fill it. While sweating buckets and whipping her body into an overheated frenzy she hadn't felt it. But once they stopped and the march back resumed, her gut kept sloshing back and forth in hunger. It wasn't the hungriest she'd ever been, but it felt like the most earned.

Locking a helping hand around Hayley's shoulders it wasn't to their little house Gavin led them but the main one. For a moment Hayley glanced down at her mess of clothing. Over half of it was mud, the boots in particular slathered in it from her jaunts into the stream to cool off. She was about to say something, when her knight turned her towards a little side door. While the entrance at the top of the stairs was ornate with ivy carved into the frame, this looked like someone found a scrap of wood and nailed it up.

He didn't bother knocking, just yanked on the handle and walked them inside. A small table holding handfuls of bowls rested close, Hayley knuckling her way over to land on a stool. Her knight glanced over once to make certain she wasn't about to pitch to the floor before he vanished.

Pawing at her chest, she sighed as another mud clump splattered onto the floor. She'd have to wash that, wash everything on her body. It'd probably take hours just to get through the mess of her livery. "I would really like to lay down and not get up for thirty days."

"You have returned!" a voice pinged through the small stone room and Hayley turned to find Ania walking quickly towards her. The girl stopped right across from Hayley, her big eyes watching as the bruised and battered squire smacked into the mud on her chest. "You are filthy."

"Yep," Hayley nodded her head hard, unable to deny it.

Ania swung her legs around the opposite stool, her clothed knees nearly brushing against Hayley's. She felt bad and tried to shift, doing her best to keep her mass of mud from touching the girl's clean skirts. Placing her chin in her hand, Ania stared hard as she asked in her flat voice, "Did he take you to the stream?"

Hayley bobbed her head, uncertain how to respond. It was a stream, but there could be a lot of stream in the area. Maybe there was another, fancier stream where the dashing Knight took girls he liked.

Smiling, Ania reached up to undo her kerchief revealing black hair bobbed to her ears. "He goes there often to train, says the ground is softer."

Wincing, Hayley reached back to the bruises along her spine from all her falls. If that was softer... Wait. "How do you know that?" Seemed like one of those secret knight things, at least it sure felt out of the way of everywhere.

A blush rose on Ania's cheeks and she shrugged, "I'll bring food, sometimes. Check to make certain he doesn't require anything."

Tension snapped through the room, Hayley tasting its bitterness in the back of her throat but for the life of her she had no idea why. Ania was fiddling with the hair curled around her ear, for once her burning eyes going anywhere else. She opened her mouth a few times as if testing the air while all Hayley could do was stare in confusion.