Silly Little Castle

Meaning

Nerini jogged along the cobblestone pathways of the city, in the early predawn of a late summer morning. She skirted past drunks asleep in gutters and bakers hustling to their shops to start the morning's batches of bread, the smell of the baking cutting through the smell of stale beer and revelry from the night before.

Cutting along one street, she jogged past Wyn's meal house. It was now fully constructed with full crops of vegetables teeming in the gardens surrounding the walls of the kitchens and the neighbouring schoolyard. Here, workers were coming in, starting a meal that would feed others in need and children being housed and schooled in the attached orphanage. She smiled at her friend's handiwork, knowing that it would change the city of Alliance for the better.

After healing and taking things easy for several weeks, Nerini was back training to recover her strength. She  had weights strapped to her limbs and weighted weapons on her back as she circled back towards the palace complex, feeling the crisp air burning in her lungs, her legs screaming in complaint as she pushed herself up the sharpest hills, along the steepest inclines she could find.

Soon the rulers of those nations in the Alliance would be boarding ships home, leaving the elected members to represent them in meetings that would last through the winter. Only in times of crisis or during the annual meetings in the summer months, would they be coming to meet here. The days were growing short and home countries needed their ruler's presence before the darkness of winter settled in. She could feel the change in the soul of the city, even when there wasn't as many people out to observe. Allians was preparing for when it was half the population then it was right now.

She felt proud, happy that it had all come to be, even knowing that it wasn't hers to be proud of but celebrating in the successes of her friends, both new and old, even as she recovered her strength and felt an old familiar tug to move toward something else. For the first time in memory, she had held herself back from it, kept amongst the people she loved, stood to the side and watched them in their glory as she shuffled along in the background.

The tugging was growing but she allowed it to pester her in the back of her mind as she had resettled her friendships and created more. At first, she'd had no choice, as she recovered her strength, she had merely resigned herself to healing and helping where she could. But more and more every day, even as she felt the desire to leave, Nerini resisted it. She told herself that she had to stay on and let her body recover a little bit longer. She lingered here, with excuses that would not have held her still in the past but kept her in the company of safety and familiarity now.

She wanted to linger, felt like she needed to rest her soul before tackling whatever else was going to happen.

With a grin, she pushed herself into a sprint, rocketing past the palace complex gates and down the path to the training yards, stopping only once she made it to the field where she had been teaching sword fighting these past months.

There she came to a walking halt, panting and grinning at the exertion, stray wisps of hair clinging wetly to her face as she made her way towards where she had left a jug of water. The training yard was still empty, though people would be arriving soon enough as the day truly started once more.

She took a long drink and straightened, watching a now familiar form jogging up to her, offering her a careful grin. "You look like you're completely back on track, Lady Nerini."

"High Lord Shiar, thank you, I feel like I may be." She smiled, offering him a glass of water, still feeling oddly out of place around him, even after the last few months of acquaintance. 

They had been in the same group of friends, circling around each other at dinner parties or brushing elbows in meetings. Their paths crossed in hallways, though neither one of them had pursued anything past cordial greetings or exchanging a few words in a group conversation.