Escaping the End of the World

337 Days Remaining

          My cloak was whipping in the wild wind caused by the storm I had been caught up in.  The rain was coming down in sheets, hard and harsh in the chilling wind.   I pulled my cloak around me tighter, attempting to absorb whatever heat still remained within it.  Merrik neighed as he plowed forth, head against the wind.   A strike of thunder lit up the forest grotto and the path ahead.  After leaving Aelkus in a hurry, I had made sure to stay away from the river, for the guard would have been following it for sure.   

          Instead, we took the forest path.  It was a loose forest with thin trees of oak and bright green leaves.  The weather had been nice for the first two days, and perhaps warmer than usual.  This made for easy nights where a fire was not needed--and thank the Goddess for with a fire, I would have surely been found by now.   It was not until the dusk of the third day that the dark clouds rolled overhead,  blacking out the light from the Brother Moons, threatening the chaos that I was now enveloped in.  

           I now shivered under my cloak for some time, the wind piercing through my skin with every gust.  I had no idea of how long it might be before I once again felt the fond touch of heat.  There certainly would be no chance for fire tonight unless I burnt the forest whole, and that was strictly out of the question.  I hugged the horse hair lovingly, but to no avail.  Merrik was freezing too.  

        Then, in the distance, I saw my salvation.   A light swayed back and forth in the winds, illuminating some sort of wooden structure.  It was not until I got closer that I realized what it was--a tavern.  But then, not too far to the right sat the conjoining atrium of the Naldoryss and the Lesser Naldor River.  I wanted nothing more right now than to sleep in a nice warm bed in a tavern, but to risk arrest was something I didn't want to risk.  But the freezing rain and the stiffness of my face was almost enough for me not to care.  Perhaps the guard will not look for me in the inn.  

       I approached the inn, the sign reading "Forest's Edge Inn".  The light of the hearth shined through the panes of the windows, and the sound of shouting and laughing was audible even through the booming storm that raged on around me.  A man exited the inn and came toward me.  "Stable of eight silver fracts." 

      I reached into my purse within the pockets of my cloak and handed to him ten silver fracts and climbed off my horse, and pulling from my pack a short blade that I slid into one of the loops on my bottom piece underneath my cloak.  "Keep the rest."  I told him, stomping through the mud to the inn, turning my head away from the wind-blown rain.  

      Grabbing the splintered wooden handle, I yanked open the door to the inn and the laughing, and the talking and all of  the happy sounds of the inn came to a halt.  Chairs screeched against the worn wooden panels.  All of the eyes turned to me.  All orcs.  The only other elf in the whole tavern was the barman.  I continued to the bar, the whole bar silent save for my boots thhmp-thhmping heavily against the floor boards, maybe a pound or two added by the rain.  "Room for one?"  I asked, trying to ignore the eyes on my back.

          "Elven scum."  I heard someone mutter.

          "For you."  The elf said, "Just the cellar.  We don't think too kindly of the Saldaeronn kind in my tavern, capitalizing on people's suffering, making slaves of the good people of Saeressia."

          An orc in the back room chuckled at this.   I looked over my shoulder at the common area where the hearth blazed near the back, over several tables where many orcs sat.   Then I looked back at the elf.  "I'll take whatever you have."  

         "Do you know what, I think we're fresh out of cellar rooms.  Might as well sleep with your horse where you money is.  You cunts seem to get off to that."  He said.