Strums and Strolls

Escapades

The castle was never dark, even during the fiercest of storms. Its candlelight shone brightly day and night, and as if my magic, they never needed to be replaced or relit. The girl knew that someone must be in charge of making sure the candles are alight, but she had never seen them – not in her seventeen years of life.

The candles made it all too difficult to be moving about the castle past her curfew, let alone to sneak out, but she had managed once before. The girl tied back her neatly-cut black hair and threw on a nun's habit, donning the dress she had been given for her fifteenth birthday. Checking herself in the mirror by her dresser, she no longer looked like Momo Yaoyorozu, the princess she always was – she simply looked like another castle dweller.

Her door opened with a miniscule creak, and shut silently behind her. She took a deep breath and began to walk – left foot, then the right foot, then the left foot again. This was almost unheard of for her, as she had never disobeyed her parents' orders before, besides the one other time she had snuck out – and was caught. She had to be more careful this time.

As she made her way cautiously, but not suspiciously towards the castle doors, she once again felt the tingle of excitement that arose whenever she left behind the cobble walls that had always surrounded her. She yearned to learn about the outside world, about every bit of the kingdom she was destined to inherit. Sure, she had her father to teach her the politics, but she wanted to know every single name of every single person who resided in the nearby town surrounding the castle. She wished to walk the streets freely and chatter amongst commoners and nobles alike.

Moments before she stepped through the castle threshold, she heard a shrill voice come from behind her.

"Sister, where are you going?" She immediately knew the voice – it was Sister Minutia, the most easily persuaded of all of the castlewomen. Momo breathed a sigh of relief.

Momo turned, revealing not half of her face. "I was told that a prayer was needed in the town for a sickly man. His family believes that he will not survive the night."

Sister Minutia was taken aback. "Oh, please, don't let me prolong you any further! Go, allow that man's final moments to be in peace!"

Momo nodded her head and silently thanked Minutia for being so clueless. Her heels clacked against the concrete stairs as she fled the castle, breathing in the fresh air. The night sky was infatuating. The moonlight reflected off of the silver clouds, giving an eerie yet wondrous glow to the whole sky. Before she leapt off of the staircase and into the town, she diverted her path to a dark alley, where she knew a set of commoner clothes would await her.

"Julio said that the clothes would be on top of a barrel..." Momo muttered to herself, and before her next thought, she saw the dirty rags, and her face lit up. "There you are!" It didn't take long for her to get changed, but the clothes weren't exactly her size. The rags seemed to be randomly loose or tight in odd places, such as how her forearm had plenty of space but her elbow was already ragged with the rug burns from the harsh cloth. The clothes did nothing to hide her royal figure, but she didn't care. She seldom left the castle, so most commoners wouldn't give her a second glance.

She made her way through the market distract and spied her target – the Windy Brook Tavern. It was the one place she knew that the town was alive for the whole night, but she also knew fights broke out there fairly frequently. She did not care though, she wished to experience all that commoner life had to offer.

She clenched her fist around the metal handle, steeling herself to finally come face-to-face with commoners all by herself. Her body shook with both excitement and anxiousness, but before she could second-guess herself, she flung open the door.