This Is My Town

Chapter Eleven ~ Kiara

Her head was pounding and her leg was aching. She could feel the sun through her eyelids, and she knew immediately that it was eight o'clock in the morning. She couldn't remember, however, what had happened the previous night to make her forget so much as to when she was in Montilo.

Then she led the trail from Montilo back to Longreach, and realized exactly where she was.

She let out a heavy groan and rubbed her forehead with her right hand, feeling the comfort of a bed beneath her. Her clothes had also been changed, and she wasn't wearing tight leather anymore. She groggily opened her eyes and looked down, her chin pressed against her chest to see that her leg had been fully cleaned out and bandaged and that her legs were housed in loose brown pants that were held up with a thin coil of rope. A loose white shirt that cut off around her arms in a singlet-type way hung off of her body, and had a triangle cut out in the front; only a small one that revealed her quite vivid collarbones. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten anything, but she wasn't feeling hungry anyway.

Stretching her legs out and feeling a short stab of pain in her right leg as she did so, Kiara grit her teeth and swung her legs off the side of the bed she was in, glancing out the window to find herself in the side room of the Longreach blacksmith, gazing out at the stables of the small river town she had ran away to.

Stepping out of the room with her bare feet pressing gently on the ground, Kiara found Rye in the main room. She also found that the bag of coin that was on the bench in the same room was gone. But the fewer coins on the sill of the window were still there, so Kiara knew that something had happened while she was sleeping.

Rye was sitting in that wooden chair that he had healed her leg on not twelve hours ago, but it was pushed up against the wall beside the window and the water basin. His head was down, but Kiara knew he wasn't sleeping. He wasn't upset, either. He was more... weary, than anything.

"Rye?" she asked, and he lifted his head, eyes wide. When he saw who it was, he let out a breath of relief and stood, guiding Kiara to the chair that he had been sitting on not moments before when he saw her leaning on her left leg. She sat gratefully, and pulled up another chair that seemed to be a new addition to the place. He faced her, crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes.

"I want to know what the hell is going on," he demanded. Kiara blinked.

"Alright sunshine, calm down," she muttered. "Obviously, you are not a morning person."

Rye smirked. "The day I am will be the day that no one is hiding anything from me," he shot back, and Kiara tilted her head sideways.

"Says you," she remarked, and Rye leant back.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked after a few moments, and Kiara shrugged, leaning back herself.

"I have told you everything from being accused of associating with Pandora to her plot in killing the King of Frate. And you have not told me a single thing about yourself."

Rye sighed. "I guess you are right," he murmured. "These things; friendships, do you call them? They are two way streets, I guess. Alright, I will tell you about me."

Kiara smiled. "You do not have to say much if you do not wish to," she added. "But I do want to know something. Including why you seem intent on staying in a place like this when you obviously have the coin to do much better."

Rye chuckled at that and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I guess it started when my parents died," he murmured, leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him. "I... I was not dead then, so I do not remember. But I have heard rumours, whispers, and the King also told me everything."