Instead of following the main highway out of Mashond, they forded the broad-yet-shallow river and took a smaller road—one still well-travelled, wide and paved. It wasn’t long before they caught up with a caravan—or rather, a cattle herd. Once they passed it, another herd came into view far ahead. If that hadn’t made the main purpose of the road clear, the excessive amount of muck (and the smell that went with it) was hard to miss.

Julie tried not to think about it too much, even as she spent most of her attention on steering her horse around the fresher piles that had yet to be trampled down. With what little focus she had free, she fell back on her guard habits, scanning the surroundings for anything unusual.

However, rather than seeing anything herself, Julie noticed that Sammy seemed to see something in the distance. Many times over the next hour, Sammy looked to the forest to the south for a second or two, sometimes more. Julie thought that Sammy would tell her if it was important, but her curiosity eventually got the better of her and so she asked, “Is something there?”

Sammy hummed a note in reply, the gentle sound cut off by every clack of horseshoes on the paving stones. “There is… a feeling, I suppose. Something there is pulling me, like how the rain is drawn to the sea.”

“Oh,” Julie muttered. “Do we, um, need to worry, or go see it, or….”

“I am afraid I cannot say. It is not quite my feeling, so I do not know what to make of it,” Sammy said, almost talking to herself.

That didn’t exactly make any sense to Julie, but she didn’t say anything.

As Sammy was often distracted, Julie tried to be more vigilant than usual. So the afternoon passed in silence and they ended up at a small village. At least, the part for people was just a few dozen buildings, but vast stretches of land surrounding it were set aside for grazing; the number of cattle easily outnumbered the people, Julie thinking maybe by as much as double.

With most of the visitors being cow herders who were happy to sleep in a barn if it saved them a coin, the accommodation on offer wasn’t what anyone would call accommodating. While the tavern had some rooms, they were more closets for people too drunk to walk home, and it would be rowdy there until late in the night.

That was what Chloé (the barmaid) told Sammy; seeing Sammy’s brow furrow, Julie understood it wasn’t good news.

Speaking Sonlettian, Chloé asked, “You pretties need somewhere to stay, then?”

Sammy simply replied, “We do.”

Chloé’s gaze wandered across the room, mouth pulled to the side. Julie wasn’t sure how old Chloé was, but guessed she wasn’t much older than them, maybe twenty or so. She seemed to be a bit short and thin (hard for Julie to say, Chloé’s outfit puffy), long hair neatly brushed. Julie recognised Chloé’s tanned skin as something seemingly local, the colour a bit different than if she’d simply worked under the sun—a touch of yellow to it, Julie thought.

And while Julie stared, Sammy and Chloé finished their conversation.

Turning to Julie, Sammy said, “Good news: we have somewhere to stay.”

It took Julie a moment to catch up; then, looking back at Chloé, she said, “Um, mursee?”

Chloé let out a brief laugh, tittering with her mouth almost closed. “Vou are welcomeh,” she said in Schtish, finishing with a lopsided smile.

That took Julie by surprise, but she quickly returned a small smile.

Going back to Sonlettian, Chloé said, “I got work ’til sunset, so you go eat and meet me back here.”

Sammy nodded. “Thank you again,” she said.

Chloé waved her off. “Not easy being a horse without a saddle, I know.”

That phrase gave Sammy pause, but she rather liked it—the sound of it (in Sonlettian), the meaning she thought it had. “Is that a local phrase?” she asked.

Chloé narrowed her eyes for a second and then rolled them. “Not really, or, well, it’s from where I’m from. Your accent…” she said, then shook her head. “Never mind.”

Sammy followed the little changes to Chloé’s expression, trying to understand them. After a moment’s thought, she said, “It is quite the pretty phrase. If I may, does it mean… one who has broken free from the role she was raised to fill?”

Chloé let out a snort. “That’s way too clever for a bunch of bumpkins,” she said. “It’s just, like, a wild horse has to fend for itself, yeah? No flat roads, no feed, no water trough.”

“Ah, I see,” Sammy said, nodding along.

A shout from down the bar cut off the conversation there. After a quick goodbye, Chloé glided down to attend to the other patron. Sammy and Julie took that as their cue to leave.

While Chloé hadn’t recommended anywhere to eat, it was easy enough to follow the smells of grilled meat to a butcher’s store. Quite the popular place, Julie guessed some twenty-odd people were outside it, lounging around with food in hand, or queuing up for a turn at the cooking fire. From what Sammy overheard, the butcher sold meat ready to sear—perfect for the herders passing through.

“Oh we must try it,” Sammy said, her giddiness rather evident.

Julie sighed, but gave in nonetheless. Well, she didn’t have any real reason to object, but she felt that this almost communal eating was yet another step down for a princess.

So they queued up, patiently awaited their turn. Once they arrived at the front, Sammy happily tapped her fingers together, gaze darting across the selection. For all the times she’d seen all the finest cuts and presentations of meat, never before had she seen any so raw (excluding certain fish delicacies); such vivid reds, the lingering smell of blood, every sliver of fat eye-catching.

As much as Sammy wished to spend an hour deciding, she was even more eager to watch it cook. (Besides, it wouldn’t do to dally and upset the hungry customers waiting their turn, she knew.) After a last inspection, she chose a fatty piece of steak; Julie chose the same cut, but one with little fat on it.

Walking over to the grill, Julie couldn’t help but smile at Sammy’s giddiness, having never seen someone so eager to eat a cheap piece of meat that had been burned over a fire.

Amidst the chatter and the smells, Sammy’s enthusiasm didn’t wane when they grilled or when they finally had their first bite. “Ah, such a novel taste,” Sammy said.

Even in her lowly position, Julie had tasted better steak before. Then again, most of what they’d eaten on their journey hadn’t measured up to the food served to the garrison, so, really, Julie was surprised that Sammy hadn’t complained yet.

Rather than say that, Julie just nodded and mumbled, “Yeah.”

Leaning over, Sammy nudged Julie’s shoulder with her own. “And the company makes such exquisite seasoning.”

It took Julie a long second to understand, even then only really getting it after she saw the mischievous smile Sammy showed. Ducking her head, she stared down at the steak. It really wasn’t that good—raw in the middle and burnt on the outside, chewy, some awkward strips of sinew—yet she’d swallowed that first bite easily.

Maybe, Julie thought, this was what people meant by a home-cooked meal tasting the best. It wasn’t about how good the food was, but who she ate it with.

Lost in that thinking, she didn’t give much thought to her reply and said, “Yeah.”

Sammy was pleasantly surprised, expecting Julie to push back at least a little on her flirting. However, Sammy realised it wasn’t exactly a victory, Julie’s expression distant. She left Julie to her thoughts while they finished eating.

In the gloom of approaching twilight, the lack of anything interesting to see or do had them wander back to the stables. Julie spent the last of the daylight thoroughly checking their horses, and Sammy watched her, still that little bit jealous.

They then walked back over to the tavern, seeing Chloé waiting there for them as they neared. When she noticed them, she waved, striding their way.

“Good eve-a-ning,” Chloé said in Schtish.

That confused Julie for a moment, the words familiar, yet Chloé’s accent made them sound like Sonlettian. Though it wasn’t the greeting Julie would usually use (a bit formal), she said, “Good evening.”

Sammy chimed in with the same greeting and then seamlessly switched to Sonlettian as she asked, “How did your work go?”

Chloé raised her hand and made a so-so gesture. “I served drinks and looked pretty,” she said.

Sammy let out a couple of giggles, covering her mouth. “So you did.”

A gust of wind rustled past them, seemingly trying to take off Chloé’s coat by how she pulled it tight. “Let’s not dawdle,” she said, turning away.

With how small the village was, it didn’t take long at all to get to the outskirts. There, a small and rickety cottage sat, sandwiched between a barn and the stone fence of a field. No light shone from inside, curtains drawn. Chloé walked up to the door—once upon a time varnished, now fading between black and a woody grey—and shoved it open with a swing of her hips.

“Come on in, then,” Chloé said as she crossed the threshold.

Sammy spared Julie a glance, finding her just as amused by Chloé’s method of opening the door. The evening chilly, Sammy said nothing of it and stepped inside first, letting Julie follow her in before closing the door; although it tried to stick, Sammy had built up enough momentum to shut it with a muffled thud.

“Not just a pretty face, eh?” Chloé said.

Sammy unslung the pack from her shoulder and lowered it to the ground. Then she turned, picking out Chloé’s face amongst the gloom. “While I appreciate the compliment, I am already committed,” she said with a smile.

Chloé tittered, smirking. “Good for you.”

While Chloé went ahead to light a candle, Sammy translated what they’d said for Julie, truthful in her re-telling.

And that left Julie mildly embarrassed. She’d grown used to being called Sammy’s lover in one way or another, but this felt different. Maybe, Julie thought, it was that—in books and rumours—commitments were, well, like engagements. The prince turned down the exotic beauty’s advances because he was committed to his true love.

While Julie muddled herself up, sharp tings rang out with flickers of sparks until the tinder caught. From the flaring flame, Chloé lit a lumpy candle impaled on a brass holder, dripping a few drops of wax on the floor before she held it upright.

That light sputtered at first, but gradually pushed aside the shadows and left behind a dim glow. Drawn out of her thoughts, Julie looked around. Rather than a hallway, the front door very much opened into the lounge. A pair of wooden chairs, a stool (that served as a side table), and a small dining table made up the furniture, each piece handmade, misshaped and uneven. The floor was made of stone, half-covered by a rug that had seen better days, and the wall looked like logs stacked on top of each other, Julie thinking it definitely couldn’t keep out the rain and wind.

“How rustic,” Sammy said in Sonlettian.

Chloé smirked and she gestured for them to take the chairs while she then cleared the metal cup off the stool. “It’s crap, but it’s cheap. Turns out you don’t get paid much for looking pretty and serving drinks around here,” she said, then chuckled at her own joke.

Sammy gave a polite smile in reply before translating for Julie.

Chloé watched that interaction, growing curious. Once it was clear Sammy had finished and Julie didn’t say anything, Chloé gestured at them and said, “You’re pretty close.”

“Why do you say?” Sammy replied, humour touching her lips.

Chloé shrugged. “You know, telling her what we’re talking ’bout when we’re not talking anything interesting.”

Sammy simply looked back at Chloé for a moment, then turned to Julie. “Ah, she thinks we are rather close,” Sammy whispered in Schtish.

Julie was surprised; she’d not expected the conversation to go back to that, but, after thinking for a second, she realised that Chloé didn’t actually know they were lovers.

“What are you gonna tell her?” Julie quietly asked.

“Well, would you be uncomfortable if I told her the truth?” Sammy asked.

Julie tried not to wince, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t even that she didn’t want Sammy to say it, just that she hated having to make the choice, overwhelmed by the rush of anxiety as the possibilities started flooding her. The worst of her fears: she worried what they’d do if Chloé turned them out, already dark, and the nights seemed to get colder than back in Schtat.

Seeing Julie’s expression sour, Sammy reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. That worked very quickly. Julie slowly looked up until her gaze met Sammy’s, and Sammy returned her gaze with a gentle smile.

“D’you think… she’ll mind?” Julie asked.

Sammy tilted her head. “I honestly have no idea,” she said.

A chuckle slipped out before Julie caught it, the blunt response too much for her.

Sammy enjoyed the moment before finishing her thought. “Whatever happens, I shall be here with you.”

Said so simply, yet it really did settle Julie, reassured by that promise.

Seeing that Julie looked better than before, Sammy took that as an answer. She turned back to Chloé with a soft smile and said in Sonlettian, “She is the one I am committed to.”

Chloé’s eyebrows rose, but her mouth then pulled to the side in a smirk as she said, “Good for you.”

“I think so too,” Sammy replied.

Chloé snorted and Sammy translated the last part for Julie. A silence followed, light, the wind whispering, candle crackling, distant and muffled sounds of merrymaking. Eventually, Sammy spoke up again.

“I hope you do not mind my asking, but I noticed your accent doesn’t seem local,” Sammy said in Sonlettian.

Chloé took a moment, scratching her bottom lip with her nail. “Sharp ears ya got,” she murmured, then carried on speaking normally. “Let’s just say me and my parents had different plans for me.”

Sammy nodded. “If I may ask, what plans do you have here?”

Chloé’s mouth twinged with a smile. “Actually, I’m a bit envious. I want a man like a woman. Someone soft, gentle, caring. All that muscle and bravado just… scares me. A writer or a painter, who knows love and beauty, knows when to hold me and when to let me go….”

Sammy listened carefully, heard the melancholy echo. And she gave Chloé a moment of silence to collect herself before meticulously translating it for Julie. It quite reminded Sammy of her own past, days spent reading poetry in all languages for Marian and Rouge (and all the other girls in-between). In her mind, what Chloé had said was very much a love poem—a familiar ode to love for one unloved.

Julie stayed quiet after hearing it. Only once she’d thought it over did she say, “I hope she finds someone.”

Sammy thought the same and put it to words. “We wish you luck,” she said in Sonlettian.

Chloé awkwardly laughed, looking to the side. “Thanks.”

Another thought coming to Sammy, she stood up and strode back to their packs to collect something before returning to the table.

“Please, let us give you this,” Sammy said, offering Chloé a coin.

“No, no,” Chloé said, waving a hand. “No need.”

Sammy let out a note of laughter as she took a step closer, placing it in Chloé’s palm. “It is a novelty from our travels, just enough for a cheap drink at an inn,” she said.

Chloé gave in and checked the coin. “Where’s it from?” she asked.

“Schtat,” Sammy said, sitting back down. “I would like it if you thought of it as… a reason to visit Hopschtat—if things do not go as you wish here.”

Chloé stared at the coin for a long moment before closing her fingers around it with a small smile. “Who knows, maybe I will.”

“I think you would fit in rather well, and there are oh so many jobs for women there, what with the men all working the fields and mines,” Sammy said.

Chloé let out a chuckle at the energetic reply. After a bit of thought, she turned her gaze to the window and the night sky that lay beyond it. “We should sort out the beds.”

“This room is enough for us,” Sammy said. “We have bedrolls and such.”

Chloé looked ready to argue, but eventually let out a long sigh and said, “Well, I’ve got a winter blanket and it’s not too cold yet, so you two borrow that.”

Sammy smiled. “Thank you, that’s most kind.”

Pushing herself up, Chloé rolled her eyes, then she carefully picked up the small dining table, moving it to the side of the room. With a space on the floor cleared out, she went through to the only other room in the cottage and returned shortly after, woollen blanket in hand.

“It’s a bit scratchy, but warm,” she said, leaving it on the table. “Oh and, if you need to go potty, well, we better go now—I doubt Old Ferron wants a stranger borrowing her privy in the dead of night.”

“Of course,” Sammy said.

So the three made a detour to the house across the street, Mrs Ferron very pleased to meet such polite young ladies, and they fetched a pale of water from the well on the way back. They took turns wiping down in the bedroom.

“You don’t wash together?” Chloé asked.

“She’s a bit shy,” Sammy replied.

With nothing left to do, they put out their bedrolls. Julie tried to put hers apart from Sammy’s, to which Sammy said it would be awfully hard to share the blanket, to which Julie insisted Sammy could have the blanket to herself. After a brief discussion, they compromised and Julie moved her bedroll right beside Sammy’s so they could share the blanket.

Thoroughly amused by their antics, Chloé lingered in the doorway to the bedroom to watch that play out. Now that her entertainment was over, she said, “Sleep well, and try to keep it down,” with a knowing look.

Without so much as a flicker of embarrassment, Sammy said, “We shall try.”

Chuckling to herself, Chloé stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Julie waited a couple of seconds before asking, “What did she say?”

“She wished us good dreams and asked us to avoid making too much noise,” Sammy said honestly.

Julie’s face scrunched up. “We’re just sleeping—what noise could we make?”

“I wonder,” Sammy said, smiling.

Julie thought about asking more on it, but—seeing that smile and those mischievous eyes—decided against it.

Left in gentle candlelight, the two of them fell into their usual bedtime routine. Taking turns, they changed into their nightdresses (while the other looked away), and then Sammy blew out the candle and they snuggled into their bedrolls, the blanket strewn over the top like a layer of fresh snow.

Julie had tried not to think about it, but she couldn’t avoid it any longer; lying beside each other, she heard Sammy’s every breath, so very conscious of how close they were. Even when she closed her eyes, it felt like she could still see Sammy in the corner of her vision. And while it wasn’t strictly the first time they’d slept beside each other, well, she’d put pillows between them during that stint at the capital.

Her heart beat in her chest, trying to race along with her thoughts. It wasn’t that she thought Sammy would do anything (maybe a little worried that Sammy may move in her sleep), but that she couldn’t stop herself from thinking silly things.

Even though she knew nothing would happen, they were lovers sharing a bed. It was intimate. She had slept beside other women many times in her training, yet she’d only ever worried if they would snore. Her heart hadn’t trembled at the thought of being touched those nights like it did now as imagined all the places Sammy might touch her, imagining what she would do if Sammy did.

And what made her feel all the more worse was that she knew she couldn’t stop thinking about it because a part of her wanted Sammy to touch her. They had done nothing more than hold hands the last week or so, and she was so keenly aware of what things they hadn’t done.

“Lia?”

A single word whispered and Julie’s stirring thoughts fell into silence, as if caught by a spell. “Yeah?” she mumbled back.

“Goodnight.”

That single word brought a smile to Julie’s lips, familiar. “Goodnight, Sammy,” she whispered.

Just like that, her anxiety went forgotten and only a sense of peace remained. Just like every other night, Julie felt the pull of sleep, falling into routine.

At Julie’s side, Sammy watched with her head turned. She had seen the tension in Julie’s face and then saw it melt away, and now she waited for Julie to show a most precious expression, one she could only see when Julie dreamed. Sammy didn’t have to wait long before the last of the tension left Julie, head lolling ever so slightly.

In the darkness, Sammy couldn’t make much out of the sight, but she had already seen Julie’s sleeping face so many times that her mind easily brushed aside the night’s veil. Such a beautiful face, one that filled Sammy’s heart with warmth, that made her fingertips itch to caress, her lips ache to kiss.

If it had been a week ago, perhaps Sammy would have indulged with a touch. However, now knowing what she had to lose, restraint came easily to her. Love was not a game but a war and she knew which battles to pick.

So she simply watched, smiling softly, and whispered, “Sleep well, my love.”