Silver, oblivious to the world, had not noticed when Rowan had entered to see the horses. Nor had he noticed her, tucked away behind the equine pair. Shortly after he had left to go looking for her elsewhere, she had finally cried herself to sleep there in the warmth and comfort of the stable. The stable itself was not particularly comfortable, of course, and neither was the pile of hay she had been lying upon. But the simple act of being close to Steel had been enough to allow her exhaustion – emotional, mental and physical – to take her into the depths of unconsciousness once the tears had run out.
From the fading of the light, she surmised that it had only been a few hours. It was enough. Time to go back inside then, to face Rowan and find a way to pass off her absence and feelings without lying about them.
Propping herself up on her elbow, she rolled to the side... and promptly threw up. A puddle of milky grey with green flecks and, of course, the obligatory carrots, because one cannot simply vomit without the presence of carrots, even if none had been eaten recently.
Her stomach roiled. Her head swam. Nothing stayed still!
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
She opened her mouth to call out, but quickly closed it again.
Why alert him? Asked the inner-Silver dismissively. He'll only use it as a further excuse to treat you like a child. You were useless enough before when you were just a cripple. But a sick one, too? Oh, he'll have a field day with that!
“Shut up,” she growled, crawling around the dusty floor in search of her cane.
You know I'm right, Rajana.
Silver shook her head. That, as it turned out, was a bad idea. On hands and knees, the floor nevertheless pitched and rolled underneath. Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes and waited for the dizziness and nausea to pass.
“I need help,” she muttered to herself.
I'm right here.
But from where? She wondered, purposely ignoring the comment from inside her head. From who? Elias was sick. Besides, the last time she'd gone to see him, he'd tried to give her stomach remedies for her aching leg! What were the chances he'd be any help now? He'd likely accidentally poison her instead.
Poison. Was that what was wrong with her? It would make sense, wouldn't it? The original fracture had never felt like this. There had never been any sickness when one mask had been exchanged for another. But who knew about poison?
Ah!
The bigger question was how? Everything she had eaten and drank of late had been prepared by her own hand. Of course, she knew more than anyone how terrible she was in the kitchen. Food poisoning? Could that make her feel this way? Dernwynn would know.
Retrieval of the cane achieved, Silver crawled carefully back toward the saddlebags. Sitting back heavily, her back against the wall, she paused to wait for another wave of nausea to pass. Once settled, or relatively so, she dug around in the bag for her ledger and some charcoal.
She ripped a page from the back of the book and lay the ledger aside. It was only when she laid the paper against her leg and applied the writing implement to it that she realised how badly her hands shook. Not good. Not good at all.
Hey, if you die, does that mean I get my body back?
“It's not just yours,” she muttered. “And no. If I die, we all die.”
It took time to make the short note legible. She knew he didn't read well. She knew that she needed to keep it to a minimum. But her hand trembled abominably, causing her usually elegant, cursive script to look shaky. It would have to do.
She tried to stand. Not a good idea. The world turned around her and she flumped back down to the floor, the cane rolling out of her grasp once more. So, instead, she crawled. Pushing open the stable door, she made her slow and quadrupedal way outside, the aperture left hanging open behind her. It wasn't far to the house. Ten feet or so. She could make it that far on her hands and knees. She would make it. She had to.
Halfway there, she stopped to vomit again.
The mud was horribly cold against her hands, but she didn't care right now. She had something to do. A goal. It had to be seen through. Forward, forward, here are the stairs. Up. Up a little more. The porch. The mat. The door. The folded parchment with his name upon the front was slipped underneath it. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to be enough.
I could have had this done in half the time, the inner-Silver observed. You're sweet, Rajana. No one could argue that. But you're also weak.
She paused, gulping down some of the cold evening air in order to steady herself, then, weakly, she whistled. As always, Steel came when called. From the porch, she tried to pull herself over onto his back.
It was then that the door swung open behind her.
