She leans back on the bales of hay, letting the spring sunshine soak into her winter cold flesh, her eyes shut against the brightness. In that self made darkness she listens and smells the world around her so much more deeply; the laughter and jostling shouts from the crowds, the freshly baking bread and roasting meat, the scent of the flowers hung in bows and garlands all over the village, even the distant music from the dancing outside the other tavern in the village from the one she was lying outside of now. So rare that Meredith got to have a moment like this, one without constant thought or action, one of pure enviroment and just merging with it, listening to the joy of the festival and of the season.
She shifted in the sunlight that flickered through her eyelids and opened them a crack, her right hand drifting gently towards the pommel of her dagger, as she looked up. Looked up to see a young man, several years her junior and hovering. Not clever enough to know where his shadow was at the very least. So inexperienced. With a sigh she sat up, keeping her face away from him, relying instead on the motion in her peripheral vision should he move. She asked him what he wanted, why he had approached her and, full of courage taken from the tap, he told her. She laughed, still not turning to him, knowing that he had watched her legs, her hips and the blonde hair that spilled from her hood and had not faced her. She asked him if it was a wager, whether he had been sent to offer his bed to her by his jeering friends and he told her no, that he had come because he had seen her in the bar of the tavern and had admired her.
She smiled, inside the hood. She told him to come back that night, that she would see him her by the bales and then they would see where the night would take them. Were he brave enough. And she stepped away into the fair, to lose herself in the crowds, as he stuttered his assertions that he would see her there.
---
She had learned some time ago that to work for the Duke of Ghieste was a dangerous thing to do; that while he paid well he expected much and the work was often bloody - a man had to carve a reputation some way it was true and both she and the Duke knew where they stood. But it meant other people sometimes wanted to take their issues out on her. She coped with it though, sometimes even enjoyed it. So it was to a vantage point in a barn opposite the bales she had come, long before dark had descended on the village and all the pretty paper lanterns strung between the trees had been lit by the mayor and his young daughter. The sounds of music echoed up and down the streets now as the beer drunken throughout the day fuelled frantic jigs and reels that caused feet to tap and heads to spin.
She watched him arrive, sit down and then start to fidget. He was pleasingly nervous and quite pretty and she did like them pretty. And there was no one else lurking in the shadows behind him. That was always a good start. From the rooftop she dropped down the side of the building, walking around to the front of it whistling as she grinned at him from beneath the hood, still drawn over so her face was still in shadow, trying not to show him the ugly scar until it was too late for him to change his mind. As he looked at her she took his hand and, without a word, took him to her room in the tavern she was to stop in. When, at last, he saw it's vicious puckered pain across her face he did not care anymore; there was more to her beauty than a flawless face.
Eventually they slept in each others arms as the music outside began to slow and grow quiet at last.
---
It was as the morning sunshine pushed through the grime of unwashed windows that the young lad, whose name she had not even known was Branden, stirred. He rolled over to wrap his arm around the woman he had spent the night with and it met empty air, surprising enough to make his open his eyes. As the light dazzled him he realised his hand had touched something wet and now felt slick. Once his sight had recovered he could see why it felt so thick a fluid, his hand caked in deep dark blood. His scream strangled in his throat as he realised that her side of the bed was heavy with it and that her clothes were still strewn across the room, intermingled with hers. As he stood up he could see the signs of a struggle, spilled tankard and her weapons on the floor instead of hanging up where she had left them. As he rounded the bed he found his voice again and, seeing what was left on the floor, he screamed, with all his breath.
