The air was painfully cold as it stormed into her lungs. Each breath was reminiscent to when she was taught how to sew by her nanny as a young child, the needle prickles like the tip of icicles from the North, small in size but carrying enough agility in the wound to send pain spreading like a spiderweb over her nerves. That was how her chest felt now as exhaustion and the winter like air combined. Her feet hit the cobblestone pathway heavily as her adrenaline slowly began to wear out. She was unsure exactly how everything had just happened. Talk with her maids about how she was nervous about her new role as a princess, not just a lady. What that role entailed. The requirement of having heirs to ensure that she would not be traded out for a new, younger woman who would bear him children and continue the blood line. But would he actually do that to her? Did he not love her? Somehow, in between having these thoughts and realizing how much she feared losing him to another woman, Eleanor had found herself outside of the palace and sprinting through the streets.

Now, however, she was faced with another not-so-minor problem; where had these streets led her? To add to the sudden and inexplicable crisis, Eleanor was not a native resident of the city, meaning that she did not even know the basic layout of the buildings. Even the rough location of the castle being unknown to her. When she was unable to push her body forward anymore for cold and lack of energy, the first thing which registered clearly was the glowing light of a tavern at her left side. The smell of meager vegetable and rabbit foot stew was wafting out of the lopsided window frame and out into the slowly thinning crowd of residents returning home, most likely to their own dinners, with their own families, and not having to worry about hunger like Eleanor was beginning to realize she would have to.

When was the last time she ate? For breakfast she had managed to keep down a small amount of freshly baked bread and some ripe, purple grapes, but lunch was another story. Nothing had caught her appetite and she left the table without so much as a tiny morsel passing her lips. It was now dinner, so that meant she was basically empty stomached, and the pain of lack of food was starting to gnaw against her insides. But that was not the worst issue of her predicament. To eat food, you had to buy it, and to buy it, you had to have money. Her own purse was laying neatly on the bedside table dresser in her overly lavish room within the royal residence. Coinless, hopeless, and overall joyless, Eleanor was turning away from the pub when the racket of two drunker men drew her eyes back towards the doorway. They were rowdy and almost surely out of wits for the evening, and had to balance against one another by placing their hands on the other's shoulder to prevent stumbling over. They reminded her of her father when he had too much wine with his supper. This made dread claw at her heart when she picked up on their eyes roaming over her body.

"Well now, what would a cute little filly such as yourself be," one of them started to saying, interrupting himself by engaging in a very rude, very loud belch before continuing with, "doing out here at this time of night?" No one had talked to her in a such a way since her journey from her homeland and, quite frankly, the words make her feel very uncomfortable. Someone speaking to her like that even only a few weeks ago and Eleanor would have laughed them off, but he had taught her what it really meant to be a lady, that woman were precious to society and should be treated as such. With the little dignity she had left after fleeing through the extensive mass of the city, the brown headed girl straightened her posture and looked him dead in the eye, saying in a low, ominous tone, "I am a lady, sir. You will address me as such lest I report you to the Lannisters."

So far, one of them had maintained a tight hold on his tongue, but all of a sudden the fool began to laugh at her. "You? A lady? Pah! Look at you! You are nothing more than a brothel wench who has run away from her masters and is in need of a good lesson for behaving so disobediently. Just by glancing at your clothing would I be able to tell that you are little more than the dirt which I walk on." To put emphasis on his words, the one who had just insulted her gestured to her dress with the almost empty pint in his hands, sacrificing a quarter of the remaining liquid to the ground in order to get her to look at her skirts. They were filthy. Parts of the once bright blue fabric had been torn on wagon spokes and others on lose bricks as she rounded the corners of shops on the main road.

A look of shock much have passed over her face as she took in the sight of her clothing. It made her look so vulnerable. In truth, that was exactly what she was, but on the inside she had not felt that way until now. As the laughter of the two men merged and seemed to turn into something from a type of horror filled play that one might see in the castle courtyard, Eleanor did the only thing she could comprehend as the wisest choice; she ran from them both. Fear of what they might do to her if she lingered was enough to ignite the dwindling spark of adrenaline in her once more and she picked up speed when the started to throw further offensive remarks her way. "Careful you don't trip over, girly. I like it when they're on their knees for me!"

The whole world seemed to preoccupied with sex, and she knew so little. He had engaged in it more often than not, from what she had heard, and even the two men back there had shown their predatory, carnal side, and it was not even the worst that they could have done. Much like her father, if they had the ability to, she was sure they might have raped her. All knowledge she had of the physical pleasure two people may experience was the darker, less willing angles. How was she supposed to please him the way his whores did when she had never been touched in a way that was nice for her? The things he had joked about, strange positions with names and weird things with your tongue, they were like trying to teach her about a book that was written in Dothraki.

There was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightening which drew her from her thoughts only seconds before the rain started to poor down. It was so heavy that soon the pathway had become slippery underneath her feet and she skidded over a worn stretch of dirt, falling backwards and landing on her posterior and elbows. She cried out in pain as her elbows started to bleed and tears started to sting her eyes as she quickly rolled herself onto her side and she pushed back onto her feet. There was no more running. There was no way she could continue in that weather. That and she could hardly breath as her tears became sobs, yet this was not from any physical pain. The way her father dug his nails into her skins and torn at the soft, pale covering of her body to draw blood was rather like the graze on her elbow, and so she was used to it. It was the psychological abuse she was submitting herself to.

A slender, crate filled alley which was being kept partially dry was where she managed to half drag herself into, using the wall of the structure forming the crack to ensure that she did not tumble downwards again. More thunder rumbled from the sky and for the first time since the rain started, Eleanor was glad of the noise and the wet. Sliding down to have her knees pulled up to her chest, out of the wind for the most part in her little hiding hole, the thought of how she could cry without interruption was something which ran through her mind. No one could see her rocking back and forth on the spot, her head hitting the hard surface of the closed shop behind her and starting to hurt, the tears pouring over her usually cheerful and smiling face. No one could see her for how she really was. A scared, frightened girl, who had no idea how to get through her life without failing.