Lydia sat atop her dark horse, stilled within the frigid and clear starry night, for just a passing moment to idle upon the traveling road. Ahead in the bedarkened distance laid Whiterun village, and all about that, the fine and expansive green flatlands under the domain of Whiterun Hold. The exalted stone city in the distance, well-walled and fortified, glowed with faint fire-lights and looked very welcoming to Lydia's travel wearied soul. But, she found herself inexplicably shifting in her saddle then, and her heart seemed to grow just a little cooler beneath her armoured breast, while she looked out upon her stately home.
Once within the safety of those walls again, Lydia thought sombrely, she would certainly have to play at her own Jarl with vague, contrived words. For her would-be Thane, Lydia mused, and her Thane's last earnest request, she would have to spin a few pointed lies. Lydia's heart had retreated and grown a little distant from this, because she realised that she would do such things willingly and easily for the half-breed woman. And that startled Lydia's upright mind somewhat, because she could not place where such blindly faithful feelings stemmed from within her heart. Nor could she seem to make herself want to understand them, because of a kind of silent protectiveness dwelling deep inside of her…
Swishing his tail readily, Lydia's horse suddenly whickered softly in his deep, gentle horse-voice. And Lydia, while blinking tired, wandering eyes, came out of her thoughts then. The Housecarl smiled knowingly down at her keen-hearted horse, and she patted at his smooth, hard neck. "Yes," she murmured to him grinningly. "I am eager for my own bed as well!"
Straightening herself in the saddle again, Lydia nudged her boots against her horse, and urged him onwards. Unhurriedly clopping their way down the cobbled road, Lydia and her horse finally made their way on home. And though Lydia was, of course, happy to be returning to Whiterun, she could feel that not all her thoughts were truly with her at the moment. For she found that she had left some, and perhaps she always would, with Sumnyot Paitr in The Reach.