"Here is enough, dear, thank you so much. May Elimine bless your day, your grandpa must be really proud of having such a nice young lady like..."

Lyndis just smiled, her hands grasped by the old maid who kept on going and going for quite a few breaths. It was a really sweet old lady but she wielded words like a clueless swordsman, waving them around with the hope of one of them finally bringing their opponent down.

The woman meant well, or so she believed, but it was overwhelming for someone so unused to the needs and pacing of the elderly.

Her gray hair finally got lost in a jumble of clean sheets and clothes, and Lyndis was quick to rush to the end of the hallway and escape. She didn't want to be rude, so she didn't run, but her legs had the quickness and certainty of an experienced fencer closing on the distance to her opponent.

She managed to turn the corner and stopped, glancing to every side.

Was she... alone?

A wider smile started to creep on her lips, before it finally fully bloomed after a second check.

Alone!

Inadvertently a spring grew in her step, and she started to hum an old tune, lyrics lost to her memory, but a rhythm still clear as day in her mind.

Even if it was a few breaths, even if after the next corner another servant, one of her friends or a soldier was waiting for her, she enjoyed that fleeting moment of freedom.

She missed it... She loved her new life, her everything that made the current her, but...

She just missed it.

The planes, the calmness of solitude, the wind whistling in the infinite emerald sea of Sacae...

It seemed like an eternity ago... but only two springs have passed...

She stopped.

Only two? It felt...

And then she experienced it again, rocking her body from head to toes, shaking her chest to her core. At some point, her eyes have diverted to a window facing east, in a vain hope of seeing... THEM.

But only the mountains were visible on the far horizon, the plains way further even than that.

Even their wind couldn't reach her all the way in Caelin, stopped in its tracks to her by those impenetrable and tall walls of stone.

Yet... she could feel it? A tingling in her feet made her want to start going east, to see them again and...

The echoing sound of mail and plate through the stone halls reached her ears; Lyn's hand reached to her belt instantly, to her sword...

A cold, desperate, fear overwhelmed her.

It wasn't there! Her sword! When did she...

It took her two quick breaths to remember where she was, who she was now. Her sword was hung on the wall, in her room, by the chimney.

She was home... A new home.

After another two slower breaths her heart was at peace again...

Lyndis put her clothes in order and started walking.

She met the two soldiers carrying her grandpa's colors on their clothes. They saluted her, and she answered with the appropriate head nod of her station; their paths diverted again, the jingle of mail quickly going down the halls.

Lyndis stopped in her steps the moment that clinking of metal was lost to her ears; she glanced to all sides...

She was alone... A spring bloomed in her step, her humming voice echoing on the halls in a tune lost to time...