Lucina liked to believe that growing up at the end of the world had sharpened her instincts. A shadow out of place in the corner of her eye, a rustle breaking the wind's even rhythm, alone they might have been invisible, but together they strummed the chords of a voice in her head that screamed she was in danger.
She had no idea how she could tell–it was unhelpful like that–but after years of learning to trust that voice, she knew, without a doubt, that someone's eyes were glued to the back of her head.
Slowly, Lucina scanned over the others, but no one seemed like they were watching her. Anna and her four daughters were laid out around the dying campfire, fast asleep, and Gregor was standing on the other side, his back facing her as he watched the road. A horse stood by the wagon, tied to a pole in the ground, but Lucina could tell by its soft snoring that it was asleep. For now, she was forgotten by the same people who were supposed to keep her prisoner, which meant that there was someone else here.
Lucina briefly considered telling Uncle Gregor. As an older and more experienced fighter, he might have been able to deal with her observer. If she got his attention, though, she ran the risk of him finding out that she was trying to escape.
Uncle Gregor was no Royal Guardsman, but in her time he had been one of the most skilled warriors she knew of. She didn't want him to notice that her bindings were more loose than at the beginning of the day, or he might tighten them again and undo several hours of hard work. No, if she wanted to get out of here, she was going to have to do it by herself. Something that was becoming a pattern lately.
For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, Lucina attempted to slide her thumb between the tightly woven tangle of knots. Her spirits rose as her finger wiggled its way through, but when she tried pulling at it, the rope only clamped down on her wrists. She pulled at another cord to reset it, but it did little to settle her growing impatience.
This night had yielded nothing but hours of frustration so far. She would not give up was what she kept telling herself, but the temptation to do so was growing on her.
No, she thought, shaking her head. I'm so close to getting out of these bonds. The only thing standing between me and my freedom is a sloppily done knot. I will not let such a trivial thing hold me back.
Again, Lucina looked around for the pair of unseen eyes watching from the shadows, but not a leaf was out of place. Whoever they were, they hid themselves well. She would have to keep her ear open if they ever decided to approach her.
Her eye swept over the campsite again, to see if anyone was coming to check on her. No one did, though. Uncle Gregor was still keeping watch. Anna and her three daughters were still fast asleep.
She turned back to the rope around her hands, then stopped. Wait. Three?
Lucina checked again. No, she hadn't miscounted. There were only three girls laid down by the fireside. Which meant the fourth–
"Miss Marth?"
Lucina bit back a groan. Deep breaths. She needed to stay calm. If she raised her voice, she would bring more attention to herself.
"What do you want?" she asked, leveling a frustrated glare at the girl standing at the foot of the wagon instead.
"Why are you still awake?" the girl replied, and her head came to a tilt.
"Because I can. Go back to sleep."
"Can't."
The urge to get angry was there, but Lucina wisely pushed it back down. "Why not?"
"You're too loud?"
She was? Lucina glanced down at the wagon. She shifted her weight, and the wagon replied with a low creak.
"Oh," she said softly. Looking back at the girl, she added, "I'll try to be quieter."
"Can't you go to sleep? Mother says it's important to get lots of sleep."
"I–I'll try."
Pleased, the girl nodded back. "Okay," she said, and without another word, she walked away.
Lucina watched her return to the rest of her family, and as the girl slipped back beneath the large blanket draped over the rest of her sisters, Lucina was hit with a nostalgic pang. When she was very little, her brother often suffered from nightmares, so she always slept with him to keep him safe. It was ridiculous now, but it didn't stop Lucina from missing having him at her side.
I wonder how he's doing now. I hope he'll be okay with me there to protect him.
Shaking the distracting thought from her head Lucina fixed her gaze on the sleeping family. She said she would try to sleep. She had never said when, and as soon as the girl stopped tossing around, and her breathing steadied into a slow tempo, Lucina resumed her efforts to free herself. This time, she took care to move less, and to avoid disturbing the cart as much as she could.
Her thumb slipped through another gap, and this time when Lucina pulled, the knot untangled itself, leaving the rope to fall uselessly to the floor.
A grin lit up Lucina's face. Finally, she was free. After a week in the dungeons, and after a day tied up in the back of a wagon, she'd had enough of being a prisoner. She was going to take this chance for freedom and–
"Miss Marth?"
This time, Lucina jumped with a startled yelp. Her head snapped to the girl standing at the end of the wagon, and in an instant, she was on guard. How much had she seen? Was she going to have to run?
"What do you want now?" Lucina hissed.
The girl only looked confused at that. "What are you doing?"
"None of your business. Can't you go back to sleep?"
"I need to pee."
Sighing, Lucina nodded over to the bushes. "Alright, go on then. I won't watch."
"But why are you still awake?"
"Can't sleep. I thought I already told you."
"No you didn't."
Lucina certainly had, but she could already see that this would be going nowhere, so instead of arguing, she shrugged. "Please do your business and go back to sleep."
"Okay." The girl disappeared. Lucina waited a few seconds for her to return, but instead of going back to her family, the girl walked back to the wagon.
"What?" Lucina asked.
"Are you escaping?"
A cold jolt shot up Lucina's back. Nervously, she glanced down at her arms, still hidden from sight behind the wares piled up in the wagon. She couldn't have seen Lucina untie herself, could she? What had given her away?
No, she couldn't panic, not when she was so close. Deep breaths, Lucina. Think this through.
"Escape? No, of course not. I can't get anywhere, tied up like this," she said, and she lifted her legs to show that they were still bound. "What would give you that idea?"
The girl gave her a good, long look, before she replied, "I don't know. I just wanted to ask."
This time, Lucina's eye remained fixed on the girl, following her back to her bed and watching as she tucked herself back in. After a few minutes, Lucina shifted in the wagon, letting it creak under her weight, watching for a reaction. She received none. Lucina did it again, and again, the girl didn't stir.
She had to be asleep now. Hopefully, that would mean Lucina would have no more interruptions. Not until she was out of here, at least.
Slowly, as to not disturb the wagon again, Lucina bent over to grab the ropes around her legs. Now that she could fully see what she was doing, the task of freeing herself was a lot less tedious. This end of the rope went under here, that end went over there, and in no time at all, her bonds were undone.
"Miss Marth?"
Lucina twisted away, shoving her legs behind a sack before her head snapped to the voice. For the third time, she found herself looking down at the girl from the edge of the wagon. The girl's face betrayed nothing, blinking innocently like nothing was out of place.
Her again? Lucina thought. I could have sworn she was asleep!
"What is it this time?" she snapped.
The girl shrunk away. "I just wanted to ask what you were doing," she muttered, kicking the floor.
"I thought I told you already. Go back to sleep."
"I don't remember."
"You don't–" Lucina cut herself off with a sigh. "How could you forget?"
"I don't know."
Lucina watched her face for any indication it was some kind of odd bluff, but the girl truly believed they had never spoken before.
Was this girl from the same family of backstabbing, selfish merchants she had known in her time? Maybe it was simply the innocence of childhood–she herself was a fry cry from the careless little girl she had been years ago–but seeing her here and knowing the woman she could grow up to become still disturbed her greatly.
"Why are you still awake, then?" she asked, steering the conversation in a better direction.
"I had a nightmare."
Lucina frowned. "Well, couldn't you go to your mo–" Wait, she couldn't say that. If the girl woke up her mother, Lucina would have to wait until she fell asleep to make her move again. What could she say instead?
Craning her head over to lean toward the girl, she said softly, "What... what was it about?"
"Huh?"
"Your..." Lucina made a twirling motion with her hand. "Your nightmare."
"Wyverns."
"Wyverns?"
"Mhm," the girl replied, nodding. "They were gonna eat me. I don't wanna go back to sleep."
And that was a problem, wasn't it? Humming, Lucina closed her eyes, thinking long and hard about how she could get her to go back to sleep. What could she do? What had she done before?
"I can help. Come up here with me," she said after a moment of thought. When the girl hesitated, she added, "Don't worry. I can't hurt you if I'm tied up like this."
The wagon creaked as the girl hoisted herself up onto it. Lucina nodded toward the sack next to her, and the girl obediently plopped herself down against it.
Lucina whispered, "Don't worry, now. I'll keep watch over you and make sure nothing comes to eat you in the middle of the night, okay?"
"Okay," the girl muttered.
Lucina kept her eye on her, and she waited. And waited. She waited until the girl's breathing steadied, and she drifted back into sleep. Lucina cleared her throat softly, and when the girl didn't wake up again, Lucina let out a breath of relief.
Now, surely everyone was asleep. She would no longer have to deal with any interruptions, aside from Gregor if he ever decided to abandon his watch, and that frustratingly persistent pair of eyes still trained on her like a cat waiting by a hole in the wall.
That wouldn't do. If she was headed into the dark woods, she needed something to protect herself. Careful not to disturb the sleeping girl, Lucina reached over into Anna's wares. Anna sold all kinds of things, from strange medicine to literature imported from far-off lands, but right now, it was the weapons she sold that Lucina was most interested in. A metal gleam caught her eye, but when Lucina reached over to take it, she was disappointed to find herself staring at her own reflection in a shiny helmet. Trying again only yielded a plate of silver and an ornately decorated teapot. Reaching over for a fourth time, Lucina finally grasped something that felt like a handle, but before she could pull it out, a voice shattered the silence.
"Oi! Was Marth not tied up before?"
Lucina glanced over her shoulder. Uncle Gregor stared back. He had seen her. She had seen him seeing her. And he saw that she saw him seeing her, which meant that this was all a bust.
So Lucina did the only thing she could do. She bolted.
Behind her, she could hear Uncle Gregor curse, waking Anna back up again and raising a ruckus. Something metal clattered to the ground, chaos overtaking the silent night, but Lucina would never know how it would all turn out because she was not looking back.
She moved with the grace of someone experienced in weaving through the wilderness, ducking under branches and slipping through the trees, all pretenses of stealth abandoned. There was nothing to be done about it now, nothing else she could to do prepare herself for whatever was waiting for her out there. She just hoped that this... soup ladle... would be enough for her to defend herself with.
Wincing, Lucina glanced back down at the big spoon she had grabbed from Anna's merchandise and cursed her misfortune. Of all the things, why was this the thing she'd been left to wield?
As she dodged another low-hanging branch, Lucina thought, Gods, I hope I won't have to fight Uncle Gregor like this.
Thankfully, the next town over was only a few hour's walk from there. The sun had only just begun to peer over the horizon as the town walls finally came into view. A good thing too–Lucina hadn't slept all night, and she was just about ready to collapse.
Thankfully, she had arrived early enough that the guards on the night shift were still waiting for their replacements. She could see from the way their heads drooped that they were fighting off sleep.
A voice caught her attention from the road, and she glanced over to see a small family huddled together, approaching the gates ahead. Without a word, she pulled her scarf over her head to conceal her face, and slipped in line behind them. As she predicted, the guards barely paid attention to them, nodding them inside without bothering to check if anyone stood out.
And just like that, she was in.
"So... this is what towns looked like," she muttered, taking a good long look at everything around her.
It wasn't too different from the towns she had seen in her time. The buildings lining the streets were made of the same stone brick and wood material she and her friends had come across on their travels. Everything looked similar, it was just... livelier here. Children played in the roads, their laughter filling the air as their parents watched from the doorways of their homes. Up ahead, a pair of soldiers strolled toward her. Lucina froze as they passed her by, but they seemed too busy chatting with each other to notice her.
In her time, all this lively bustling about was nonexistent. People stayed locked up in their homes, too afraid of what the outside world would bring to risk wandering out into the streets, and the few that had to leave their homes scurried from house to house like insects afraid of the sun. It was nice seeing people be able to live their lives for once. What did they talk about? What did they do with their lives? Surely, now that they did not have to fear the Risen, there must have been so much for them to do with all this peace.
It won't stay peaceful if you aren't able to stop what's coming, a small voice reminded her, and as much as she didn't want to admit it, it was right. Just because she had years to wait until everything would finally go into motion didn't mean she could afford to lose sight of her mission. She needed to work hard to keep this timeline on the right track, and she had to prepare herself to stop the horrible things that would lead up to her father's death.
The only question was, how?
If only my friends were here, Lucina thought, sitting down by the side of the road. Maybe they could have helped me sort out this whole mess. With all this messing with time, how can I figure out what things I need to change without throwing everything wildly off track? With a groan, Lucina let her head fall back against the wall. I need some kind of plan.
"And what does this young woman look like, ma'am?"
"From the last time we saw her, her hair was blue, as well as most of her clothes. Her eyes, too."
"Really? That is quite the dedication."
"So I've seen."
"Do you have anything else for us to go off?"
Taking in a sharp breath, Lucina stiffened. Her eye flicked to her left, to the door just beside her. Through it, she could hear muffled voices, as well as the sound of approaching footsteps. She cursed and shot to her feet, throwing herself into a nearby alley as the door creaked open and a soldier and a Pegasus Knight walked out.
They were talking about her. That much, she could figure out. It seemed word traveled fast, and soon, the guards would be scouring the city looking for her.
I suppose that should be the first thing I do, she said to herself as soon as they walked away. She reached up to run a hand over her blue hair, and she frowned, thinking about how she stood out like a flower in a desert. At first, she considered cutting it, but she shot that idea down hastily. What would she even cut it with? The soup ladle strapped to her belt?
Simply hiding it would have to do. At least there, she had some idea of what to do.
After waving down a passing farmer and asking for directions to the town's marketplace, Lucina found herself following the crowd toward an open square in the middle of town. Stalls and pitched tents made up the layout of the place, only leaving the narrowest of spaces for customers to walk through.
Lucina thought she had seen a marketplace before, back in Robin's hometown. She couldn't have been more wrong. Here, the stores were loud, and the people were louder. Signs splashed with bright, eye-catching colors pulled at her attention everywhere they could, and all the merchants waving their wares in the air and yelling at people to come take a look rattled her already weary head. Her body was telling her to leave, to find somewhere more peaceful to take a rest, but Lucina pushed it out of her head.
You have to focus, Lucina. Find what you need, and then you can leave. A cloak, or some kind of large fabric I can turn into a cloak is all I need.
Pressing on through the extra noise and squeezing her way between people out to shop and excited merchants showing off their wares, Lucina was able to find a stall selling cloaks easily enough. The dull brown cloth they were made out of seemed awfully plain to Lucina, but then again, the whole purpose of this wasn't to find a cloak that she liked, it was to find something that didn't stand out, and she supposed that these garments did it well enough.
The problem was, when she asked for the price, the shopkeeper revealed to her that it would cost her twenty gold. Much too expensive for her, especially considering she had no gold on her in the first place, and much too expensive for her to trade off anything on her, so with a sigh, she decided to leave the cloak behind to search for an alternative.
You should have taken some gold when you escaped from Anna's wagon. She wronged you first, so no one would judge you for returning the favor, a voice at the back of her head told her, but like all the times before, she ignored it.
Thankfully, finding the fabric store was much less of a struggle, since it wasn't too far from the cloaks stall. Like the rest of the merchants, the fabric merchant greeted her with a friendly smile. Lucina returned it with a half-hearted mumble, already sifting through the various fabrics laid out on the table. This, she was confident she could do, since she'd already done it before in Robin's village.
"How much for this one?" she said, and she held up a pretty green one with pink stripes.
"Fifteen gold." Upon hearing the merchant's price, Lucina's heart sank. Fifteen gold was, again, rather expensive. The last time she had purchased cloth, she had gotten a good deal more for less, and she told the merchant so, but the merchant didn't seem fazed at all.
"Well, you won't find fabric of this quality anywhere else, miss," the man behind the table replied. "If you don't have enough gold on you right now, I can save it for you to buy later today."
"No thank you. It's alright."
Well, there went that idea, too. Glaring down at the fabric in her hands with a huff, Lucina considered her options. She couldn't buy a cloak because those were too expensive. Fabric was out of her price range as well, though much less so. The trouble was, she couldn't think of any other way to hide herself. She needed this, or she needed a cloak, and right now, this was the cheapest option, so maybe if she stuck with it, she could find a way around it.
"Will you take a soup ladle for it?" Lucina felt a little silly, even suggesting such a ridiculous trade, and when the merchant shook his head, it only made her feel even more embarrassed.
"For that tiny piece of junk? Sorry miss, I'm afraid you'll have to offer something more than that."
"Oh." Her eyes fell to the floor. Her brow creased in frustration, but she would not give up yet. Surely she was forgetting something. Surely there was another way to tackle this problem that she was missing–
A red blur passed in front of her before she could finish that thought. Lucina looked up, and she froze. Running down the road was one of Anna's daughters, her head frantically scanning through the crowds.
She was so busy trying to figure out how she was going to hide, she had completely forgotten that Anna had also been headed to this town, and with her daughter here, the woman would not be far behind, on the hunt for her runaway prisoner.
Lucina took a step back. She pulled the sheet of fabric over her head and wrapped it around her face until she was sure she was hidden from view. It wasn't much, she knew. Lucina didn't have time to properly hide herself, but right now, she didn't have time to make things perfect.
Further down the road, she could hear a commotion. She heard the clanging of armor, like those worn by the town's militia. Were they looking for her as well? Thinking back, the guards would also probably offer a reward to Anna if she ratted her out, and it seemed as if Anna had done just that.
Lucina turned her back and prayed that it would make her less recognizable. As long as the guards didn't spot her or ask her to turn around, she would be alright.
The guard's footsteps closed in. Lucina grimaced, clutching the fabric closer to her body. She heard the guards come in, but to her surprise, they ran past her in the opposite direction.
Curious, she craned her head over her shoulder, and peeked out into the street. She spotted Anna just a little further down, but instead of helping her, Lucina watched as the guards grabbed hold of her arms and dragged the woman away.
Lucina blinked. She frowned, confused. This didn't make any sense. Why were they taking Anna away instead of her? Though she was a distance away, if she focused hard enough, she could faintly catch what it was they were saying.
"Sorry, ma'am, rules are rules. All merchants from outside the city must wait until noon to enter the marketplace," the guard said.
Anna wouldn't care, though. Lucina knew from experience that if there was money to be made, that woman would step over however many rules she wanted to get it. Of course, this had to be about money.
Which was why when the woman spoke, it caught Lucina completely off guard.
"Please, you have to let me through! My daughter is missing! I need to find her!"
Well, it's not Sunday, but it's close enough. I've been trying to figure out a work schedule for myself, chipping away at bigger projects like this so I can make time for the smaller ones. It's worked so far, but whether I'll be able to keep it up is another matter, especially with all the things I have to do to prepare for college applications and all that jazz. One of the joys of being me, I suppose.
Anyway, if I do manage to stick to it, hopefully I'll be able to get another chapter out by two weeks. Until then, I wish you all well, and stay safe!
