Some time within the last interval the cold had begun to set in. It was a wonder it hadn't already, considering she'd had to go most of the way on foot. Finding a carriage driver that didn't throw her out or turn his nose up at the prospect of going to the far north had proven far too difficult to be worth it. As a result, the majority of her possessions were now being held indefinitely in the hands of the smuggler who had gotten her into the country. From what she'd seen that far, it was looking as though that precautionary measure had been entirely unnecessary. A waste of money or not, it was a place she could keep the things that weren't coming with her on the road. That left Lexine, her equipment, the courier bag, and an inconsistent supply of victuals carried therein. It wasn't her first time footing it through a land totally unknown to her, she'd managed to survive, but Gris was a place for adventurers and she no longer fit into that category. The people were rough, the buildings were rough, the food was rough. She described Gris to herself as rough only to avoid using the word cold. Ice had seeped into every fragile joint of hers, what felt like jagged frost impinged on every movement. For a while it was the same as any other winter, but as the towns grew more sparse, same for the stitching of each consecutive blanket, her ability to cope was simply not great enough. Misery was the word she applied to her predicament. 

As security against the freezing wind, the belts governing her coat's hood had been pulled tight. Through the ring of fur lining the opening, only a fragment of Lexine's face remained. Two glowering, mismatched eyes directed at the horizon. The ashen color of her hair blended in with the gray striped white surface of her overgarment, and nothing else remained to define her silhouette save the streak of yellow fastened to her arm. Unlike her, Vulture's Roost stood out from the horizon quite clearly. It was the only means she had left of navigation, except for the road signs. They had proven unreliable in the past though, and she was very keen on not being lead away from the main road again by would-be bandits who had the unfortunate qualification of being literate. There was no way of relocating the monolith she chased. It was the only feature on the horizon, a description she had been given of Vulture's Roost by a native prior. The great white empty behind and around it told her that it truly was the last stop on the way north. At least part of her journey was over, in a sense. The more painful part was certainly only beginning. She had a job to do, however, and had surmounted far worse to see her task done before. Her investigation was, for the moment, the only thing she had left. 

One dutiful step after the other saw her down her last road. The Roost slowly grew before her, until she stood well within its shadow and could see every impressive detail of the fortress' architecture. Another detail was the crowd at its gate. [i]No admission[/i]. For whatever reason, there was a collection of travelers that she was about to join who were being held at the door. It [i]was[/i] a castle, there was no point if they just opened the door whenever, but she knew for a fact that she needed at least a chair before continuing on. She trudged up to the assembly, looking between the people present in the hopes of finding some sort of clue about their predicament. Hopefully one that told her that she was fine to head in. Of course, that wasn't the case, and she was one more person stuck waiting outside the castle walls. She stood apart from the quartet conversing, and planted herself on a patch of road by the man wise enough to spend his time reading on the assumption that they were in a sort of line. Given the scarcity of reasons for coming this far north, she also assumed it wasn't going to be the last of this crowd she was seeing. If she could help it, this was a traveling party in the making if only for the sake of convenience.