Solae had laid on the grassy slope beside the roadway for what felt like centuries but what could have been no more than an hour. As sweat cooled on her body she found herself chilled yet extraordinarily thirsty. Adrenaline had caused her to over-exert herself and made ever muscle scream in pain no matter the respite it was granted. Breathing was steady through her chapped lips whose blood had congealed with the now stopped stream from her forehead. She was light-headed and dizzy, hungry, and nauseous all at once. The noblewoman was both numb to the sensations that rolled over her body in waves of anguish and overwhelmed by them.

For all the academic learning she had conquered with almost two decades of education she did not remember any lessons in survival. Only a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, basic emergency medicine, and vague recollections of colonization stories seemed applicable to her situation. Fresh water was her top priority; her body could not exist as long without it as food or shelter. Exposure to the elements with a climate such as New Concordia's was not a threat immediately. Solae struggled to focus on the word [i]deficiency[/i] to center herself mentally on the pursuit of water as she started to crawl on her belly.

Singular focus brought clarity. The diplomat slowly managed to force her elbows and knees under her as she pulled herself along the scraggly overgrown weeds of the embankment. Pebbles, grit, and dirt embedded itself under her nails and in the abrasions of her knees but she didn't care- she couldn't afford to let it impede her progress. Bit by bit, with teeth clenched together in determination, and only sheer willpower to fuel her she managed to propel herself upright. Solae's gait was staggered, unsteady, and feeble but it was movement nonetheless.

Sometime during her repose on the greenery her hearing had begun to return though it was still muffled. A shrill whine, which she recognized passively as damage to her ear, persisted but with concentration could be ignored. In the distance were the shouts of either soldiers or citizens as they called to one another. Gone were the alarms of enemy attack for, in the short time that had transpired, the imperial forces had been demolished. Solae still did not grasp her situation fully but her sense of self-preservation was still kicked into proverbial high gear. Everything in her exhausted body told her that to return to the city was suicide.

Night began to descend over Armistice and the surrounding lands as Solae made her way across the landscape. Geography and astronomy were subjects she had scored well in but neither the direction of the setting sun nor the arrangements of the stars offered relief. To seek their guidance was to have a destination and she was utterly aimless in encroaching despair.

In the dwindling light she happened upon a farm with a well which she stole water from as the family happily dined behind smudged windows carved into a humble home. She felt guilty for taking from people who had so little, but her conscience did not overcome her excruciating thirst. Solae drank until she was satiated and the meal was completed. Traumatized and melancholic she watched as they cleaned the table, talked to one another, and flickered on the lights that led to the bedrooms upstairs. The peaceful joy was as foreign to her now as the agony of today had been prior to the embassy's destruction. Commoners accused the titled elites of living in bubbles, in capsules of protection that made them indifferent to the suffering of the poor. In a day's time the tables had been turned for Marquise Solae Falia.

For minutes after the last light from the farmhouse had been snuffed out she stared after its darkened silhouette. Fine people they might be but she could not gamble on their compassion. Solae did not know their circumstances. While she did not doubt they were humane and empathetic, life on New Concordia created wounds, festering wounds, and the higher social caste was almost always blamed regardless of the cause. Gentle farmers were not without limitations of the abuse they could suffer before they saw a victim such as Solae as an oppressor deserving their rage.

She turned, walking to the edge of the property and, parking herself next to a half-rotted stump, she finally allowed herself to collapse again and fall into a dreamless sleep of fatigue.


[b]DAY TWO[/b]

Morning brought hope. Slumber had refreshed her mind. With the death of Marlene a day behind her, and no visual reminders of callous murders and near death experience, Solae found it easier to compartmentalize the past and present. Wary of venturing back towards the farm of last night she headed in a different direction as she kept Armstice's skyline on her left. One of the fields she traversed through had slightly under ripe fruit dangling from trees on its borders. She ate three that were roughly the size of her fists as she walked, discarding the skin, cores, and seeds in shrubs to make it appear an animal had devoured them instead of a vagrant.

Success emboldened her. Slowly she navigated away from rural domiciles and closer towards the surburbs that spread from Armistice in a perfect circle. When she had initially flown to New Concordia with her mother and father years ago she had marveled that so long after settlement planning was enforced stringently enough not a single estate was out of place. Now she realized that there was cruelty in such unmerciful design. People were not free, even so far away from the central planets of the empire, to build what they wished wherever their heart desired.

Thoughts of a rambling mind were interrupted by something she could not place- a sound or lack thereof had made her pause mid-step beside a stone wall she had been creeping beside for the last several minutes. Her heart raced as she struggled to find the source of the instinctual freeze in her posture but she did not have to wait long. Solae had dropped behind the wall to collect her breath (which had caught in her throat) when a booming male voice lifted from the other side a short distance away.

[i]“Stand up slowly and keep you hands where we can see them!”[/i] called out a man that the intuitively knew was armed without peeking over the masonry that separated them.

Solae's returned hearing was both a curse and a blessing. A lethal altercation took place she deduced by the sounds of moving bodies, panting, a strangled cry, and three blasts of gunfire. Terrified to move she waited for a sign what had just transpired had ended or the parties engaged in combat had moved on. There was but a brief moment of silence and then a male voice, different from the first one she heard, muttering to himself, [i]"“This really isn’t my day.”[/i]

Options were limited. Either she could try to escape the attention of whomever just spoke, taking her chances in solitary survival, or she could stand, expose herself, and parley. Why had that first man wanted her to come out to him instead of shooting to kill without reservations. Had someone or something wanted her alive? And why had someone intervened before she was taken captive? Was he hoping to have him for herself or were his intentions more pure? Solae's heart continued to race so hard and fast as she contemplated her choices she was worried cardiac arrest was an actual possibility. The stranger hadn't asked her to come out nor had he let the lapse in time be used to strike at her. Chances were greater he was an ally than an enemy based solely on the little information available.

"Who... who are you?" Solae asked as she rose. As the morning light shone on her beaten and stained figure her hair, still flaked in dried blood, gleamed a golden white in the soft illumination. There were very few people in the universe that had the hue the late Marquise Falia had passed onto her daughter; in fact, it was rumored to have been inserted in bloodlines through embyronic genetic manipulation and subsequent generations had created their children like designer handbags since. Technology allowed the wealthy to chose gender, hair color, and eye color as they toyed with life to feed their godly complexes. Solae had suspected but never confirmed her mother had made certain her offspring bore the recessive trait for her hair color. In any other circumstances it would have been a positive boon to recognition, but as the duke's rebellion raged on it only helped to identify her as an important target.