The soft spongy soil of the moors was surprisingly comfortable, Serra was actually surprised. She had spent zero time outside of a city well except recently on her enforced slavery and forced travel. But even then she was in a whole passel of folk so many you could trip over them. Her duties were just as they were in the inn, scullery duties and they kept her busy. She had little time to notice anything. But here, on the moors, the soft ground was easy on her body. Oh sure there were sticks and twigs and bushes but compared to her ordinary life they were no less comfortable than sleeping in a pile of flee infested rags, being woken by kicks to the head, and trekking in all weather hither and yon.
She curled into a ball in a hollow, burrowed herself under a bush, and hid. She didn’t know what happened or what was going on behind her, only that she had a chance to hide. The strange ground she was now hid her tracks, though she didn’t really know it. Barefoot her tracks would have been easily visible on the dusty and muddy road. Here she was safe from her human captors but it would take an extraordinary bit of luck to survive the night on the moors. Serra didn’t know that however; She only knew she had escaped and she was, for the moment, hidden.
The sun, warmed the ground under her, and trickled through the bush under which she was hiding. It made Serra cozy and warm, far more comfortable than she had been in some time. She was soon fast asleep. She slept through the bulk of the day, and woke at sundown. Something told her to stay where she was. The dusk on the moor was beyond weird and she was too far from the village to make it back before true dark. She was hungry and cold, but she had been hungry and cold for most of her life. She just tucked herself into a tighter ball, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep.
Sleep came patchy at best. She was so terrified by the end of the night she was exhausted enough to finally sleep. Genuine sleep. It was noon by the time she awoke, cramped and miserable, and crawled from under the thick bush she was hiding under. She had no idea of the dangers that she escaped that night, mostly because she was too terrified to move and because she was too small to be interesting to anything.
When she woke she made her way back to town, completely floored that it appeared abandoned. Actually she was elated at first. There was plenty left behind, and no one to stop her from helping herself. By late afternoon she was starting to get spooked. It was creepy here in the silent village. She started to worry that maybe they had become ghosts and would come to haunt her in the dark.
It was only because Serra was such a generally uncertain girl that she had managed not to run into anyone else. But when dark was coming again and she was alone, again, this time in some place that was as spooky as the abandoned village she was extra careful. Packing her pockets full of easily pocketed consumables, a blanket over one arm, she slipped outside the same way she had come in. Over the village wall. It was easy enough to retrace her steps and find the hollow where she had slept before. This time, armed with a blanket and food she was much more comfortable. She still didn’t sleep however. Not till just around dawn. It was less spooky here but there was stuff out on the moors, Serra could hear it, and she knew she dared not move or anything. That long night she pondered her options and decided her best bet was to get back to Loudwater. She would fill up on food from the abandoned village and try and make her way back down the road.
So the next day she woke after her morning sleep, once again around noon, and made her way back to the village. She had planned to slip over the wall at the rear but the presence of a figure in the distance changed her mind. Uncertain, but deciding there was only one, she picked up her pace to see who was left. As far as she could tell everyone had abandoned the village, she hadn’t seen a person in nearly two days. She gripped her stolen blanket tighter in an effort to hide her nervousness and continued forward to see just who it was that had been left behind.
