Snippet #1974235

Roina gazed up at these women rather dumbfounded. She couldn't recall an other moment she had been the recipient of another person's gratitude. The woman's embrace came was a bit of a shock to her. All she could manage in return was a weak pat on the back. After the chorus of praises, she just sat there trying to make sense of what just happened. She wasn't a hero. A hero would have saved them all. However, she could not help but feel a twinge of hope. She didn't know ho those women were, but she felt that the child would grow up to be a splendid member of the future generation if they were going to be a part of his life.

She spotted Keras only briefly. She wanted to run to him, to ask if he had seen Lady Elsah or a man with a broken foot, but the crowd swallowed him up again. He had a look on his face that told her he had other business to tend to. She wanted to try to find her leader, but citizens were already beginning to organize. One gentleman nearby decided to organize people into groups. Men were organized to carry the bodies to the funeral pyres once their families had claimed them. Other men dug unmarked graves in the fields for the unclaimed bodies. Women tended to the wounded, cared for the separated children, and searched the rubble for rations. Riona gave a sigh of relief when the man assigned her as one of the foragers. This allowed her to work on her own, see what of her caravan had survived, and check the place where she left Lay Elsah.

The scene made her stomach feel as if it had turned to ice. She had envisioned big piles of rubble where the stalls once stood and felled wagons with their cargo spilled across the ground. But there were no piles of rubble; just splinters and whatever was too heavy to be carried away remained. The damage made one vendor's area indistinguishable from the next. She couldn't even point to the place where she had saved the stranger's baby.

After four hours, Riona had found some produce that had been scattered, some dirty pieces of dried venison (though it wasn't so dry anymore), and a few handfuls of rice. She turned her scraps in to one of the cooks and took a seat on one of the cots that had been set up. Despite her hunger, her tiredness had the upper hand, and soon she was laying down and closing her eyes.

In the morning she and a group of other women were taken to a nearby lake to bathe and clean their clothes. The open air already made her feel uncomfortable in doing this rather intimate ritual and being surrounded by half of a score of strange women didn't help. It seemed the story of her previous day's heroic act spread amongst the mothers. Riona tried to bathe away from the crowd, but she kept getting approached by everyone wanting to hug her and thank her with teary eyes. It quickly grew to be to much for the woman who spent most of her life in solitude and she quickly got out and put her sopping clothes back on.

She managed to eat her simple breakfast of porridge in peace and spent the rest of the morning basking in the sun to dry her dress. Noon came and she started making her way towards the manor. She hoped His Lordship wouldnt mind a woman donned in damp clothing.