Snippet #2335928

It took Finn a while to realise where he was, when he woke from something too superficial to be called sleep. Although his breath still misted the air as it had done down in the cells below the keep, the taut brown canvas a few inches above his face, the call of birdsong and the faint chatter of voices were utterly alien the briefest of moments. Until he remembered.

It was odd that, however much he found his new situation to be strange and unfamiliar, the dank musk of the dungeon and the echo of footsteps on stone seemed a thousand years rather than seven sun-downs ago. It was quite possible that things would always be strange and unfamiliar from now on.

His eyes were raw from the lack of sleep and the chill air and he would have liked nothing more than to close them again and dig himself back under the blankets to find an isolation of softness and warmth that was like being buried alive. But he knew this would be futile; sleep didn't come easily and it certainly wouldn't come twice in one morning. Better to get up and fool himself into thinking he was doing something worthwhile. That and he could smell eggs cooking...

Slowly, painfully, he struggled out of the folds of felt and pulled on his boots with clumsy fingers. The newest additions to the scars on his back, inflicted only a few days before they were freed, tugged painfully as he turned to pull on a fur-lined cloak over his clothes. But it was already pink with newly-healed skin- courtesy of the healer everyone else called Rae- and would soon cease to hurt at all; nothing in comparison with what he'd had to endure before. He fastened it under his chin and tugged it down, further over his shoulders. With the bulk of the fur and the woollen tunic underneath it was almost impossible to tell exactly how gaunt he was; he loathed the way his ribs were visible beneath thin slabs of pectoral muscle, how his biceps stood up like strings as he pushed himself up off the floor of the tent and unsteadily stepped outside into the morning sunlight. It made him feel weak and insubstantial, as if he could be buffeted about by the slightest wind. Worse still, he was reminded of the flesh-ragged skeletons that stalked the walls of the castle.

Slowly weaving his way in between the tents, he lowered himself down onto a seat by the fire. Many of the members of the camp were already up; he recognised the healer and a man so alike her in looks he guessed him to be her brother, a blonde archer who had been part of the raiding party who had retrieved he and Aleric from the dungeons and Neira, the second-in-command who often looked as blank and distant as Finn inwardly felt. With a fleeting grin at each of them, he took the bowl that had been passed to him and hungrily dug into his breakfast, though not as rapidly as he would have liked. Eating too much too soon could make him ill, he'd been told when he first arrived at the camp. But it was so difficult when the smell of cooked eggs seemed akin to the most decadent feasts his uncle had thrown at court in his youth.