The news arrived suddenly and unexpectedly. It first came from a mail bird sent from the mansion. Escorted through the forest by Kyne, it delivered the letter straight to her mother like always. Would it be a notice that her father would finally be visiting as planned? Or would it be another apology that he wouldn’t make it?
Pretending to be uninterested, Misha watched as her mother opened the letter—until all the blood drained from the older woman’s face. Her shock made her all but collapse and brought Misha running over to hold her.
“What’s wrong, mom?!”
Though Misha recognized it was a bit rude to do so, she peeked at the contents of the letter. It was a curt message: Her father had returned to the mansion heavily wounded. They were sending someone to pick her mother up for her to administer treatment.
She was stunned for a moment, but Misha quickly recovered. She shook her equally lost mother. “Get it together! They’re sending someone, so that means he’s still alive! We need to get the medicine ready!”
If they had sent the bird the moment her father arrived home and set off for the forest at the same time, they’d be at their doorstep in a few hours. They didn’t have time for their anxiety to paralyze them.
“R-Right. We have to get to work!”
Coming back to her senses, her mother jumped to her feet and dashed to the storage room. Meanwhile, Misha hurried to start her own task. She could leave collecting the medicine to her mother, but who knew how long she’d have to stay in the mansion? Misha needed to pack a few changes of clothes and other daily life essentials for her.
Two hours passed in the blink of an eye, and a violent knocking rang from their front door.
“Yes, one second!” After racing to the door, Misha opened it to find a familiar knight on the other side. He was a close associate of her father; Misha had often seen him during visits. However, his normally pleasant, gentle face was now grim, and his clothes were covered in dirt and blood. He must have run here immediately after returning from the battlefield. Though Misha didn’t know this fact, the location of her house was known to only a small handful of her father’s closest allies.
“Are you ready?!” His expression and his tone made it clear they didn’t have a second to waste.
Misha’s heart nearly stopped. The letter alone hadn’t made it feel personal. It hadn’t felt real. But with the knight here, she couldn’t ignore the reality of the situation, one pressing on her with every sense of urgency. Her father was on death’s doorstep.
“I am. Do you have a horse for me?” Her mother emerged from farther inside the house, wearing a gray robe and carrying a large bag on her back. Though she was still pale, she once again had the calm, collected expression of a professional apothecary.
“Mom...” Misha eked out in a weak voice, not sure what to say, not sure whether she should say anything at all.
Her mother hesitated for a moment, biting her lip as she stared at her daughter. Then she quickly turned back to the knight. “She’ll be coming with us. It’ll be hard for her to ride on my horse if we’re traveling at full speed. Can she ride with someone else?”
“What do you mean?!” Misha was almost hysteric.
“That was our intention from the start. We have another young knight with us. She can ride with him. Let’s go!”
Now it was Misha’s turn to be stunned. The mansion felt like a place far, far away she’d never see. She had never considered that she’d be going there herself.
“You have five minutes to get ready, Misha. Hurry.”
But the circumstances didn’t give her feelings time to catch up. In response to her mother’s severe tone, Misha reflexively bolted off to her room. Grabbing some handfuls of clothes and her own apothecary’s tools, she threw them into a bag. When she ran back to the front door, she saw they had all stepped outside.
“This way.”
A short distance away, they came across another knight rushing to their side. Misha was dubious as to whether he had made it to twenty years yet.
“Any experience riding?” he asked, wasting no time with greetings.
“No.”
In the forest, one needed to be on foot to handle the tight turns everywhere, and it wasn’t really an environment where they could raise horses anyway.
Though he’d expected as much, the knight nevertheless seemed a bit discouraged. “Then you’ll sit in front of me. Make sure you keep your mouth closed. I don’t want you biting your tongue. Excuse me.” Speaking quickly, the knight leaped onto his horse before reaching for Misha. Giving him her arms, she let him pull her up into the saddle.
“Ah!” With a pathetic little cry, she found herself suddenly on the horse.
Wow, we’re so high up!
She had no idea being on a horse would put her this high off the ground. With nothing but the saddle beneath her and an arm around her waist to support her, she worried she’d fall right off.
“You can lean against me, but don’t move around too much,” the knight said calmly from behind her, pulling her close and tight.
She felt an unfamiliar warmth on her back. She hadn’t even been this close to her own mother since she had turned ten years old. Her instinctive reaction was to push away, but the knight held her tight.
“I just said not to move around so much. You’ll scare the horse. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep your mouth closed and stay still.”
That’s easy for you to say!
Even if she wasn’t an adult, she was a reasonably mature, innocent girl. This kind of closeness was difficult for her to handle. But the rational part of her brain insisted now wasn’t the time to be worried about things like that, so she settled for wrapping her arms tight around her bag and biting her lip.
“Let’s go!”
With that signal, the horse began to run.
Ahhhhh! We’re shaking too much! I’m gonna fall! I’m gonna fall!