Winter, Day 42, 513 AV
Oriah shivered and huddled further into her coat, wishing for all the world she had thought to purchase something with a thicker lining. The light armor she had been allowed to borrow helped, as did the ridiculous amounts of gear she was required to carry. Exertion alone managed to at least keep her limbs moving and blood pumping. But the icy wind still nipped at her cheeks and exposed skin, tendrils of cold sneaking their way in through all the gaps in her clothing.
"Y'alright, new fish?" the knight beside her asked. They had both been on horseback, which was reason enough for Oriah to be feeling on edge, but dismounted for a spell to give their mounts a small break. Between the cold and the jostling and weight of her shield, shortsword, bow, and arrows on her back, the former dancer struggled to keep the sullenness from her voice.
"Aye," she answered with a sniff, her nose running a little from the incessant chills. "I'm alright."
The knight gave her a look and let loose a deep chuckle. "If ya say so. 'S time to mount up again. Ho, here we go!" He helped her put one foot into the stirrup and swing the other over her horse before mounting his own. Oriah battled against her unease as she sat atop the beast, not wanting to unsettle it with her unstable nerves. She forced herself to calm and stroked the horse's neck as they trotted along. Since her arrival at the Shining City, she had learned to cope with most of her fears for the towering animals. But there was still a trace of anxiety--one she hoped her path towards knighthood would eventually erase.
"Now, this isn't exactly protocol," her guide explained in a soothing, friendly tone. "But then again, Mora isn't exactly the protocol type, either." He turned to grin at the nervous looking squire. "I think you'll like each other quite well. You got a good amount of desert blood in ye both, dontcha?"
Oriah nodded. "So I have heard. But what is a desert bred wanderer doing in the forests of Sylira?"
The knight chuckled again and quirked a thick, bushy eyebrow at her. "I could ask you the same, couldn't I?"
There was nothing the squire could say to that. She inclined her head in defeat and the two of them rode on in companionable silence for a while. From what she had gathered, Oriah understood that her meeting with Sera Mora was more than a little unconventional. Normally, a freshly recruited squire reported to their assigned patron right away at their company's post. No but's, no fuss.
Her case, however, was...unusual. Instead of meeting Sera Mora at the barracks, or the training grounds at Mithryn, or the fields, or any assortment of places that knightly business could be arranged, Oriah was to find her patron. Not meet. Find. In the middle of the blessed woods. She wasn't even sure if she could survive such an endeavor, let alone track down one of the most elusive members of the Order on completely unfamiliar turf.
Well, not completely, the squire had to admit. She'd trekked about the Bronze Woods...once. About six days ago. But that was with the aid of an experienced hunter, and even then it had been a near thing. How was she to achieve this on her own?
"Don't worry about it," her guide sighed out of the blue, as if he could hear the questions firing away inside her head. "She may be curious in her ways, but Sera Mora is not cruel. She does what she thinks is necessary, no more and no less. And she wouldn't ask a new fish like yourself to do something she didn't think you had a chance to succeed in."
Oriah mulled over his words in silence. When the shape of the outpost could be seen in the distance, the knight took the reigns of her riderless horse, which still had most of her belongings in its saddlebags, bade good bye, and went on his merry way.
She stared after him, then turned and marched off towards the forest. "Yahal guide me," the squire sighed under her breath.