Searing 13th, Year 113, Age of Steel
It was cold. It wasn't a bitter kind of frost, but it was hard to find a place to actually rest that was inside, so to her, it was far too cold. What did Alyssum think this was a good idea?
Only one time prior to this had she entered Lorien within her life. Isra tended to avoid Turoth when Alyssum was a child and still trying to familiarize herself with the world. Alyssum had returned a couple of times after, but was mostly because she wanted to visit Daravin. Lorien was just a place that very rarely held her interest for long. Mostly because of the stories of the Kindred. Pervasive and ever-present, she hated it. For someone like herself, she just needed to be careful regarding the things she did while occupying the city. The last thing she wanted was to draw the attention of a Kindred to herself.
She had a feeling that would just go poorly...
It had been part of her process that by visiting during Searing it wouldn't be as terribly cold and she'd actually get a reprieve sorts from the yearly heat which plagued her. She wasn't expecting it to still be this cold. Apparently it was though.
She'd already made arrangements to stay here for the majority fo the season though. She could leave a bit early, but things would just go badly for her if she left too early. She could always hunt down a tower or a chapter house, but still... She didn't want to rely on the Scholia Arcana too much. If anything she could consider this a test. The spirit of Isra coming back to haunt her, whispering in her ear 'Okay, let's see you survive this.' When she thought about it in those terms, the challenge was almost welcomed.
Alyssum missed Isra. The woman always threw some of the most outrageous problems at Alyssum and told her to survive them, but there was always a kind of gentleness to her. Something that made Alyssum start to realize later in life that she was probably never in danger and Isra wasn't going to just let her die.
Probably.
Now there was no Isra so she was well and truly on her own, waddling through unfamiliar streets, buddled in the pelts of the creatures she'd hunted and commissioned into coats just like Isra always liked to do. She'd thought about learning how to make her own clothes so that she could add some kind of enchantment to them, but she didn't have ready access to the resources to use Runeforge and Alchemy would eventually fade given enough time. Though she supposed a temporary concoction to make her coat a little warmer was worth the effort if she could even find the resources. She was unfamiliar with any of the components in Lorien which meant even if she wanted to it was going to take some trial and error before she could actually figure out something.
It was made all the worse by her childish appearance. Few in Lorien wanted to trust her. It was hard trying to find a place she could wander into for an hour or two and warm her feet. Lorien was such an untrusting place, she hated it. Alyssum liked being brutally honest and placing her trust in complete strangers until they gave her a reason not to. Then they could wander off and die for all she cared. But she'd trust them completely until they gave her a valid reason not to! Admittedly, there was some pretty strict criteria on what kinds of things would lose her trust...
She was still more trusting than these jerkwads! Finding a job was still going to be an issue though...
If she was being realistic, it wasn't actually that cold. She'd certainly experienced colder winters living in Atinaw. The temperature was usually moderated by the proximity to water in the entire region, but in the valley following the Grimholdt mountain, there were occasionally powerful cold snaps. The reason she was so cold now probably had a lot to do with the fact she couldn't find anywhere that would let her rest, so she'd been wandering around for hours at a time while she looked for an inn or something similar. At least Brandt wasn't as bad as some places in the kingdom when it came to their beliefs. In some ways, it was worse, but it could also be better depending on who you were and your current take on the whole of Lorien.
