August 15th, 427 DF (Thursday just after Midnight)

Post date: Feb 22, 2015 7:30:49 AM

The air smells so strange.

Really, the air smells, well, it has many smells, smells of freshness and moistness and pricklyness and more, and it is the smell of smells when there is nothing to smell, and while I know all this it is still very strange to me, to my nose, this the first time in a long time that it has not been swimming in the stink.

These are our first breaths outside of the city.

Of all the things I could have foreseen when we began to just talk about robbing that merchant , this was not one of them. Standing here now, it makes all the sense in the world.

First and foremost, Rowf found me tonight as we were heading out of the lower slums. Never have I been so overjoyed, period, let alone overjoyed to see him. Safe, secure, and looking like the bright, clever, and in charge brother that I know him to be. Whatever had plagued him of late – both within and without – must have been dealt with, for his faculties and his presence were there full force. As was our bond to our family, both maternal and our created one of these past few years. He took my plan and drove it fourteen steps forward... but I am getting ahead of myself.

First, our gang had to reconvene after our clever ruse, and we all made our escape without issue. It felt good to have pulled it off. And Scribbles and Berhanu began pantomiming back and forth, allaying my fears somewhat that we may still have to deal with her. Aria apologized, and we cleaned that up, and that felt even better. Our guard could be let down for just a moment, but I knew we had to keep moving. It came sooner than I thought. The streets began to fill with greater and greater number of guards, knights, and hunters. In groups of two we ambled away. Over the wall, everyone tries to stand out. I'd forgotten how here, it can be an asset that there are so many of us, so equally filthy and downtrodden. The guards didn't know us from another clump of stinkers. We made it by. Evermeet, then to the upper slums, I thought. We could start anew there.

Rowf led us beyond... beyond to the docks, then onto the waters. My musings of home the other day were not idle musings born of randomness, it seems. It was a vision of the future. We're not going home now – someday! – but we're off to make a home for us and mother. Get her out of the stink and that den of oblivion, take her away from her memories of a life she feels wrongly separated from. Whether she will ever let herself be healed of the betrayal I do not know, but I do know that it will never happen where she was. If we couldn't go back over the wall, we will go beyond the walls, to the villages.

You might say we've never been out that way, how might we do outside of the city we've known our whole lives?

I would reply, until years ago, I'd never had to fight for scraps in the slums. Until four days ago, I'd never been chased down by vicious dogs and a clergy intent on murdering my friends. It may be new, but we are capable. We know how to work. And we will work it out.

A few days ago I said I believed we were lucky, with our gifts. With the wind blowing lightly around us now, I believe it even more so. With our gifts and our coin, we've brought ourselves a blank slate. And it will be a big we – Rowf's going to set up a few more things, and then any of our gang who wants to join us will do so. Heh, again, just a few days ago I said how proud I was as the red bandanna brigade, how we could together escape the rags to find some measure of lasting comfort and gainful existence.

If things went well for us.

And they have. Here we are. Here we all will be.

Let the next day dawn.