Upon waking the next morning, later than usual, Willow felt all the hurt of the previous day rush back with none of the anger.
‘How dare they?’ she thought savagely as she rose to change. Her upset bled into her action, and she found even brushing her hair a monumental task. It took her a good hour to calm herself enough to focus on the bird’s nest she had created atop her head and even begin to set it to rights.
As she exited the house, she tried to push her feelings aside. She refused to interact with her family, although they called out to her as she departed. In this situation, both parties believed they were in the right. Arguing would solve nothing. Willow, however, could see nothing redeemable in their idea, nothing she could use as a basis for compromise. They were unwilling to see her side of things, to understand why she was so upset.
She fed herself in town, a sticky slice of honeyed bread she bought from one of her Betrayer friends. It felt like all eyes were on her. Was she behaving differently? Had The Betrayer’s heard the argument the day before? Disregarding these thoughts, Willow hurriedly made her way to teach for the day. The children were more restless than usual, although this could have just been a symptom of Willow’s jagged thoughts and unusual inattention. After the class, she was emotionally and physically drained from trying to corral them. When her own stresses combined with the class’s unrest had almost brought her to tears out of pure frustration, Willow decided to end the class earlier than usual. She just couldn’t deal with the high energy that is young children calmly any further.
As she dropped off the last child, the child handed her a daisy before hopping off into her mother’s arms. Willow smiled. Even the children had noticed her disquiet and she hoped her conversation later with Jay-Jay would help ease her mind.
Willow turned to Bea’s home, seeking a sense of comfort and normalcy. She hoped being surrounded by people who she knew loved her just for her and had no part in this hare-brained scheme helped calm her enough to return home.
Willow babysat Amelia while the older woman caught up on lost sleep. Willow whiled away several hours in the relaxed environment and thoroughly enjoyed the simple comforts of home life. Amelia kept her suitably distracted with her chatter and pictures and songs until the afternoon.
Bea probed again about the perceived stresses Willow held, clearly able to see that whatever had weighed on her the previous day was still a present concern. Again, Willow blew it off, sticking to her claim that she’d argued with her parents but refused to elaborate further. She didn't want to endanger them more than they already were. And how did she explain it all, anyway? An elf my parents are secretly and illegally keeping in the family home has turned my entire word upside down a reveal knowledge that could threaten my life? Willow snorted. That would go down well.
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After a subdued snack, Willow departed, intent on distracting herself in the marketplace while she waited for the time of day when she knew Jay-jay would be home. She stopped by the Betrayer’s stall once more, still feeling more eyes on her there than usual.
Willow herself was feeling a little suspicious of the group. Rumour believed they were the primary way the regular folk continued contact with long distant relatives in other states. Why would the Resistance not utilise their unique freedoms for their purposes too? Were they part of the Resistance? Or a subsidiary? Did they know the content of the argument Willow’d had with Richard and Esther? Were they in on the whole conspiracy against her?
Just to be on the safe side, more to assure her own anxieties than anything else, she kept away from the group’s leader, a man named Wandering Foot. She’d known him most of her life and believed him to be a man with good intentions, but... well, she’d believed that of Richard and Esther and look where they were now. Better safe than sorry.
The Betrayer’s little section of the market was bright and cheerful. Several of Willow’s students were already there, running with some of the young Betrayers or enjoying the various entertainments, from jugglers to a puppet show tucked in one corner telling a common favourite fairy-tale, The Girl and the Dragon.
Willow caught up with several of her childhood friends, but they all seemed to be intent on being anywhere else, and they soon left Willow with the strange sensation of being both abandoned and being closely monitored.
The day continued into the afternoon and finally, Willow left the awkwardness behind and head for the other side of town, intending to visit Jay-jay.
He should be home now, Willow decided, looking at the sky. Distractedly, she tried to formulate a plan. She’d had little success the night before and had chalked it up to anger and exhaustion. But now she struggled to figure out how she was going to explain her sudden desire to move the wedding forward without bringing undue suspicion on her family. She’d have to catch him on his own; Jay-Jay she knew she could trust explicitly but... parents will do anything to protect their children. This decided, she mused on how to get him alone; it wasn’t strictly proper for her to be alone with James, but she should be able to snatch a quick minute or two if she could entice him to take a walk with her.
Willow crossed a skinny rope bridge as she thought, having to grab the sides to balance herself. She loved this part of town, with its rope bridges and separation from the marketplace. The separation allowed for enough quiet to hear the bubbling of the water and Willow had often come here as a girl to read or have picnics. The architecture and layout itself were not all that different from her home on the farm, just with access to more neighbours, but Willow knew she would be more than happy to spend the rest of her life in this neighbourhood, building a home and family.
In the coming weeks, Willow would regret her lack of vigilance that day. Perhaps if she had been more alert, her life could have worked out very differently.
As she turned down the narrow dirt path that led to Jay-Jay’s’ home, she felt a sense of danger flash through her being before calloused hands grabbed her, and everything went black.