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Making Plans

Ria rubbed tiredly at her face as she took another sip of coffee, sighing as her guide pinged again. Ward just smirked at her and she scowled at him. "How is your sister this awake? It's still early and she's already sent me twenty messages. I can barely answer one of them before there are three more new ones sitting there waiting for me. I mean, what in the world?"

He filled her plate before carefully sliding it in front of her. "She's always been a morning person, up with the dawn and even before and already going a mile a minute without stopping her chattering long enough to breathe properly. She also didn't spend all of yesterday walking and learning. You know, you can tell her that you have to go and will chat with her later, she will understand."

She massaged her temple for a long moment as she turned his words over before nodding slowly. She typed out a quick message and sent it before closing the guide. "You're right, I guess I'm not quite awake yet. I can always answer her after I finish breakfast and am awake enough to answer her questions correctly."

He offered her a sympathetic smile, "She'll always have more questions for you, you'll never manage to answer all of her questions. But it'll do for now."

They both turned their attention to breakfast, eating slowly in companionable silence. Ria had nearly finished her plate and had drank two mugs of coffee before she finally felt awake enough to manage a sensible conversation. She looked up at Ward who just raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "What are your plans for today? I suppose that you have guardian tasks to attend to?"

He nodded, "Yep. I'll probably spend most of my day meeting with the local guardian here and going over any incidents that happened since the last time that I was through, making sure that all the paperwork was completed correctly, all the administrative stuff. Then, this afternoon, I'll probably swing through the training grounds, maybe even make a quick loop of the village to check out the defenses and make sure that there aren't any weak spots."

Ria absorbed all that, her fingers drumming lightly on her half-full mug, watching as the steam curled lazily up from the coffee. "Sounds like a lot to handle."

He shrugged, "If I don't get it all done today, I can always finish up the remainder tomorrow. We're not in a rush after all. You'll need to gather information anyway, which always takes time. You have a few options for what you wish to do today as well." She blinked at that and he grinned. "What? Did you think that I was simply going to abandon you here today and let you navigate this all alone?"

She shrugged, trying to order her thoughts in a way that wouldn't come across as offensive. She had known that he had guardian duties to attend to and he was already kind enough to escort her safely, so she had figured that he would leave her to find any information that she could while he was dealing with his real job. The one that was not babysitting an inept star traveler. However, she merely said quietly, "I guess I hadn't thought that far."

He allowed her deflection to pass by unremarked. "Well, you have three options. One, you can stay here at the inn and rest more, as you are clearly tired. You traveled well yesterday, so it's nothing to be ashamed of. Not only that but you need to listen to your body's needs. Taking a rest now to help your body grow stronger is better in the long run than trying to push through and having your body give out on it because you've weakened it because of overexertion."

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She set down her mug, "I'll keep that in mind, it's good advice."

He held up two fingers, "Next, I can bring you to the small library at the guard station. Naturally, there will be some restricted tomes that you won't be able to access because they contain guardian business but it is a more widespread source of information because guardians have to be familiar with wider swaths of territory than most villagers end up being." A third finger joined the first two. "Lastly, I can escort you to the local library here in Altira. You can spend the day going through the information there as well as speaking with any locals that will inevitably drop in throughout the day and sometimes oral traditions have more truth to them than the written lore. Because everyone might think that something is such common knowledge that they don't bother to write it down because the information would be redundant."

She tapped her cheek thoughtfully, "And yes, the information would be redundant if one had grown up and spent all their lives in this region. However, for star travelers such as myself, it could be a vital piece of information to help decode the text."

He nodded, gesturing for the server to refill their mugs. "Exactly. So, the choice is up to you. I would offer for you to accompany me, but because of privacy and potentially sensitive reports, I can't. Although I could come and get you after that, if you'd like to see the training grounds or walk the perimeter."

She sipped at her fresh coffee, closing her eyes as she savored the test and ran through her options. It made sense not to expose sensitive information to a star traveler, especially one who was on a mission to return to their world of origin. However, she really needed to get out and start immersing herself in Audrilandre so that she could find out on her own using the guide. After all, she had learned more from her trip to the market than she had during a day of scouring the guide.

Still, she needed to decide which of the libraries to use while he was busy because she was not going to sit around and nap like some sort of spoiled princess. Reading was not strenuous and it would allow her to rest after all of the travel the day before while still keeping her mind occupied. The idea of having more widespread information was tempting and she almost voiced her choice for the guardian library. However, she was hoping that the information that she needed was located in this region since it was the place where she had been dropped in. So best to explore the village library and speak with any villagers who would be willing to speak with a lone star traveler. She knew that she was a bit of an oddity, so at this point, it was even odds as to if anyone would even deign to speak with her.

Opening her eyes, she looked back over at Ward who was waiting patiently for her answer. "I think that I'd like to go to the village library, at least for the morning. If I get weary, I can always head back here to the inn and rest. However, if you do end up checking out the training or going around the perimeter, I think that I would like to tag along."

He nodded easily, standing and waiting for her to join him. "That's simple enough. And if you change your mind or if I won't be able to make it today, we can just message the other to keep updated, if that works?"

Relieved that Audrilandre had a system for easy communication, she smiled as she stood, "That works, although my inbox might be clogged from all of Lynne's messages."

He laughed at that, "Oh no, you never actually run out of space in your inbox, you'll just have a million notifications is all." They both waved at Derrick as they headed out of the inn. "However, I can flag mine as from a guardian so that it'll appear at the top of your message list so that you won't miss it, if you prefer."

Thinking of the stack of unread messages waiting in her inbox, Ria gave a quiet laugh and nodded, "I think that that might be for the best."