[I'll be passing through again in three days.]

Staring at the message, now almost overgrown with moss again, I clutched Sage to my chest, doubts gnawing at my mind. The day had come for the old man to return or, rather, for him to ride back through the forest as he wrote. Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to think that he was coming back just to help me, that I was the sole reason for his trip back, because if I was . . . well, I could be screwed.

For all I knew, he might as well have come back to take me, enslave me, and I don't know . . . maybe sell me. He was a merchant, after all. What if, what if, what if . . . having no idea of his intentions was killing me.

'Shit it!'

Eventually, as the sun dispersed the morning mist in the forest, and the taste of blood flooded my mouth as I bit down too hard on my lower lip, I cleaned the stone with the old man's message and added my own version of the adorable me, complete with a smile, underneath his drawing of me. Writing down a simple 'thank you' would have been more to the point, but I had too few glyphs on the weave of [Eleaden Standard Language] to do so. While I could read Eleaden Standard, writing in it proved to be a futile effort, like hoping to discover my hidden sense of direction. Anyway, since it didn't seem likely that the old man would be able to read English, I wasn't left with too many options.

Hence, the drawing of the smiling me.

Of course, I didn't sit on my ass all day yesterday, and I certainly wasn't about to wait for him holed up in the ruins when chances were he wouldn't arrive until the evening to spend the night like last time, either. There was so much to do - like having breakfast or searching the other end of the brook.

Yesterday's trip downstream might not have turned out the way I'd imagined, again, but that didn't mean there couldn't have been a small lake upstream. Well, not too small, big enough for me to take a bath. Sure, the water in the brook was icy cold, and washing off the dirt accumulated over a year and a half would undoubtedly make it undrinkable, but a girl could dream, right?

Nevertheless, as expected, and much to my disappointment, the third expedition into the forest turned out to be as pointless as all the previous ones. Hence, annoyingly, as the sun moved across the sky and dipped towards the horizon, I found myself no better prepared to face the old merchant than I was three days ago.

"Oh, stop it. I know," I grumbled, pushing Sage away from my face.

That I wasn't any less ready wasn't quite true. Unlike my first encounter with the old man, I was rested, fed, and, most of all, not bewildered by what was happening. Of course, that didn't make it any easier. My heart was racing, and restless snakes seemed to nestle in my guts. I struggled with whether to hold it in, throw up, or take a squat behind a tree.

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And that was just me, hiding in the ruins, waiting for the sound of a carriage coming down the road. Talk to the old man? Well, for fear of tucking my tail between my legs and running away, I prefer to stay away from any thought of that.

Was that an unnecessary worry?

Could be, for the night drew near, and the road remained disappointingly empty. But just as I was beginning to question the old man's written promise my ears perked up.

'There!'

The sound of a horse-drawn carriage cut through the chirping of birds and the noise of waking night creatures echoing across the forest. Not long after that, two horse-like creatures, mares for lack of a better word, appeared among the trees, with a carriage drawn by them close behind. It wasn't until I recognized the old man in the driver's seat, though, that I dared to breathe a sigh of relief.

All that waiting was not pointless.

Of course, I was still ready to run away at the slightest hint of trickery. However, that it was him - the old man by himself - and not someone else arriving drove away quite a lot of the tension running amok in my body.

"Whoa!" the old merchant howled just as I remembered, and the wagon stopped in front of the inn's ruins.

»Still not like it here. We should keep going,« the younger mare whinnied, looking around in search of danger, while the older one, sounding tired, shook her head: »You speak that every time.«

»Because true. You not smell that? Beast.«

»Forest full of them.«

»One was here, though.«

I froze, my breath caught in my throat. The mare knew - she knew I had been around.

"Come on, girls, calm down," the old man spoke in his low, husky voice, patting the younger mare's neck. "Just one night, and we'll be gone again."

This time, his voice soothed more than just the mares. Hearing the old man reminded me I had left my cute little mark on the stone for him to see. Even without the mares alerting him to my stench, he would know about me being here soon enough.

Annoyingly, though, he took his sweet time looking at it.

Instead of climbing down from the wagon and going straight to check out the rock, he busied himself with unharnessing the horses. Only after he had tied them to a tree in the corner of the former room did his eyes fall on the spot where he had left me the bun.

"Tits, ain't I getting old? How could I forget?" he gasped, running his hand over his beard, eyes fixed on the rock, searching the grounds. "Did that Ter’an girl take the sweet bun that Marlen made?"

»I-it was the beast, I tell you,« neighed the younger of the mares while I watched everything from my hiding place in the ruins. Of course, the old man didn't understand the mare as well as I did, so ignoring her neighing, he rushed to inspect the now-bun-less rock. Then, after staring at it for a moment, no doubt making sense out of my artwork, he scared the shit out of me and the mares when he laughed out loud.

'Like, what the bloody heck? Wasn't he worried about disturbing the mossbears?'

Even the older mare thought the old man must have gone mad. But when he turned around to address the mares' fearful neighing, a broad grin stretched across his face, his eyes darting around the crumbling walls.

"Are you there, girl?"

'Shit!'

Once again, I froze. This was a part I hadn't really thought out.