Role

Chapter 5

Oirwn stumbled through the winding backstreets of residential Galadon
looking in every rubbish bin for something suitable to eat. This winter
was much harder than she remembered the season typically being, and she
constantly puffed out warm air onto her fingers to ensure they still had
feeling. She was starving. Proper starving, like when one considers
oneself lucky to find a molded apple core or a bone to gnaw on. There
had been jobs to try out for, but none of them seemed to want to commit
to her. She wondered if her falsified credentials had much to do with
it.

Oirwn finally collapsed outside a tiny, hole-in-the-wall pub, and she
curled up on the ground to try and make peace with the fact that she
might just freeze to death. As she closed her eyes, a hint of rhyme
and song drifted to her on the wind.

"Don't leave me," she thought, clinging tightly to the poetry she could
barely hear. "Just stay the night. Stay with me so I can make it."

At close, the pub's patrons filed quietly out into the night, cinching
up their coats and pulling on thick, leather gloves. If any spied
Oirwn lying silently below the window, covered in snow, they kept on
walking. No time for that tonight, just a beggar who gets by dis-
honestly on the city's charity. The entertainer of the evening was
the last to leave. He paused outside the door and took a long drag
from his pipe. A snowball formed atop Oirwn's head and rolled to the
ground, hitting the bard's boot. Oirwn heard his footsteps crunching
up to her, followed by a soothing voice.

"Hello, little one. My, you're blue. Come on, up you get. I'll help
you to somewhere warm."

Oirwn didn't move. She couldn't. Her mind begged and pleaded with her
body, but it would not be pursuaded.

"No? Well, I have something to say about that."

She felt herself being lifted, hoisted easily over a shoulder, then the
footsteps began again.