“Oh yeah…” she sighed, relaxing near every muscle she could. The filth and tension of gods knew how many miles walked and two fights were melting away, and before she knew it, the tub was nearly full.

She absent-mindedly closed the valve with her foot, and returned to soaking in the water. It reminded her of the liquid nothingness she woke from, as long ago as it felt, yet as recent as it really was.

Zefaris thought herself self-aware enough to accept her own lack of understanding for the world. She thought that she never had and never would know enough for knowledge to drive her to drink. Yet now, it was the lack of self-understanding that drove her to down mug after mug of that sweet, lightly-alcoholic ale. Mug after mug, and by the time Makhus returned, pitcher after pitcher, all in service of drowning the uncomfortable thoughts that the strange foreigner brought on.

It wasn’t just her immaculate, statuesque physique or her strange two-tone hair, or the fact she dressed in a somewhat provocative manner. No, in her life before the war she had encountered and even fancied both men and women bearing one or two of these traits, it was the way in which Zelsys acted that truly struck at something deep within Zefaris that she hadn’t known was there up until now.

Sigmund’s rugged calmness yanked her from the swirling abyss of inner conflict.

“She can tell when you stare,” he muttered through his beard.

Confusion washed over her, and she only managed to stutter out, “What?”

“Zelsys. You don’t notice ‘cause you’re too busy starin’, but I can tell,” he smugged, sipping ale in infuriatingly small increments. “Every time you look, she stretches or moves just enough to give you a better view. She’s playin’ with you.”

“And what’d you expect me to do about that?!” she blurted out in response.

The historian just grinned through his beard, “Just figured you should know that she knows.”

Half a mug of ale later, when the inn was becoming fuller and fuller with the evening influx of workers returning from the fields, the barkeep emerged from the kitchen bearing a pitcher in one hand and three keys in the other. Once he put the pitcher down on one of the nearby tables, he beelined to their table, holding out a key with the number four in front of Zefaris.

“Apologies for taking so long to get you your room keys,” he beamed, waiting for her to take it before he placed keys numbered five in front of Makhus and Sigmund each. The two men exchanged looks and nods, but she was too preoccupied with a wordless internal debate to take notice, staring at the number on her key for a few seconds before she looked up the stairs, then back to the number. She stood from her chair and made her way to the second floor, bearing no particular intentions in mind, spurned on by the swirling cocktail of flustered confusion that roiled in her head.