“Always prepare for the worst rather than hoping for the best. You can never go wrong that way.” - Old folk saying.

“That was fast. Did you get everything settled?” Aideen asked when she saw Celia leaving Azulise village from the north. The other, younger woman looked somewhat downcast, yet she walked forward with firm and certain steps as she left behind the village where she had lived her entire life so far. “No regrets in leaving? Anyone you’d like me to teach a lesson to?”

“Things are settled, Miss Aideen,” replied Celia as she looked up and met Aideen’s eyes with her own. Aideen could see the determination in the girl’s looks, which partially answered many of her questions already. “And no to both of the later questions, I have no regrets left behind by this point, and I don’t blame the other villagers for acting the way they did. They never knew any other way of life.”

“I would have probably been the same had it not been for my parents and grandpa showing me what other places were like, honestly,” admitted the girl as an afterthought.

Celia had just paid a visit to her old home in the village. It was indeed taken over by other tenants of the landlord as she expected, though fortunately the tenants were old friends of her family, and had actually welcomed her back kindly at first, with hugs and tears of relief. It was only later when they warily confirmed the suspicions of what might have happened to her that their faces turned dour and grim.

While the old family friends had welcomed her back, they were well aware of what the majority of the village thought about matters like what happened to Celia. Rumors had circulated shortly after she and her grandfather disappeared, though they died down after a month or so when most had thought of her as dead.

They were all too aware how the village would have ostracized the girl for something that was no fault of her own if she stayed around. It was a backwards view, yet also one that most of the village embraced as part of life. Few of the villagers ever looked further past the things they learned from the parents, who learned it from their parents before them.

Despite the kind worry from her old family friends, and their offer to shelter her if he needed to, Celia made it clear to them that she had only come to say her goodbyes. The old horse her family had was taken care of well by the new tenants, and had nuzzled against her when she visited it in the stables.

Her family friends understood her decision to leave, and while they worried, they mostly sent her off with kind words and told her to take good care of herself. Celia was touched that there were some who would still stand beside her even after she related her tale to them - though she skipped the bit about rising into unlife - and bid her farewell with some tears in her eyes.

She left after a while, and kept the hood of her cloak up as she walked through the village to meet up with Aideen outside the north gate. Celia couldn’t help but feel somewhat downcast when she walked through the village of her birth, probably for the last time, as she had no idea if she would ever return to the familiar sights again.

After the few days she had spent with Aideen on the road, she had recovered well. Physically there was nothing wrong with her, as long as one looked past her being an unliving. Mentally, she still felt burdened by the horrible experiences of the past few months, even if she had seen the cruelty of the world since when she lost her parents at a young age and somewhat prepared for it.

When she was held captive by the bandits and used as a relief for their pent-up lust, it was truly a life worse than death for her. She recalled how she grew weaker day by day in the captivity, and even remembered the moment she drew her last breath, to welcome the oblivion that claimed her.

Only for that oblivion to spit her back out and left her with no release from the torment, at least until Aideen came and saved her. The thought of being stuck in a life worse than death for eternity was what had almost broken her mentally at the time, rather than the indignities she had suffered.

“I said it before, but you’re taking this far better than I had expected,” commented Aideen as Celia joined her on the journey northwards. They soon put the village far behind them and lost sight of it before too long as they took a turn to avoid a forested region.

“Us village folk are tougher than we look,” replied Celia as she walked calmly beside Aideen. The tunic and trousers she wore under her hooded cloak was borrowed from Aideen, and was a size too large, especially with how she had to roll the leg of the pants a bit because Aideen was nearly half a head taller than her, with noticeably longer legs to boot. “When it was our lot in life to be the downtrodden, many prepared themselves for the worst. There’s always some that just fall into despair when shit happens, of course, but they usually die out in those cases, while the ones made of sterner stuff get to live on.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” said Aideen. “I have to admit that I’ve lived a rather… privileged life myself, so sometimes that might skew my perspectives somewhat.”

“Either way, that life is behind me now,” said Celia somewhat wistfully. She seemed to ponder things and collect her thoughts for a moment before she continued her words. “It was strange. I had expected to leave the village behind some day, often with a prince on a white steed like the stories in my fantasies. I just never expected it to happen… this way.”

“As they often said, Celia, life is often stranger than fiction.”