The only ones that should have been awake at such an hour would have been the owls, badgers and foxes...not Jackilyn. The dreams were there again, more vivid than before. Anyone at the soothery would know what those consisted of, and they left her restless. She did what she was told, what her mother suggested the night prior, "think of something nice before you close your eyes Jacki dear", she did, and the dreams came back with a vengeance. She only wished she had some of that tea the dwarf would make, it might have knocked her out cold and at that she resolved to look for a solution in the book she borrowed.
Time pressed on and it was the middle of the night. The blanket was a scrunched up bundle, her pillows, of which she had more than most, were asunder. Giving up, she lit the small oil lamp beside the bed, it's light casting long shadows upon the cluttered walls, strewn with belongings that the child she was, had accumulated over the years, through to womanhood. She took her slate and began to draw, more silly pictures, more dusty chalk caking her fingertips. Maybe he was right, maybe it was a sickness, she thought. Though the thoughts made her smile, his awkwardness, how he felt against her, how they spent their day and night out by the tree watching the waterfall. It wouldn't do, he was angry at her about his books, he was dismissive of her when she was learning that last day, but, she still thought of him because the words she was forced to declare, words in front of the woman lacking her own voice, were true, she -did- love him, and as she had told him, you cannot simply brush such thoughts aside.
At that moment, a choice was made. She got up, avoiding the shaggy sheepdog laying at the side of the bed, and sat at a small, ornately carved desk and took to writing the man a letter which was to be delivered that morning. Like he hadn't with Rue, she too decided not to give up. The dog stretched, looked at her, and sighed, perhaps in his doggy mind judging her for being so foolish, though more likely thinking her mad just for being awake. She smiled at the dog, she didn't care why his reasons, for she had news to give the healer after all.
