Corrben

Ellany returned down the stairs to the kitchen after helping Muirenn up to her room. As the day came to an end, Miss Charlotte had taken up one of the guard's shirts to mend. She squinted down at the small tear and let the firelight guide her needle. When Ellany sat down opposite Miss Charlotte, the elder woman glanced up from her sewing.

The elder woman sat rocking in her chair by the hearth, not a single dark hair out of place, not even the few greying ones. Her knitting needles worked rhythmically in time with her rocking. Click, click. Click, click.

"So did you stop by the jail and acquaint yourself with the Watchers as your father bid you before he left? You know that if there's any trouble, you go straight to them." Miss Charlotte raised a thin eyebrow, regarding the younger woman across from her.

Deal with a Watcher

I brought my sister the hunting leathers I hemmed in for her and watched her change. I could not help but feel a coal of jealously ignite in my heart. Traveling was something I have always dreamed of and now she's going to the mountains. The Blue Mountains, I've heard the dwarves speak of them in reverence and I dreamed of their icy peaks and biting winds, the hidden coves and trickling waterfalls.

~ A crumpled up and yellowed parchment, frayed at the edges and worn from continued folding along the middle, would lie thrown somewhere in Combe, blowing in the Spring breeze ~

Corrben and the other scouts crept up on the camp site. The southerners were sitting on crates, drinking stolen ale and smoking stolen pipeweed. There had been a raid on a Staddle farm and likely this was some of the booty. He crouched, his spear gripped in his hand, feeling a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck. There were three men, including one of those squinty eyed ugly bastards who were notoriously cruel and good fighters. The other was a woman, though it was hard to tell if she was young because her face was lined and dirty, hard from poverty and war. 

"How long do you think it'll take them  brigands to find our hideout and kill us all?" Brittleleaf pondered as he scraped the whetstone along the blade, "I've got a whole gold coin that says three days, what about you?"

Oakdale hunched his shoulders, "How are you going to collect on that debt? I say two more days tops." 

Corrben flexed his hand, that was one thing he did not miss when he was in the field with Grimbriar, the bloody paperwork. He was filling out an arrest form for yet another petty thief, this time a lad of about thirteen who had stolen boots that were being repaired at the cobbler. How desperate did one have to be to steal broken boots? The nib of the quill scratched against the parchment, the boy only offered a first name and likely did not have a surname. He blew on the ink to let it dry, handing the sheet to Dawn Appledore to file.