In the hours before their wagon was ready to depart, the servants within the manor fluttered about, organizing and locking the effulgent wardrobes of her siblings into suitcases. Clementine locked herself within her study to obsessively read and re-read a report; written in exquisite calligraphy, wax-stamped with the signet the University of Paridon, it read:
"Let it be known that the following coordinates are to be exactly followed, lest a punishment of uncertain gravity befall the ignorant traveler," Maps and landmarks in conjunction with arcane diagrams demarcated the Mistways, dotted lines of flight that fade into uncertainty.
Above one of them, there is written "The Serpent's Coil," and above the other, "The Shrouded Way." A gulp.
She had been afraid before, but they were the petty problems of girls in gowns and crinoline; it couldn't be compared to the knot of anxiety that gripped her innards now. The document continued, describing the testimony of an expedition dating roughly twenty years ago, after Paridon was severed from Zherisia, in the wake of the ensuing famine.
In a desperate bid from the middling class, the burgeoining merchant-proletarians had tried to secure a trade route with anybody they could find, and approached the Mistways haphazardly. Their rackety wagons soon found themselves in the plateau before a cliff, and they could not stop before the horses found themselves in free fall. Only a few survivors from a group of thirty ever made it back to tell the tale, and in the struggle, many who survived the initial fall died of the very hunger they wished to quell back home. Mothers, fathers, sons and nieces.
She bit her nails, ruining her manicure. She hid her hand into the silken folds of her elbow, she wouldn't let the servants see her like this. Promptly, she decided to roll up the document and locked it away in a varnished oaken box. There was no use in indulging in tragedy.
"The wagon-mongers will see us through, it's in their nature to scramble about as nomads through the passages. They will serve." Her own mind spoke to itself like an old friend, trying to find a measure of comfort. It was the only thing that steadied her, there was no room for wishful thinking for those committed to a secular mind. Well, that and...
A tincture for sleep would do the trick, "Yes, only to ease ourselves, nothing more..." The sweet drops of serenity soon gave her the necessary indifference to fall asleep in the wagon's cushions come the critical moment, she was calm and dreaming of flowers when the mists' maws surrounded the carriage.
