She did not want Dag to despise her, to take her for something low. But then, she would never apply the word typical to him.

So…was Dag lonely? Or lucky?

He didn’t seem the lucky sort, somehow.

So how would you know? Her heart felt as if it knew him better than any man, no, any person she’d ever met. The feeling did not stand up to inspection. He could be married, for all he’d said to the contrary. He could have children. He could have children almost as old as her. Or who knew what? He hadn’t said. There was a lot he hadn’t talked of, when she thought about it.

It was just that…what little he’d talked about had seemed so important. As though she’d been dying of thirst, and everyone else had wanted to give her piles of dry gimcrackery, and he’d offered her a cup of plain pure water. Straightforward. Welcome beyond desire or deserving. Unsettling…

The valley they were riding down opened out, the creek ran away through broad fields, and the farm lane gave onto the straight road at last. Dag turned the mare left. And whatever opportunity she had just wasted was gone forever.

The straight road was busier today, and grew more so as they neared the town. Either the removal of the bandit threat had brought more people out on the highway, or it was market day. Or both, Fawn decided. They passed sturdy brick-wagons and goods-wagons drawn by teams of big dray horses pulling hard going out, and rode alongside ones returning, not empty, but loaded with firewood or hitchhiking county folk taking produce and handcrafts to sell. She caught snatches of cheerful conversation, the girls flirting with the teamsters when no elders rode with them. Farm carts and haywains and yes, even that manure wagon she’d wished for in vain the other day. The scent of coal smoke and woodsmoke came to Fawn’s nose even before they rounded the last curve and the town came into sight.

Nothing about this arrival was like anything she had pictured when she’d started out from home, but at least she’d got here. Something that she’d begun, finally finished. It felt like breaking a curse. Glassforge. At last.

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