“But she didn’t know about the undead? Could be a monster, then. Shame about the beast. We can’t look for it now. It’ll be black as pitch in another hour. Can’t get caught out. Rethis says he thought he saw a bear.”

“How big?”

“Big.”

The thought of a bear had provided the ‘unconscious’ Cara sufficient reason to have her eyes flutter open. The two villagers had bent over her, and soon she’d been following them back to their home.

“My name is Idelt Geishart. My daughter says you’re a traveller. New to Noelictus. If you’ve lost your horse and belongings, Lord Lantal will see to you. Until then, you may rest here.”

The [Blacksmith] gave Cara a short speech while they were inside his home. He had a smithy attached to his house, a crude one capable of moving iron and not much else. Cara had her speech ready from the silent walk and being unconscious.

“I can’t thank you enough, Mister Geishart. I thought I’d be lost forever. I’ve lost my money and possessions, and I hope I can find my horse, but I’m willing to help or do anything rather than be a burden—”

The man actually backed up as Cara tried to clasp his hand and gave him her most genuine smile. He shook his head as Violetta clattered about in the kitchen.

“No need, Miss…Sullivan? Lord Lantal will see right by you. I’m just doing my duty. I could never turn someone away without a place to stay the night.”

How…disarmingly charitable. Cara blinked and eyed the man. Now she wasn’t on the road staring at his back, or peeking at him while lying in a faint, she saw he was, well, very [Blacksmith]-like.

That was to say, he had large arms, and an odor of charcoal about him. He sat squarely in what looked to be a hand-carved chair, a bit of soot on the side of his square jaw. He wore dark clothing, unlike his daughter who mixed white into her dress. He couldn’t have been more than…forty?

By contrast, Violetta still looked like some odd cross between a medieval-dressed village girl, which is exactly what she was, and a Victorian-era maid with the white-black dress motif. Her skin was pale from lack of sunlight like her father’s—if there was color in either father or daughter, it was the slightest bit of violet in their hair color, which Cara would have assumed was a dye. But she doubted either of them went to the trouble; it was most noticeable at the ends of their hair, or in faint streaks of color.

Natural violet in hair? Fascinating. Oh, and their eyes. Idelt’s were a pale yellow, and Violetta’s a yellow-green, the colors mixing in her irises.