The Morning Stroll [open]

[Yloise]

“You could not even give me a smile or a hello when greeting me at the door?” Yloise asked her reflection in the mirror. She was applying makeup quickly and adeptly, turning this way and that to make sure the candlelight caught all of the facade that she was putting on her face. She liked her new outfit, very slimming and easy to move in. She had already packed a few bags of other designer gowns and items from her mother's closet on the back of her coeurl.

 

She pouted, then smiled as the dark red rouge put on her lips blended perfectly. Dropping the leftover canister of red coloring, it rolled off the dresser and onto the floor where she kicked it, causing it to roll under the bed and out of sight.

 

She did not care to fetch it. This would be the last time she visited her parents caverns. She looked around her parents room, picking up anything metallic that she could melt down in the future, and stuffing it into a makeshift bag that was tied around her shoulder. It was only when she got to the kitchen and dining areas of the carved caves that her bag began to become almost too heavy for even the pugilist to carry. She raided the family's stash hidden in the floor of the den for any Gil or merchandise easily carried in pockets. She was disappointed that there was less than expected in the hideaway.

 

She moved from each room, remembering, looking, reflecting, upon her days from her birth until the day they kicked her out and set her on the path to setup a shop in Ul'dah. When she notified the family upon her failure to comply, she was dismissed and cut off with a response from her parent's solicitor.

 

She moved over to the bar and pulled a decanter of brandy and took a few drinks directly from it. “Should not drink too much, I need every drop.” She commented out loud. She took a second container in her free hand and began to douse the carpets, the furniture, the tapestries coating each room as she passed through. Only then she finished emptying each of the six types of alcohol from the bar, and sampling some for herself when she arrived at the front door, she paused.

 

Turning around to the two figures draped in a rug, tied together back to back in the middle of the entry hall, she said, “Payback is a bitch, and I am doubly so.” She took a cigar from her pack and lit it, only to throw the match back inside as she closed the door behind her, erasing any signs that she ever lived there at all.

 

Yloise marched out of the caverns and into the dawning sunlight of a new day. She squinted and stretched after a long night of rifling through her childhood home. “Let's see what is next for me!” She said excitedly. She felt a huge release of relief and headed down the path to the southeast to the White Maiden river. As she did so, she called her coeurl and hopped upon his back and the two trotted down the cobblestone away from the caverns.

 

She was already hours away before anyone seen the smoke or damage caused to her family's home. By then, the cobblestones already changed to a dirt path, leading up to the edge of the river where a bridge crossed within a short distance. It was fall, and the river was full from the mountains gushing from the most recent storms up north. She nudged her coeurl to a trot, as she looked around for anything suspicious. A bridge was a likely place to ambush someone laden down with goods.