Gremyne Sunsets

Zende held her breath and let the words sink in. Her father knew about what she had done. He must have suspected her for a long time now. Zende thought about her punishment for a while. Her mother would have just bored her to death with one of her lectures about how she lived and acted... but her dad had never punished her before. She didn't want to find out what it was like either.
When the voices had left, Zende went down the stairs to the kitchen. The kitchen-rooms were dark and deserted at this time of day, though one cook was keeping a night watch by sleeping next to the fire. Zende snuck around him and entered the woman-servant corridors behind it. 
"Mariann." she whispered.
"Wha?"
"I'm going, give this" Zende dropped her necklace, earrings and the money in Marianns hand, "to the man I saw today together with the leftovers from tonight. I can't give it to him myself."
"Ok." Marainn said.
Zende knew the girl wouldn't piece it together right away. She had done this before when her father or mother suddenly told her to join them on a day away from the castle. No, no-one would know she was gone until the castle woke the next morning. She'd be gone by the early morning light when the gates first opened for the workers to enter the castle. That would give her about 4 hours of a head start on foot. She didn't dare take a horse.
She grabbed an old black cloak from the wall and slept beneath it. She didn't sleep well that night, woken up by any unusual sound. 

The next morning she went out, hidden from sight by all the other dark cloaks around her. She followed a bunch of them until they reached a road. After that she just followed the road to the city of Gal'ud. The city was about 5 kilometres down the road. That was how far the castle hunting terrains extended. The road Zende followed was dusty, with rocks at some point hiding it from view. She had to climb several hills and go around a few others as the road zigzagged its way through the mountainsides of the valley. There were a lot of trees and little people so Zende felt hidden and safe. But she didn't dally. She knew her father would come for her soon. She had been walking 3 hours now and in the distance she could see the city with its narrow streets and small houses.
She was concentrating so much on the sight that she at first didn't get the meaning of the sounds behind her. Horses were closing in. Zende quickly started running to maintain more distance between them and looked around. She had two options. She could either hide in the woods around the road or make for the city.
Zende thought about both options and decided to go for the city. Her father would have a tracker with him, like he would in a real hunting party. In the forests she'd be too obvious to stay hidden, but in the city, with lots of other people and brick roads she'd be safe.
Zende ran harder, hoping to enter the city before they saw her. Minutes later her hopes were trashed. She heard a excited shouts and no doubt were the horses coaxed into running faster. The city was closing in front of her. People were looking at her, at the hunting party and then at their city. They dropped what they were doing and left the streets. Wise.
Zende ran as fast as she could through the small streets from Gal’ud to stay ahead of the search party as much as she could. Her father would know by now that she had gone. And he wouldn’t forgive her. That she was his daughter didn’t matter. A tear rolled down her cheek but she wiped it away abruptly. Not now.
Zende looked at the sky and saw that the deep blue was turning red at the edges. Night would fall abruptly, as it always did in Vyver, sheltered as it was by it’s mountains. There was still hope that she would get away. If she could just reach the mountains and cross them...
Ok, maybe she was taking this all a bit easy. Zende had never left the castle further than the hunting grounds around it. The city she was running through was not known to her. But people would help her when they found out who she was… right? Or would they betray her? Suddenly she wasn’t as sure of her flight anymore. She should have arranged transportation or shelter in stead of just taking off.
Zende hastily ducked into a very narrow alley and chided herself for thinking in ‘what ifs’. There was no way back, so she shouldn’t waste time on thinking about what she had done wrong.
Without looking she ducked around another corner and suddenly bumped into something… or rather someone.

Continue to Part 4
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All images copyrighted to me except for the dividers. I got those from Dreslough.com