37th, Winter, 516 AV
The bell rang, its irregularity cutting through the city streets. Nemori heard it from the small she shared. It made no sense. The piercing rang a few times, inconsistent as the rest of the city. It had been bothering her, one of the many things about the city that did. So, in order to attempt to put to rest one of the many mysteries, she donned her coat, hood carefully covering her hair and eyes. Shortspear on her back. Out she stepped into the corridor, slipping through the passages and hoping to avoid the innkeepers gaze. It required careful timing, waiting for her back to be turned on some paperwork or other. Nemori suspected that it would be fine if she had gotten spotted, but she would rather not run the risk for as long as possible. The floorboards creaked underfoot a mere few steps in. She was not as stealthy as she was pretending she might. Normally she waited til the innkeeper was in another room, but the bells had already stopped. Her memory of their location was quickly deteriorating and she wanted to capitalise on it while she could.
A quick glance at the innkeeper revealed her to be attentive to her task, not caring for the passing of her customers. Nemori quickly tossed up her options, another failure would definitely attract her attention. Instead Nemori attempted to merely lighten her footing, instead of outright stealth. Her eyes fixed firmly on the bottom of the door. She believed that her steps were lighter, although she had little proof. She did not look around at the innkeeper again, for fear of catching her eye.
She pulled the door open, stepped through into the busy street. Was that such a large gap before? She pushed the though from her head, allowing the door to close snuggly behind her. She stopped. Taking a moment to close her eyes and focus on the dangers in the city. She concentrated on what would likely happen if she was caught, what they might do to Morwen. She gulped, sufficiently fearful to turn her eyes into a pale green. The bells had definitely ceased and this irked her. Perhaps they would sound again soon? It seemed unlikely, she had yet to hear them in quick succession. Instead she took to walking away from the slowly spinning cubes of the inn. Part of her was glad to be outside again, even if it was a chaos of bodies and voices pushing their way through the streets. It was easy to allow the crowd to direct her. Head down and following the easy path of the pedestrians. The voices were unfamiliar and many of the words were equally bizarre.
Occasionally Nemori would be jolted into a different group of commuters, but she did not mind much. She had no idea where she was going, and she suspected that the city would not allow her to find what she wanted anyway. It seemed to make a habit of that. Nemori wondered if they was some curse to make it more difficult for Vantha to traverse, despite Alex claiming he felt the confused sway of the city too. Did she just get it worse? Perhaps it was her newness to the city that caused her confusion, although truthfully she had no idea how long Alex had been here.
“I can’t wait to see the temple. Is it really as glorious as they say?” The word temple struck Nemori and she felt herself stop. The rest of the sentence passing over her as background babble and unimportant. A few disgruntled passerby’s knocked into her suddenly stopped, aggressively telling her off and she started walking again. A sinking feeling manifesting in her stomach and she started to feel ill at the idea of being pushed towards the temple. From what she could tell the temple was the centre of their attempts to execute the blessed of Morwen. She dared herself a glance up, attempting to find a way out of the crowd. Much to her dismay she found herself in the center of a gaggle of excited people. As far as she could tell they were discussing the temple, but the words were far above her linguistic capability in Common.