Spring 3rd 519
Cassiea really appreciated the mountains. Perhaps not quite in the same way that others did; she saw their beauty frequently, but it was their terrain that really caught her appreciative attention. She grinned as sweat dripped from her brow, and her feet beat a steady tock, tock pattern as she ran up the narrow, winding passage steps. There was very little on her mind except the feel of the stone beneath her boots, and the impact on her toes through the wearing leather. She'd probably need new shoes soon, that was for sure. Either that,
or skip the shoes entirely, and run barefoot. Cassiea was fairly certain that would be foolish.
The street had been quiet, but typically as she rounded a corner, she almost knocked into a stranger that had been obscured by the jutting stone wall of the nearest building. She nodded a silent apology in his general direction, and caught the man's disapproving glare before she ran off, pushing herself faster up the increasingly narrow steps. Her heart was beating from exertion, almost to an uncomfortable rhythm. Not yet though. She liked to court with that uncomfortable pulse, see how far and how fast she could go before having to stop and bend double, puffing and red in the face, her hair flapping in wet strands around her.
Cassiea started taking two steps at a time as she tried to launch herself further and further. The issue was, as she ran, that the street was getting more busy. She'd narrowly avoided bashing into several people now, and in all honesty, running with a load of people around her was not the best way of practicing speed runs. Conceding defeat, she slowed to a jog, and then a speedy walk, her mind on what to get for dinner, whether she could splash out a little on a sweet treat.
Up ahead was a ragged gaggle of people. Cassiea, as nosy as the next, walked a little closer to get a look at whatever they were looking at. As she walked, she brushed her hair back from her face in an effort to look a little more presentable. She took a look at the assembled crowd. In fact, they all looked somewhat similar to one another. On the floor, at the bottom of a step, a woman lay. She was progressed in years, with grey hairs cropped short to her ears, but it wasn't her hair that made Cassiea wince with sympathetic pain. The woman had fallen, and badly at that.
"He.. Hey, hey you!" The youth who'd spoken beckoned Cassiea over, his expression a strange mixture of irate and worried. She wondered what on earth she had come across, but approached anyway. She didn't say anything, merely tilted her head in an implied, 'Yes?' kind of way.
"I saw you running, my granny's fallen, something's wrong, can.. can you run and get some help? I'd go but I don't want to leave her." The youth grimaced. Cassiea took a closer look at him, and smiled. "Aye, sure thing. Anything to let the doctors know?"
"Just that granny's whinging at me? Gods, I don't know. She's difficult to talk to at the best of times." He sighed a heartfelt sigh, and Cassiea tried not to smirk. Family. Lovely, but difficult to put up with sometimes, no matter how much you loved them.
"I'll try to be as fast as I can, for you and your granny." She set off in the direction of the Catholicon, after getting a few directions, to the ringing voice coming from behind her: "Me name's Dahlia, and don't you call me 'granny'!"