The end of the Adventure

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Up ahead the tavern loomed out of the mist. Once, Rosie would have been glad to see it. Right now, however, she was just too damn tired to feel anything. The wolf she had been riding had been too tired to carry her for a while, and so she had half walked, half stumbled the last hour or so of their journey.

The wound where the serpent had torn its bloody roadside toll from her leg was aching and throbbing, and an ominous stain was beginning to seep through the bandages she had made. Her scalp and shoulders stung with sunburn, from the desert they had trudged across, and her mouth was as dry as bone.

She couldn't talk. She had not tried for a while, and neither had Worthy. There was nothing more to say, only a slow and stubborn desire to keep going.

How long had they been gone? Rosie wasn't really sure she remembered anymore. She was beginning to wonder if she really remembered who she was either. She had been someone else before, she thought. A Rosie-Out-Of-The-Hedge. A Rosie who sometimes had a job, and a boyfriend, and who watched DVDs with Satrap Sam. A Rosie who was a person, and not a strange mixture of rags and pains.

Outside the inn was a weird collection of riding emus (had she wanted one of those once?), lizards and horses. The wolf, padding slowly and painfully, beside Worthy and Rosie perked up briefly at the sight of the horses. From inside there was the noise of raucous singing, in a familiar voice. Light spilled out from an open doorway and Worthy stepped aside to let her bedraggled companion enter first.

From his table inside the inn, Steampunk looked up and his face split in a broad grin.

"Lads! Our wayward heroines have returned! Get those girls some Grog and some Grub! Double... nah...triple portions!"

The two women came forward, half pushed by the bar staff and pulled by the drunken mannikin, Worthy more solid than Rosie, Rosie as grey as a ghost. At the table, they sat, and Rosie lifted a face towards Steampunk, who seemed as bright as brass to her. She had a thousand stories to tell, she knew. They were her stories - her adventures - for the first time earned with blood and courage. Yet she was less excited than she might have expected. Instead she just felt very tired.

"Hello Mr Steampunk," she said, and even to her own ears she sounded rather like a small child. "We have had an awfully big adventure. But I think it's time I went home now."

And then she sat and waited for someone to tell her when she could go to bed.