And the story continues on…
Day 38: Anna chewed her lips as she thought about it.
Anna chewed her lips as she thought about it. She wondered how much of her current dislike was caused by the fact that she might have an option. Was her apartment too small now because she knew she could go back to the grander properties that her family once owned? It was something to think about as she walked.
While she loved the grandeur of the home where she grew up, looking back Anna always thought of it as cold. Sure the heater went out frequently in the winter where she lived, but somehow it still seemed warmer. She knew she wasn’t painting her former home with the gloss of nostalgia. She enjoyed the comforts money provided, but it hadn’t been a paradise. There were the cold echoing halls. The lessons in duplicity from others that one called friends. The political wrangling and the feeling of secrets being kept. She didn’t know if secrets had a scent to them but if they did, Anna believed that was the dominant scent of her childhood home.
Secrets whispered around every corner and snuck in through the air vents. There were secrets the family held and secrets they tried to pry from others. There were the secrets gathered and whispers of secrets lost. The very air was weighted with them.
‘Maybe a compromise,’ she decided. ‘Something that combines some of the benefits of wealth without all the icy trappings and air tainting secrets.’
Anna shook her head and smiled at herself. She patted her bag. Inside were the papers that claimed she was no longer to be hunted. She was pardoned. Her family wealth and property restored. ‘But what would really happen if I tried to claim any of it?’
She somehow doubted that even if everything was given back to her that she could simply walk in and pick up the threads of her old life. She changed in the time she was gone.
‘But I am going to have to find work soon,’ she reminded herself. She made no connections to the magical community in this city. At the moment that would keep her from being traced. No one would have had any cause for contact with her and if Marcus asked if they had any knowledge of her, they wouldn’t.
However, in every other city she made connections. Some were severed when she left, mostly by others figuring out she was hunted and seeking to cash in on turning her in. Others remained viable and she suspected that unless something happened while she was gone, she could go back and reactivate those connections, finding work as she had before. While Anna still had savings, both in the bank here under an assumed name and identification, she also had stashed funds that she didn’t take to the bank. She was not in dire straits and wouldn’t be for a while, but sooner or later her money would run out and she needed a plan.
‘Better to plan without the family money into the mix,’ Anna decided. The question remained as she continued to walk. Should she settle here and make connections to the community or should she return to previous haunts and reconnect with those she already knew. But the time she stopped for the night, Anna hadn’t come to a decision. She suspected she would debate the question with herself until she finished her business in the lost city and returned.
Ten til Midnight 