[Crystal Heart]

Crystal Heart entered the Inn, hoping for a nice warm drink. Lately the winds had been too cold for her liking and brought memories of darker times in her past that she had been trying to forget. She entered and looked around, her heart fluttering wildly. She knew it was silly to still look for a face that had long since passed on, but she still looked. Somehow she still didn't believe.

She walked over to the bar gracefully, her cloak sweeping across the floor. It had been her mothers, the only thing of her that she had left. She hoped that she wouldn't stick out to much. A newcomer in this Inn. Sure she didn't look a thing like the locals, with her long red hair and her piercing pine eyes. She knew that many wouldn't see her face, probably wouldn't think much about her since her hood concealed her and her thoughts. Like a safety net that protected her heart from becoming destroyed once again.

She sat down lightly in the stool and smiled lightly.
"Give me the warmest, strongest drink that you have please." She requested as she rubbed her hands together to warm them. They had gone frightfully cold, colder then ice. As if the blood didn't circulate in her slender fingers that had wheeled many swords in her time. Oh, she wasn't old in any way, she just had been forced to grow up quickly. She had been expected to be a young lady that brought fortune to her famished family at the age of ten and she knew now that she would never get those carefree days back. The days of happiness before the death of her beautiful mother.

She hoped this bar would have something so strong that she would sleep without memories, without fear that night. Even though she had no idea where she would even sleep, she wasn't worried. She would find someone to buy her a room. She wouldn't let them in that bed, she had morals of course, but she knew how to be pursasive to a lonely man. She only had a few coins to her name. She knew that if she sold the cloak that concealed her then she would have a lot more coins, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It was her mothers. Her father had already sold everything else of her mother. This was the one thing she had been able to keep.

She began to wonder if he was looking for her, searching for the daughter that had ran away from her home in the deep darkness of the night. Crystal didn't believe that he was. He was too preoccupied with the new woman in his life that didn't like the fact that he had been married before with a child.

Crystal stopped thinking about her past and waited for her drink quietly as she inspected the room around her.