Over the Wall
Auden's feet stamped loud and furious down the hallways, blackly ignoring the eyes and whispers of maids and servants as they parted about Auden like water. Once she's back in her room, Auden feels her chest heave, panic raw and roiling bubble her stomach as Auden leaned with her back against the door.
Was this to be her fate? Married to some 'Lord' who'd only ever seen her as Laurel had. Something lesser and wild and dirty? 'So fight back.' Again with a voice that Auden isn't entirely sure belongs to her whispers in her blood, soothing and promising all at once. Fight back? Auden would need a goddamn miracle. Weapons were not, as Laurel explained to Auden multiple times when she'd ask, ladylike. She'd never been allowed to train or fight; and Laurel had always been the master manipulator between the two.
In her wild thoughts, her feral pacing Auden hadn't realized her legs had carried her to the window. That damned wall silent and ancient, suffocating and taunting her. 'Come, come if you dare' the moss speckled stones seem to call to Auden as she feels a shiver run through her body, something determined and fierce she'd not felt before clawing up in her stomach.
Auden would not be sold off like cattle to the first person willing to take her off Laurel's hands. She would not waste her years away bearing children for some mighty lord who only found her bed when he wanted heirs. The thoughts fuel her hand as Auden tears about her room. She finds the satchel Charlie had given her last year as a present, along with some fleece-lined tunics and cloaks. It could have been minutes or hours before Auden can will her hand to move again and desperately she's stuffing what she can fit into the satchel, a plan already forming in her mind. Her mother and her father had lived beyond the wall. Sure maybe not a long time, but they were free and that promise of freedom makes her feel drunk.
Powerful. She wouldn't meet with Charlie. Pure and sweet as he was, Charlie would never understand. He'd try to stop her or worse yet try to join her and Auden couldn't have his life hang over her head. Rather she would wait until dusk, and she would slip from the estate to the walls. The guards had no right to stop her from going, all who reached eighteen years was free to go beyond the wall. And then, once she was beyond this fucking prison she'd run until no one found her, until they forgot her name and Auden could live as she wanted to...
These are the thoughts that fuel Auden's almost comically silent frantic packing, keeping an ear out for unwanted visitors. Luck, in perhaps the first time, smiled upon Auden as she finished packing, kicking the satchel beneath the bed. She'd left one pair of trousers and a tunic to change into, and with nothing left to do, Auden sank into the windowsill, her eyes fixed on the sky as she waited for the sun to sink.
It's not until the maids bring Auden a dinner tray to her room does Auden enact the first half of her plan. Stripping easily from her nightgown, she finds the tunic she set aside from earlier, fingers trembling as she slipped it on. It was a little too big, and clung low to her hips even with a belt. It felt... Freeing more so than any dress and Auden smiles through the darkness, thinking this was her first reward. For being brave, for leaving because Mother curse them all, she would be leaving.
That thought fills her with enough resolve to snatch her satchel from its hiding place, stuffing it with what food she could travel easily with from her dinner tray. Mostly bread and fruit, but Auden tells herself it would do. It's not until her fingers are on the golden knob of her room does she glance behind, some silent goodbye to the one place that had been her refuge from and her prison to Laurel. Too easily Auden's mind summons images of Laurel, her mocking words of 'so much like your mother' whispering through the svelte woman's head. For a dreadful moment, Auden isn't sure if her fingers will move, but she pulls some strength from within and with a soft creak steps into the antechamber.
It was empty as it should have been at this time and as Auden creeps across the thick red carpet she can't help but feel another stir of guilt, this time at Charlie's face that swims into her mind. He would think that she hadn't been able to sneak to the barracks, or perhaps at worst that she'd lost her nerve. Would he realize tomorrow as soon as she wasn't in her chambers? Laurel certainly wouldn't look for her, Auden could practically hear her crowing. 'See, I was kind and good, gave that child everything. And still see how she turned out, a wild thing after all.'
Exhaling, Auden forces herself to continue moving, sticking to shadow trying to think of anyone but Laurel and the image of Charlie. He'd been the only person, one of the few who'd shown a soft and warm acceptance for Auden. As she was not what others wanted her to be. In another life... Auden's throat thickens with tears as she steps out from the estate, the cold Autumn air stirring her cheeks rosy. She couldn't think about that. She couldn't be what Charlie wanted her to, and he could never be what she'd wanted. Even if Auden stayed, it couldn't be with her pretty brown-eyed lover.
With more steel than she ever thought herself capable of, Auden creeps to the estate's gardens. To the small hole in the wall she'd only recently discovered. She was going to show Charlie tonight but... Auden shakes her head as if trying to physically clear away the thoughts. Dead leaves crunch under foot as Auden approaches the wall, pushing back the moss that covered her escape to freedom.
It takes Auden four tries before she's able to wriggle and worm her way through the wall; the rough stone scraping at her skin making Auden hiss as she rubbed her lightly bleeding wrist and it takes her a moment before the weight of her actions sink in. She'd done it. A small hole in the wall that led her to freedom. Auden would have danced for joy, had she not turned and found herself facing the thick and black woods. From her window the woods seemed small, insignificant.
But as she took a tentative step to the tree line, casting heavy untold looks back to the estate, the settlement she'd called home for so many years, the woods felt anything but small. Overhead, and from all about her the black of night is almost tangible, a weight against Auden's skin as she shakily gathers up her satchel from where she had tossed it through the hole. Auden flinched when her hand brushed dead, fallen leaves slick and slimy from a recent rain, quickly shouldering the satchel haphazardly as she drew the cloak tighter about her skin.
So few times had she been outside the estate this late at night, she's not used to the way the wind covets and licks at her exposed skin, playful as an old lover and Auden doesn't need to look in a mirror to know her pale, freckled cheeks are flushed crimson from the cold. Still as if wading into freezing waters she takes a deep breath, and takes her first step forward.
No lights spring up from the house, no calls or lurking beasts pounce at her from the dark. Only silence, peppered with the call of late-season birds and insects infrequently calling dare disturb that near dreadful still. Her second step and still, no waiting demons or guards. A thrill runs down Auden's spine and she's not sure if it's the first inkling of freedom against her skin, or of danger. Still, that clawing tearing something rises up in her stomach and Auden makes a determined noise in the back of her throat. She had suffered Laurel's scorn for years. The settlement's. She would not be cowed by dark and still woods.
A few more steps and Auden can no longer see the wall, a small trembling breath, as if unable to believe her own freedom stutters past her lips. She had no plan beyond this, and now that she was out in the woods it all felt much too real. Perhaps in an attempt to soothe herself, remind herself that she wasn't entirely defenseless Auden's hand drifts to the blunted dagger on her hip, something she'd convinced Charlie to give her years ago, 'just in case'. It brings her only a small sense of comfort as she takes marching steps further and further into the dark woods.