Parchments...

[Katharina Brightrim]

... all over the desk. Parchments on the floor and even on the chair. All sorts of parchments - some with seals, some torn, others so old that the ink is barely visible on them anymore. Parchments smeared with blood, parchments with complex looking drawings. Some parchments have been folded multiple times by the look of them. Basically, it's a lot of parchments. That, however, is hardly worth mentioning, because Katharina's sole focus rests on the one parchment in the center of the desk. Absentmindedly, she runs a finger over the words on it. Over the seal. She's calm and she's smiling as she gets up, accidentally brushing another parchment off the table, which slowly descends towards the floor. As it lands, it shows an indifferent room its content:

Sand in hand

The desert stands quiet and still - no wind no noise no yell.
For a while it has all been well - there was moral and will.
Yet, as time passes and things change - some even in a very wide range.
Frankly, if you consider it, it is strange - lets just imagine a random Page.

The Page is brave and great and good - as any decent Cadomyrian citizen should.
One day he meets a figure with a hood - which drags the unsuspecting Page into the woods.
At least he tries for what happens next - you will only find within this text.
A knight in shiny armour, likely one of the best - steps out of the town, stands out from the rest.

Panicking the figure with the hood - the one to which the Page near stood
Makes a run for it and flees - as if stung by an angry hoard of bees.
But watch the knight pick up the pace - and how he goes out on the chase.
And as people see the knight raise - they prepare for their eventual praise.

And surely it happens as expected - with a sense of honor not neglected.
The knight defeats the fiendish foe - probably with a strong-mighty blow.
Now you wonder how this story ends - about a knight that successfully fends
Off the threats instead of becoming friends - with the hooded figures? Well, that depends
On how many single grains of sands - you can hold in your bare hands.

[Katharina Brightrim]

Fun fact! The average desert beetle has a life expectancy of roughly 4 months, give or take. Or at least that is what the currently smoldering parchment in the chimney claims, as it slowly dissolve to ashes.
All the while, Katharina browses through another stack of parchments, until she comes across a roughly 20 years old parchment, which content makes her smile, a tad melancholic probably. 20 years, round about 80 beetle life cycles. Give or take...

[Katharina Brightrim]

As the sun rises over Illarion after the month of darkness, the light makes a hat on the table cast a shadow onto the carpet. Most hats, while they might be quite decorative headwear, would most likely be described as mundane, probably even boring. This, of course, does not apply to this particular hat, which comes in quite the flashy, pink version. Where other hats might have a regular hatband, this one possesses a delicately tailored lion and a boar, both standing proud and peacefully united at the front side of the pink and flashy hat. The owner of the hat carefully picks it up and puts it on, grinning at the view her reflection now has got to offer. For a moment, she marvels about the perfect fit of it and the gentle waves of the brim, before she takes it off again, ever so gently putting it back down on the table, covering - yet again - the parchment laying beneath it...

[Katharina Brightrim]

Ink, it must be said, can run insanely slow. The density and oily structure of it makes its fluidity remarkably lower than water. That, however, is not the case, when someone writes a parchment. It is even less the case, if the writer - in this instance the Countess of Cadomyr - has a specific intent in mind, a message to deliver. Which is exactly what happens as Katharina scribbles away on a parchment, letter after letter, word after word. Only at the very bottom of the line, the ink flow abruptly comes to a stop. Two words are left on the page and these are words that would come to most people as easy as breathing. Yet, they do not appear. Instead, there is a single ink drop that slowly makes its descent from the quill, eventually tainting the page exactly where the two words were meant to be. This seems to break a curse and the last two words are swiftly added to the parchment. And then it is done and Katharina rises from the desk, with a smile on her lips and stretches. "Amanda, I am done!", she exclaims and has already rushed down the steps to the ground level of their villa, before the ink has even had time to dry completely.

On a neat pile at the same desk lays a parchment, which shows a very elaborate plan of something like a cave. It is headlined with "Noble Tomb".

[Katharina Brightrim]

Done. That's the word that comes to Katharina's mind as she leaves the palace, just having turned in her resignation. The sun looks friendlier, the heat not as pressing and the sky open and wider than before. Chances and possibilities are spreading out in all directions in front of her inner eye, as she takes stroll through the streets of her Cadomyr, now a common, but immensely more free citizen of the realm once more. At least for now...