"M-me? I, I'm from Cairhien.." she said, stuttering. She had arrived to the city of Tar Valon less than a few weeks from that moment, as she was being asked these questions about her past. Being born a Cairhien and living in the country hadn't really ever been her fondest memories. In fact, she couldn't really recall anything she would want to tell anyone else..
The cup raised in the woman's hand, and Vispiela hurried to fill it again with tea. Serving as a tea-pourer for some minor noble was, while a living, not really something you woke up to in the morning and thought that your life was wonderful. In fact, it was the very opposite of it. Each day was like the previous one and the daily chores never changed one bit. It didn't really matter what kind of a weather it was outside, like it did for the farmhands for example. No, every day was like the other.. and it had been like that for as long as she could remember. Pour tea for the guests and the House's members, then stay out of sight until you're required again. Like being part of the decoration.
She was sixteen years old. She hadn't seen life outside of the House and her family's small dwelling. Her father was a farmhand, who had been working under the House's estate farms for decades. Just as his father, before him. Her mother was a tea-servant for the House, and she too had held position as long as she had been working for the House. And her grandmother? Vispiela knew nothing of her. For all she knew, she might have been a tea-servant like her mother, but it was a topic which was never discussed of in detail. Her siblings, two brothers and a sister, were distant to her. Her younger brother had left the household at an early age, running away. Her older brother followed the footsteps of her father, acting as a farmhand. Her younger sister was six years younger than Vispiela was, but it seemed like her fate would be to become a servant for the House as well.
All it took was one special day to shake the foundations of Vispiela's life. One day. The day had begun like any other day, with preparing the tea, serving it and then standing and waiting to see if anyone would call for more. But at afternoon, she had been sent to fetch an delivery from the docks of the city. She was chosen because all the messenger-boys has been on errands, and it was a chore that needed to be done right at that very moment. So she set off to the city alone, for the first time in her life. It was like a dream come true, something else to do than to pour tea.
Vispiela wandered towards the docks. The city was full of people, just like any other day, but she wasn't accustomied to having to push and be pushed in the crowd. She moved towards the docks, but a few times she ended up in a dead-end and had to turn about to return to the main street again. On one of these side-streets she saw how a man was mugged, stolen from all his belongings and left there unconcious. What made people perform such a thing? She didn't see it her business to report it to anyone, so she hurried along.
Arriving at the docks, she looked around for who she had been sent to meet with. Not too long of a moment had passed as a cheerful looking man with a big smile approached her. She recognized as one of the servants of the House she served in, due to the colors of his clothing, but she had never seen him in the manor. The man greeted her, passed her a small box and told it was quite a precious thing and should be handled with care. She took the box with a nod, curtseyed to the man and started making her back to the city, holding the box with care.
It hadn't been long since she had left the docks when she noticed she hit a dead-end, yet again. Sighing, she turned around and stumbled into someone. Apologizing and looking up, she saw the same men who had mugged up the person she had seen in one of the side-streets before. Blinking a few times, she came to a realization that the men before her were going to mug her, as well. She froze in fear as the men moved to surround her, blocking her escape. Paralyzed, the last thought that was going through her head was that she was going to die, before the world blackened in her eyes.
What had happened she wasn't certain of, but she woke to see an woman in her middle-age searching her body. Noticing that she was being watched, the woman quickly withdrew and walked away. Slowly standing to her feet, Vispiela felt that her entire body had suffered a dragging through streets or similiar, and she found herself on the northern side of the city of Cairhien. Looking down at her clothing, she noticed they had experienced a lot of wear, and were covered with mud. But being unclean wasn't really her concern, but the fact that the small box had stolen. She had heard that the nobility might hang servants who had failed in their duties, and sometimes for even less. What should she do? She wouldn't be able to go back to the House without risking death, and they would likely come looking for her at some point.
Not certain of the location she was in, she walked slowly, painfully in an attempt to find an familiar looking place. To her inconvinience, she ended up in yet another dead end. Turning about to head out of the side-street, the middle-aged woman who had been searching her body was staring at her, standing with another woman who seemed to be about the same age as Vispiela herself was. Freezing in fear of being mugged yet again, Vispiela could do nothing but stare in horror at the woman, who seemed to notice the distraught and simply smile at her.
The older woman told the younger one to undress the House clothing from Vispiela, and she did so. Then the older woman threw a bunch of foregater looking clothes to the younger woman, and told her to fit Vispiela in them. After that, the younger woman went off with the House clothing. Giving a grin the older woman took off, leaving the frozen in terror Vispiela to stand in the sidestreet.
A few days had passed since the fateful encounter with the muggers. Vispiela had not gone back to the House, in fear of being hanged for having lost the delivered item. Instead, she had headed over to the northern foregate, and spent time as a deliverer-girl in between the few shops in the foregate. She always held her head low, and no one really seemed to pay her much of attention. She heard two of the guards talking about a murder in one of the Houses, and that the murderer had belonged to the House. Both the murdered and the murderer had died.
Approaching the guards, Vispiela asked with stutter which House had been involved in the incident, and they confirmed her suspicions that it had been the House she had belonged to. The murderer had been a tea-servant of the House, and the murdered had been one of the scribes. They had found the murderer in the scribes room with a bloody dagger, and the House guards had accidentaly hit her too hard in the head when taking her into custody, killing her in the process as well. Stumbling away from the guards, Vispiela sought a place to think about what she had heard.
A few years went by. Vispiela had decided to stay in the foregate during this time, for two reasons. First, she feared she would be hanged to have 'let' an murderer into their House and not doing anything about it. Second.. this had been a chance to break free from the life of a servant. She had nothing to call her home now, really. Her mother and father probably thought she had died, and that their daughter had been a murderer. Her siblings she hadn't really ever known too well, so she felt like she missed nothing.
She was now free to do what she wanted to do, even though the way she had gotten free had not been what she expected. Letting go of the boundaries that held her in Cairhien, she took a ferry to cross the river over to Aringill. It was time to start a new life with the money she had earned as a courier.
Vispiela Wyethir
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