Roche’s curiosity has gotten the better of her. She has no doubt in her mind that she’ll be rebuked for this later, but that’s never stopped her in the past, and it certainly isn’t going to stop her now. Not when she can see the tall spires of the castle from where they’d set up camp for the night, towering even above the biggest trees she’s ever seen. Before dawn breaks, she shimmies out from the back of her hide tent, slinking out of the camp with the agile grace of a trickster who’s done this a time or two before. Once she’s out of sightline and earshot, she shoots to her feet and darts down a deer path towards Redwood Keep. Roche avoids the Kingsroad, suspecting that even at this early hour, the trail will be populated with travelers she has no interest in interacting with.
Technically, other than sneaking off without a guard on her heels, Roche isn’t doing anything wrong. She just wants a better look, a first look in the dawning sunlight at the place that’s to be her home. By now, the concept of change is familiar to her, but she isn’t apprehensive of it. She’s more annoyed by the fact that her father has denied her the chance to learn all of Uddegana’s secrets and nuances by shipping her off to another kingdom than she is about the fact that she is to be married. Her parents had fought, she recalls, about whether she and her littermates would be used as political bargaining chips; when her mother had vanished, leaving only the vibrant blue-and-purple feathers Roche wears in her hair behind, she’d known her fate on that front was sealed.
So, she is annoyed, but unafraid. Roche can handle a husband.
Whether he can handle her is another matter entirely.
Despite her effort to reach high ground for a better view, the trees keep her from getting a clear look at the castle, and she refuses to let her first real look be when she’s standing right in front of it. So Roche, as clever as she is troublesome, picks the tallest tree on the clifftop she’s standing on, digs her claws into the bark, and begins to climb. The redwood trees are unlike those of her homeland, and prove to be less conducive to climbing; there are no low-hanging branches for her to perch on, which leaves her to raw physical strength. It does not deter her, and she looks only up as she goes, her muscles burning by the time she’s scaled a third of it. She pauses, resting her cheek against the trunk and breathing hard, but stubbornly refusing to go back down yet.
Just a little further, she thinks, and she’ll be able to see over the tops of the trees in the valley below, just as the sun rises to bathe the castle in morning light.
