Run.

The air feels thick inside; too warm and sticky and smelling too sickly sweet, with too much ale, too many men, and too little space.

The green dress she wears, laced with silver (still wearing her house colours despite what Saimon has to say about it) feels too tight and itches her pale skin. She wants so desperately to rip it off and bear her smallclothes in front of all these people... to push through the heavy double doors and be outside with the wind and the air and the green rolling hills for miles and miles in every direction; to hear the sea hitting the rocks and smell the salty air or freedom.

She wants to be with Charlie in the stables, a friend and not yet a friend, with the horses that calm at her appearance and nuzzle at her neck. The warm beasts who let her crawl up onto their backs and crave the same quick, desperate, running freedom that she does.

Not here. Not where she's so unsure of what to do, how to dance, who to dance with. And she misses the companionship of Mog and Tog. The easy, playful teasing and their practical jokes... but something changed there, without her realizing and now they're trying to play grown-ups. She's not ready for that. And not ready for the messy, new, hot and cold and desperately warm feelings that gather just below her stomach in ways that she can't quite explain yet.

She wants her Mother, but not her mother, because her Mother doesn't care about her and her impending womanhood unless that means something to her own political desires. She wants someone other than Saimon. Someone to explain what's needed of her, because right now she has no idea of what she's supposed to be. She couldn't give Tog a favour, didn't know how or what... and now she's clearly lost them.

She wants to run. No. She NEEDS to run.