No place like home

Agatha looked up and wiped imaginary sweat off her brow, finally able to see the results of her work.

Greencrest was her hometown, but the house she'd grown up in looked the same as ever; clapboards leaning drunkedly, a washed out gray-brown color planted in the corner of a weedy glade. Her earliest memories were of picking flowers in the field and catching frogs in the river to the south, but the sight of home itself made her frown, small and guarded. She shrugged off the plow's harness, raised her arms, and stretched with a yawn.

Their old horse had died years and years ago; although the field had grown fallow and she'd found other places to cultivate, in the last few years she'd made an effort to do something about it when she could. In the time they'd let it lay, stones had grown more numerous than plants. She'd almost broken the blade twice, and her shoulders hurt, but she had pushed on. It hadn't been easy, although plowing the field hadn't been nearly as hard as she'd thought it would be. Once she'd started moving she'd been able to keep moving as long as she didn't stop.

Agatha put her hands on her hips and smiled at the broken dirt around her, quietly pleased with herself. She knelt down and brushed off a thistle before popping it into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. It was too late in the season for flowering plants, but if she planted a few tubers-

The yell made her stand and immediately look back at the house, frightened, but there was no sound from it. She went to draw her sword before remembering where she'd left it and her armor, instead lifting the plow with both hands and holding it's edge up. She lowered it back to earth a few moments later when a rider came into view, waving and grinning. Her heart slowed down by degrees.

"About time I found you! Don't you get mail here in the sticks?" He laughed, riding up and dismounting. The man wearing plated armor had an open sort of face, one used to smiling more than anything else. He glanced over her shoulder and she grimaced.

"No, the postmaster wouldn't accept barter, only payment. Now they hold my letters in town. I didn't want them delivered here... It's good to see you, Kirk. When was the last time...?"

"Few months or so. 'S why I'm here, matter of fact. The order needs it's figurehead to sort something out. You heard about the war?"

"Which one?" She asked, and he laughed. It hadn't been a joke.

"There's a mercenary company operating behind the lines, in your territory. Thirty men or so, killing and torching and raping their way across the greenbelt. The Rose can't spare any companies to take care of it, but..." He trailed off, waving his hands at her. She nodded, thinking it over.

"They won't draft me afterwards, will they?" She asked warily. Part of the agreement for her training, gear, and membership was that technically she wasn't a knight, and held no titles or degrees of nobility herself. Defending her hearth and home was all she wanted to do, not fight battles for the gains of petty despots. She was nothing more than a mascot, something for people to swap stories about.

"No, the agreement stands! Just, it's a Rose problem. Best have you handle it." He said guilelessly. "You know where Oldstone is? It's not on my map..."

"I know where it is. It's to small to bother writing in, but the people there are good hearted. I'm sorry, I'll be just a moment, let me gather my things." She said, hurrying across her field and picking her way between furrows.

When she neared the house she slowed and began to creep, trying to make as little noise as possible. The creak of her door almost made her hiss nervously, but she kept it in and made her silent way to the room that had always been hers. It was very small, now, and she didn't fit her old bed, but she'd kept it as it was before she'd left. Her rack of bottles and leaves, shoots, and stems sat at weary attention.

Agatha ripped off the patched green tunic and hurriedly slipped her thin armor on, the ironwood light but strong as steel. Metal gear made her uncomfortable, and left the large rose growing out of the small of her back exposed or crushed. She eyed it in her dirty mirror, the flower a little bigger than a basketball and deep, arterial red. No one knew what it was, or where it had come from, but once it had bloomed everything had changed...

Listening one last time for noise or movement like a rabbit in it's den, Agatha took a deep breath and once again snuck out of her house, mentally cursing the door before she was free. She hoisted her massive blade up so the sun glared off it and smiled at Kirk, who smiled back before glancing over her shoulder again.

"Why don't you just-"

"Because. That's all. Are we racing there?" She asked challengingly, hoping to shift the subject.

"I don't think so. Hate to put the poor beast through that." He said, mounting up and patting his horse's head. Agatha gathered herself and set off alongside, sword on her shoulder. She tried her hardest not to look back, but she did anyway.