"Goodnight, Aria." She stands up just to curtsey to her.

"Goodnight, Isabel."

She stands, curtseys, and leaves.

She has the night to rest.

She sits outside in the garden with her star book, and matches constellations to their names. They're unfamiliar to her; their names feel old and faraway, yet startlingly immediate. She sees the same stars as the authors of her books. 

It's a slim connection to the world outside the manor, but it's far better than nothing.

Eventually, when she's had enough time to rest, she returns to her room and starts practicing her letters, balancing the slate on her knees as she scrawls with the chalk. Her letters come out misshapen and out-of-scale with each other, but it's alright. She's learnt the value of practice from her time with Soph and Aria already. 

Morning comes, and it's time for another day with Soph and the kitchen goblins. 

This time, she's put in charge of frying the sausages and eggs. Everyone is just as quiet as during her last shift. There's a sense of tension in the kitchen, enough that Isabel manages to notice. It must have something to do with her being part of Maxwell's family...

One more thing to hold against him.

Aria returns in the evening, and she has her first real writing lesson. The slate is filled and wiped clean many times, and slowly, she begins to improve. 

The days wind onwards like this for the next week or so. Silence reigns in the kitchen, and Maxwell does not return. Each day's shift leaves her drained, and Aria has to slow her tutoring to allow for Isabel's fatigue. But she presses onwards. The nights are still hers, in her little box. She spends them as best she can, slowly reading through the books Maxwell's presented her. She stumbles over words far less frequently, now; she has no real yardstick to measure her progress against, but it feels easier.

And then, one morning in the kitchen...

"... So I heard yesterday from Alina that there's a pack of wolves that's been nipping at the pastures the past few days. Glad I'm not out there."

Liath shrugs. "The kingdom'll post a bounty and it'll go away. Nothing to concern ourselves with."

"I've heard that the price of meat is already going up because they've lost a few cows to the wolfpack. And some women are afraid to go out into the fields to harvest..."

Isabel stays quiet, and listens. She knows better than to ask questions by this point.

Rosa natters on, apparently oblivious to Isabel's presence, and Liath answers her curtly. Apparently there's a travelling apothecary in town; it's a matter of debate whether his wares are genuine. 

Isabel recognizes a couple of the names of the herbs involved, but she stays quiet. She's learning.

It turns out there's a lot to talk about over the course of a twelve-hour kitchen shift. The weather, local bandit activity, sightings of tentacled creatures, the price of corn, a particularly attractive slave Rosa saw in the market... 

Liath answers curtly and matter-of-factly, seemingly focused on her work - but the few questions she asks keep Rosa talking for almost the entire shift. 

Does Liath really need to know which bandits they are, precisely, and whether they're slavers, raiders or both? Does she really need to ask what variety of corn it is, the kind with the big yellow kernels or the small white ones? Does she really need reminding of what kinds of tentacled creature it could be?

A suspicious person might notice that all her questions are awfully convenient for Isabel.

Soph doesn't say anything, though.

... there's a quiet feeling of understanding, there.

She doesn't say anything either, not even when the shift ends.

And the days wander onward. 

There's a new normal, now; she works in the kitchen and learns her letters from Aria during the day, and reads her books at night. After a few days, she finally completes all her books, and is left to reread what she already has. She's left with an empty void in the midnight hours, unable to sleep, too tired of writing to force herself to redo her slate again. 

So she turns to astrology. 

She has enough now to read the heavens at a basic level, but she has very little in the way of tools or materials. 

There is one ritual, though, that's simple enough to perform even with almost nothing and the bare rudiments of knowledge. 

At its simplest, it's a request: "Help me, please, Whoever is listening."

She kneels in her garden, and asks.

There is a sense of contest, for a moment, and then -

An image of her in her room, surrounded by blasted, desolate wasteland. Scales, tilted too far and falling. Black poison tainting clear water. A sword, shining and brilliant. 

An offer of justice, if she will be just; of honesty, if she will be honest; of strength, if she will be strong enough to fight honorably. 

She has no idea which god this is, but that doesn't mean she's not going to accept it.

And something shifts, just slightly...

She doesn't feel much different. A little more clear-headed, perhaps. Her back is a little straighter. Her body hasn't changed at all. She's still herself. 

The gods help those who help themselves, they say.