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Even with a full set of blankets and sheets covering her, the cold seemed to cut to the bones that darkening. It wasn't as though she had not seen her fair share of cold Carmelyn winters before - some perhaps even harsher than this one - but that didn't mean Amelia had to like the cold. In fact, sometimes she wondered how life in Arakmat would be like, only to stop at the thought of the scorching sun turning her fair-skinned self into a mass of freckles. That and she had yet to find a hat that actually suited her and was within the reach of her budget.
Maybe it was the cold keeping her sleep light, or the anger in the words that filtered into her room just too loud to ignore. Sleepy blue eyes opened slowly, gauging the weight of their eyelids to decide that no, it wasn't morning yet. Agamon arguing... again. A charming man in some ways, Lord Agamon - but one you'd never want as an enemy. Just like Shiandi, Amelia supposed.
The details of the conversation, she did not really understand... and even then, would she have cared? She wasn't a creature of Nexus. Sweet Materna, she hated Nexus. A place where unmarried girls were prohibited to read romance books at the library could not be called civilized, after all. She wouldn't be spending the rest of her life here, oh no. This was limbo. The less she got entangled in the spiderweb that was Nexus, the better. Still, she could not help but listen, patting her pillow tiredly in preparation for a second stint of sleep that never came.
In fact, as soon as Shiandi moved the second step into her room, she had already managed a sitting position, hands holding the sheets and eyes wide open as though Jorel himself had come for her. 'Any more sudden than this and I'll get a stroke', she thought - as she'd since decided that Shiandi could not read her mind no matter how scary she was - but her lips suppressed a very inappropriate yawn and merely came up with "Yes, Lady Shiandi." There wasn't much enthusiasm about it, unless one counted zombies as enthusiastic beings, but that was justified by the timing of the whole thing.
Once Shiandi had left, Amelia threw the sheets aside in order to fight the temptation to lie there for just five minutes, five dangerous minutes. That way it was just too cold to event think of lounging about. She broke the ice on the bowl and threw some four-celsius-degree water at her face. "I wonder how Lady Shiandi can always be so energetic, Father," she whispered. Lady Shiandi had not been shovelling snow all afternoon long, truth told. Putting on quite a few layers of clothing, she slipped her feet into her favorite shoes, tied the strip of cloth around her brand, brushed her hair as best she could and finished with her thickest coat.
Girls weren't made for dressing up in half a candlemark! Yet she managed it with time to spare and, only concession to vanity, she wrapped her aquamarine scarf around her neck, tying it in a rather girlish slipknot. And then off she was, quickly making her way downstairs to meet Shiandi at the front door.
Their schedule... just what kind of schedule could not wait till sunrise?
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