There was a distinctly-enthusiasic BOUNCE to Awyn's step as she lef Leaves. There were still several hours of daylight left in the afternoon, so surely she had plenty of time.
No direction seemed to be any more promising than any other, so she shrugged and decided to follow THIS street for awhile. The house she was seeking had seemed to be rather middle-class, and she knew of several neighbourhoods which fit that description.
And if she happenned to run into that MacConal boy again, well, then she'd ALSO have the fun of bragging to him that she hadn't NEEDED his help in coming up with a good idea. But then again, perhaps she SHOULDN'T brag. He surely knew the city better than SHE did.And maybe he'd even recognize the house if she described it.
There had been some sort of large nameplate near the door of the little house -- with words that Anwyn hadn't been able to see well enough to read them (or even to tell what language they were written in). In a city where many people COULDN'T read, surely that would be of some help too.
She was absolutely certain that she'd recognize the hairy, long-nosed male face she'd seen -- that streaked brown hair had been rather distinctively-memorable (and so were those intelligent deep-brown eyes).
Anwyn didn't know what she'd say to him when they met. She didn't even know his name either. But her vision had suggested to her that he had the answer she so badly needed. And somehow she had to convince him to give it to her, whatever it was.
Ceroill sighed to himself as he watched Anwyn head away don the road. He had really hoped Gwenn would be with her. So he sent Oberon to follow from above, to let him know if he was needed.
Walking over to the doorway to shut the door that Anwyn had left standing wide open, he was glad when he saw the two guardsmen nearby. He nodded in Gwenn's direction, and managed a little smile. 'Ah, the confidence of youth', he thought to himself, noticing that Gwenn's attention was focused firmly on Anwyn. Then he went back in, and closed the door.
Gwenn and Burl had been staying near the vicinity of 'Leaves'--Burl because he was hoping to see Anwyn again, Gwenn because he was sure she was going to do something rash. Neither of them hoped the other realized what each was doing, and so neither mentioned the fact that they hadn't walked far from the building.
So Gwenn was only mildly surprised when he crossed the street and saw Anwyn heading away from 'Leaves'-- and him. But what confused him was that she was walking in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION from the spaceport.
He stopped so suddenly that Burl had taken several paces before he realized Gwenn was no longer with him. He stopped and turned, asking, "Something wrong?" but Gwenn was already turning to follow Anwyn. Burl saw by the look on Gwenn's face (a thoughtful frown) that it wasn't something serious--at least, not yet--but that Burl was also not going to get an immediate answer. Burl shrugged and followed Gwenn....
Anwyn didn't notice any of the three who were tailing along behind her. She was far too preoccupied with looking at the various houses she passed. So far, all the houses on THIS street were TOO BIG, and it occurred to her that this street was perhaps WIDER then what she thought she'd seen.
Burl could tell that Gwenn wasn't just walking aimlessly. "Gwenn, what're...hey, isn't that Damisela An-...Gwenn, what're you doing following her?"
"Tell me, Burl," Gwenn grumbled, "Why d'ye think she's walkin' away fro' the 'port?"
Burl shrugs. "Well, my sister likes me to walk her here once in a while, so she can admire the pretty houses and imagine she's wife to one of the men who own one. An', well, you're not worried because she's not escorted are you? Surely nothing will happen here?"
"That's assumin' she'll stay here. I dinna' what she'll do. She's a lode-stone fer trouble, that one," he groused. "I dinna' think Kay'll like that she's wanderin' alone. An' I _know_ she'll not be happy if I catch her out."
They were far enough behind that their voices didn't carry as far as Anwyn's ears. But Oberon could certainly hear them clearly enough. And he quickly figured out that he had a common purpose with the two young men. Young humans were like young owlets in that they needed watching -- to keep them from following their youthful curousity into danger. And just like young owlets, they often had difficulty in understanding anything that more mature individuals tried to tell them. Even bird-sister and cat-sister were less trouble than this one human chick, though she was certainly entertaining at times.
It was a small townhouse that she was seeking, Anwyn thought to herself, one that had sat on a narrow cobblestoned-road without any space between it and its neighbours. There had been a small wooden porch out front, and a cloth awning over top. Since her dream-vision had been all in shades of blue, she had no idea what COLOUR it should be.
And as she pictured the scene in her mind once again, she remembered that, just before the scene has dissapeared, she'd heard a man's voice warmly calling someone's name in greeting. It had sounded like a good Gaelic man's name to her -- but NOT one that she'd noticed to be commonly-used here. And she wasn't sure whether it had been the name of the person who lived in the house. At the time, she'd had the odd sensation that she was seeing the yard through someone ELSE's eyes, and maybe THAT was the person who'd been greeted so warmly.
Stopping right in the middle of the street, Anwyn paused for a moment to dig into one of the pockets that she'd sewn into the lining of her short cloak. Softly grumbling to herself as she dug through the contents, her hand finally found the object she'd been seeking. It was a map of Thendara that she'd copied from a Mapping & Exploration file, and (officially speaking) she wasn't REALLY suppossed to have it. But Kay had neglected to log off from her terminal before going to lunch one day -- and Anwyn hadn't been able to resist the temptation to walk over to Kay's desk and to print out these precious few pages and to run them through the document-sealer to encase each page in a thin sheet of plastic.
From another pocket, she pulled a pair of water-soluable markers and started to circle neighbourhoods. Blue circles were for where she recalled narrow cobbled streets lined with small, middle-class townhouses. And because she thought that the uncommon name just MIGHT signify a neighbourhood where offworlders were NOT unwelcome to live, she then added red circles around any neighbourhood that included streets whose names she recalled seeing while she'd been processing personnel files for Kay or medical files for Louis.
Now all she had to do was go check out all the red-circled neighbourhoods FIRST, and see which ones were the RIGHT type of houses on the RIGHT type of streets. That should hopefully help her to narrow down her search.
After carefully re-rolling sliding the pages back into ther pocket, Anwyn set off towards the nearest of the neighbourhoods that she'd red-circled. It was just a matter of time before she found THAT house.
"What's that she's pulled out?" Burl asked. "It's like paper, but it's so shiny."
"I think it's some kind o'Terranan paper," Gwenn replied. "She's markin' on it. Look, she's changed direction. She's definitely goin' somewhere." Gwenn waited until Anwyn entered a neighborhood that didn't look as prosperous as the previous ones. "That's done it," he said. "She'll ha' tae go back." Gwenn picked up his pace but kept it under a run.
"Wait, Gwenn," Burl said, hurrying to keep up. "Let me call out to her -- that way it won't look like we were following her." He took off at a trot. "Heyla, damisela Anwyn!" Burl shouted. He waved at her and grinned as he trotted toward her.