#alard

The light falling on her face woke her up.

Lomadia grumbled a bit, stretching her arms across the table to grip the other end with her fingertips. "A few more minutes, please," she said in a half-mumbled whisper. Digging her head into the dip in the book and turning her head away from the window, she tried to fall back into the rest she so desperately desired.

It was only a few moments later when the fact that she was sleeping on a stack of books instead of her bed hit her, and she sat in the hard wooden chair with a jolt. Her eyes blinked shut as soon as the light from the window hit them again. This time she opened her eyes just a sliver, viewing the library through the filter of her eyelashes.

Books were scattered across the table in front of her, along with several half-crumpled pieces of paper. As she arranged the papers in a proper-looking order, she pulled the sleeve of her cotton tunic over her palm and wiped up a small puddle of spit that had accumulated on the surface of the table during her nap.

"Fell asleep in here again?" Alard called from the doorway. Lomadia twisted to look at him through the corner of her eye. He carried two mugs of some sort of steaming liquid - that exotic bean-tea from the Myrian Jungles, it smelled like. Though it had grown in popularity in Ryslatel during her stay there, she had only had it on a few occasions. "That's what, three days now?" he said as he settled in the chair across from her, keeping one mug of the tea for himself and pushing the other her way. She took it and sniffed in the delicious aroma as he took a sip.

"It is in here, I know it," she said after taking a cautious sip of the tea. "I have found a few leads in these books, and there are a couple others I need to investigate further."

Alard looked at her evenly as he took a sip of the tea. "Have you contacted your professor at the university? He is a healer of some renown, right?"

"I sent him a letter, but it will not reach Ryslatel for a few more days, and then I will have to wait another week for his reply. That is if Raulin replies, however." A smile twitched on her lips. "He is rather notorious for not checking his mail for weeks at a time, and losing it when he does. And--" the smile disappeared. "I strongly doubt this is something a healer can cure. From everything I have seen, the poison seems to be resistant to magic as well."

"That's... hardly encouraging," Alard said, his gaze moving to stare in the half-empty mug of tea. "What are the leads you've found?"

Setting aside the tea, Lomadia pulled one of the books she had piled on the side of the table in front of her. She flipped through the pages until she found an illustration of several plants with handwritten captions on the opposite page. "This book chronicles the different poisons that have been in use since the Fall." She looked between Alard and the book, moving her finger across several illustrations. "These are the ones that show a resistance to magic in their symptoms."

Alard set his mug down and stood up, leaning over the book. "So if you can narrow it down, you can find the antidote?"

Lomadia shook her head. "It is not that easy. If you look over here," she motioned towards the captions, "Four of these are deadly within the first twenty-four hours, so the fact that my father yet lives rules them out. These two," she moved her finger to another set of plants, "Have no cure. One of them puts the victim in a permanent coma, the other slowly infests the victim over a period of months, resulting in death."

"Again, not encouraging," Alard muttered. He looked up then, looking straight in her eyes. "Are you doing okay?"

"What?" Lomadia asked, sitting back in her chair. "I am... fine."

He raised his eyebrows, incredulity written all over his face. "You're sure."

"I'm fine," she snapped with a bit more bite than she had intended. "Do you want to hear the good news among all of this 'not encouraging?'"

Alard sat back down in his chair, picking up the tea and taking a hefty sip before breaking in a cough.

"I will take that as a yes," Lomadia said as she pulled another book from her stack and sat it on front of the one about poisons. She flipped through the pages until she came to one with only a circle drawn on the page, with a few notes in fine writing underneath. "This is my solution."

Alard leaned over the table to look at the book, albeit upside-down. "The... Dragon's... Orb," he read. His head shot up to look at her. "A legend. An ancient artifact of the threskari that was lost during the Fall. That's your solution." A dry laugh escaped his throat, and she glared at him.

"It is the only solution," she said, a note of desperation entering her voice. "According to these texts, my father only has a few months at most."

"Then spend those looking for an actual cure," Alard said.

"There is no cure!" Lomadia shouted, standing up from her chair with a jolt and slamming her hands on the table.

Alard looked at the empty mug of tea in his hands. "Then..." His mouth twisted in a grimace, as though the words he wanted to say tasted foul.

"What?" Lomadia said with a pointed glare. "I should just give up? Take up the reins of a province on the verge of starvation, on the verge of rebellion? Or, worse yet, give up my freedom that I cherish so very deeply to give the reins to someone else?"

"It doesn't have to be that way," Alard said.

"Oh, it doesn't?" she said sharply. She grabbed her jacket off of the back of her chair and pulled it over her shoulders. "I'm not giving up on him. If that means I search for a legend, then so be it." With that said, she turned from the table and marched towards the door.