"How are we this morning, miss Do?"
"Off it!"
"Feeling unwell?"
"I am now."
"Too many spirits haunting your addled life?"
"Just you, worn yarn."
"What?"
Daring Do slammed the door in Hoofcliff's face.
"As you will, miss Do; but be out in fifteen minutes for your briefing in the Royal Room."
"My briefing?" Daring Do spat under her breath.
Cradling her head in one hoof, she drained the rest of the tonic she had told a maid to mix up for her. This was a mix she had at some point learned helped cure a hang-over.
The map from last night lay on a study desk in front of her. Of course, she had not looked at it since, until now. Its spiral letters appeared only vaguely familiar to her, as though of an impression of a dream left upon one's mind just after waking, and, upon trying to recall its details, feeling it fleeing away down memory's swift, windy river.
She folded the map neatly and tucked it into her shirt pocket.
Head still pounding, she rubbed her eyes as though smothering them. She fell back on to the straw-mattress bed and found herself staring back from on high, reflected in the mirror above like a star, chill-yellow and unimaginably distant.
Daring Do imagined the King and Queen of Saddle Arabia, along with an obscene amount of dignified dignitaries, waiting for her in a long polished hall with ornately decorated high walls and a vaulted ceiling.
It was all too stereotypical and cliche, even the very thought of thinking about it! Whenever Daring Do caught herself musing upon those scenes which would fit all too perfectly in the plot of a story, she drowned it with a shot, and immediately attempted to dispel it with a few rapid shakes of her head, as though these thoughts were lice and she could shake them off like dust.
But here she refrained.
She was on the verge of tears when she sat on the cushion motioned to her in the tiny Royal Room. The Queen offered her tea and milk.
Suddenly the silence stopped breathing.
The King's voice intimated that he wanted to tell her something. At that moment Daring Do spilt her tea.