Esmeralda stared dumbly at her cake, realizing she had forgotten utensils and dreading going to ask for some. Thankfully, the baker seemed a step ahead of her. As the stranger prattled, the man came over and placed a set besides her, rolled up in a cloth napkin. “Don’t give yourself a stomach ache, eh?” He laughed, though there was sympathy in his eyes for this frail girl, clearly starved. Esmeralda was use to said sympathy and ignored it cooly. She chose this lot. She regretted nothing.<br/><br/>She unrolled the napkin and neatly placed it on her lap just so. Her fork and knife were picked up and hovered over the cake, but she couldn’t bring herself to cut in just yet. Her mother use to make cakes like this. She could almost taste the memory, if not for the incessant chattering besides her. She let out a forced breath through her nose, and slowly leveled Crow a flat look. “Something tells me you’d do horrible in a nunnery.” … It didn’t help that he was male, but she didn’t grasp that difference. She would have shunned him then and there, Esmeralda had spent so long alone in the woods or on the road, she wasn’t use to company. But now she was curious. She had been moving for so long, she didn’t even recognize the man’s accent.<br/><br/>She carefully cut into the cake, one small sliver besides another, and asked in restrained curiosity, “Which capital was that?"