The smell of horse still clung to Lia as she made her way idly toward the only tavern in town. Her adopted father, Willem, owned the local stables and kept the girl busy all day. Not that she minded, Lia loved to be around the horses. In fact, she wouldn't have left the stables if Willem hadn't ordered her to go out and be social for once. She knew that he was worried about finding someone to marry her off too before she got any older, but Lia had no interest in marrying anyone. She would sooner marry her horse, Justice, than any of the men in Charin's Rest. Besides, she was tough from the hard work she'd done all of her life. What kind of man wanted a woman with callused hands and hay in her hair? Confident that no one would be proposing to her anytime soon, Lia had mostly put the thought from her mind.<br/><br/>The<em>Lady's Flask</em>was somewhat deserted when Lia casually pushed the door open. There were no adventurers here tonight it would seem, just familiar faces of Charin's Rest. The dark haired girl scanned the room and waved cheerfully to Irene. The two of them were almost of an age and when they were young their fathers would often send them running to the other's father with various messages. Unlike Irene, Lia was dressed in a white shirt covered by a worn brown tunic and soft breeches. The nicest part of her outfit were the knee high leather boots that had been a present from her father for her eighteenth nameday. They were new, black, and positively lovely.<br/><br/>At the bar was a familiar broad frame that could be no one but Cale, the blacksmith's son. He was also near her age, so Lia headed toward the bar to join him. "Someone looks like they've had a hard day." Lia said with a friendly smile and sat down on the stool beside him. "You almost smell worse than I do." She added with a hint of mockery. Lia may have been eighteen on the outside, but she was still mostly a child. Too much time with horses and not enough with humans, if you ask me.