The first thing that Kre noticed was the silence. It wasn’t that he had stumbled into an empty, deathly quiet room with only his footsteps to echo from the walls around him, but rather that there had been an excess of cacophony just a split second before he stumbled into the room and now the room was as quiet as a graveyard.
The second thing he noticed was the light. The room was as brightly lit as a noontime service at the chapel and it hurt his eyes to the point that he had to squint.
The last thing he noticed was the amount of people staring at him. Just staring. Over three dozen pairs of eyes, the eyes of every person in the room, were affixed on him. Every person save one.
Straight ahead of him, seated at a small round table cluttered with mugs, plates, and other tidbits, was Kitalia. She was slowly burying her face in her open hand and trying hard not to make eye contact with Kre.
A moment later, like a band that had only paused for a collective quarter rest note, the entire room turned their attentions back to each other and resumed whatever it was they were doing before Kre stumbled in.
He tugged at his tunic to straighten it up a bit and looked back to see if his guide had followed him in after shoving him so unceremoniously. The door was still open, and outside he could see the clearing that he had just been in, but no one stood in the doorway.
“Shut the door,” yelled one of the patrons of this place. “Where ya raised in a barn or something?”
“Sheep farm, actually.” He had responded almost automatically, not having heard the implied insult. He returned to the door and started to close it, as instructed, but decided he should peek his head out first, just to make sure she wasn’t out there about ready to come in.
“She is not there,” came a familiar voice.
“Pardon?” Automatically he closed the door as he turned to locate Kitalia.
“She’s off taking care of your horse,” she called back. “Remember? Your horse?”
He brought his hand up immediately and ran it through his hair. “Oh no. The horse.” He turned and grabbed for the door handle to head back outside, but his hands couldn’t seem to find the knob. Perplexed, he scanned the wall in front of him furiously, trying to find any semblance of the door that he had just come through.
A few snickers and chuckles sounded from around him. One man even called out helpfully, “Try poundin’ on it!”
There was some sort of trick at work here, he was certain of it. Some manner of master carpentry that let the door be perfectly hidden in the face of the wood paneled wall. He ran his fingers along where the seam should be, but they could not find a break in the wood for the life of him.
“Just sit down,” came the familiar, exasperated voice of Kitalia. She clearly sounded embarrassed, but whether it was for him or for herself, Kre couldn’t tell.