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It was a short time after the Prince left the temple that Tia found herself hiding under the covers of her bed, eyes wide, cheeks burning, as she played their interaction over again in her mind. 

[i]Why had she touched him???[/i] Temporary insanity? Overpowering intrusive thoughts? And she’d [i]cried[/i] in front of him. How, in the name of the burning [i]sun[/i], was he ever supposed to trust her to competently do her job?

Tia sank deeper into the mattress, her hand tracing up to where he’d showed her. Her fingers pressed between her ribs again - where she was meant to drive a dagger on him. She pulled her hand away like it burned her. She swallowed. Squeezing her eyes shut, Tia wiped at the ghosts of tear stains on her face. She allowed herself another few moments of wallowing.

Then she forced herself to emerge from under the blankets and get to work.

Caring for the temple was familiar, even if the structure itself was new. She donned a thin robe over her oversized sleeping robes to clean out the soot and ash from the brazier, and added fresh wood to feed it through the new day. Then she cleaned, and changed into fresh clothes for the day complete with a scarf, blue and gold-embroidered, to cover her scar (her scarf from yesterday was long gone - not only had she left it in Orion’s home, but it had been positively coated in blood). She reached for her hair-needles to pin up her long, pale hair, but drew her eyebrows together when she couldn’t find them. She only had a set of smaller ones, too little to hold all of it back. Instead of her usual bun, she settled on only pulling the top layer of her hair back into a smaller up-do, the rest of it hanging thick down her back. 

Then she lit incense through the temple, whispered daily blessings, and collected her letter to deliver to Pleiades. She hoped the High Priest would have a response soon for her - and she could remove at least a single layer of her subterfuge here.

Tia stepped out of the back entrance to the temple, with one last chore on her list: to remove the sign she and Pleiades had created last night. Whatever contaminants had been in the water last night would be gone by now. It was her first full day to be spent in Dawnhaven - she wanted to ensure that her temple, the springs attached to them, whatever sanctuary Aelios could provide, was open and welcoming to all. 

Voices rose to meet her at the top of the stairs. It seemed that some had already taken to the springs, even so early in the morning. Her eyebrows pulled together. Had they not seen the sign?

…Apparently not. Because when Tia made her way to the spot where they had staked it into the ground, there was nothing but a lantern and a small hole in the dirt filling with snow. She paused, looking around. Had someone… taken it? Tia couldn’t imagine [i]why[/i], not when it was just parchment and a broken broom handle. 

Tia spun in place, looking for any trace of it. But it was nowhere to be seen. This was surely on the [i]bottom[/i] of the list of priorities she had to deal with. Perplexed, Tia sighed.

Well, one less thing to clean up, she supposed. She turned, to head back into the temple – 

Only to stop, looking back over her shoulder as the voices grew to a commotion.

In the end it seemed she [i]did[/i] have another chore before heading into the town: helping an ailing blight-born woman into the temple. Hands glowing, her heartrate spiking, she, along with two other women (was… was one of them a [i]cyclops[/i]?), helped the cunicular patient into a spare bed in the warmth of the temple.

It wasn’t yet ten in the morning, and already Tia found herself exhausted by the day, her barely-recovered stores of magic depleting once again.

This was how Tia greeted Dawnhaven on her first full day in the settlement, letter in hand as she went to deliver it to Pleiades and then report for the town meeting.