by Lucia Winchester 24th April 2021, 12:54 am
-Capital Crocus, the Fontaine residence, thirty-five minutes later-
Lucia had managed to stay on her feet long enough to find the Fontaine residence thanks to some friendly locals at Capital Coffee who pointed her in the right direction. She had followed their instructions to the letter and found herself standing in the nice part of town outside a large white mansion with a brown wooden door located at 1950 Prosperity Plaza. Lucia slowly walked up to it, wiped her feet on a black WELCOME mat, and pressed the glowing doorbell button on the right side of the doorframe. The door opened to show a slender and middle-aged black-haired woman wearing a blue jacket with white blouse, blue knee-length skirt, and blue dress shoes.
"Oh, you must be the mage we hired to retrieve our heirloom jewelry! I'm Judith Fontaine!" The woman greeted Lucia. Lucia momentarily put aside her fatigue and spoke to the woman in a cheerful tone.
"Yes. I'm Lucia Winchester." Lucia introduced herself.
"Did you manage to find them all? All three pieces?" Judith asked anxiously. She seemed more concerned about getting the jewelry back than she did about Lucia's well-being. Lucia wordlessly set Lumie down and took off her backpack. She then opened it up, carefully removed all three golden necklaces from the backpack, and handed them to the woman. Judith was so glad to see them that she practically snatched them from Lucia's hand.
"Oh, there they are! The necklaces that belonged to Agatha, Margaret, and Helena Fontaine! You're such a lifesaver, Miss Winchester!" She exclaimed joyously. Lucia wordlessly closed her backpack as the woman went back inside the house, then emerged with a bag of Jewels. She handed the bag to Lucia, who nodded in appreciation and put the bag inside the backpack before closing it, putting her backpack on, and picking up Lumie.
"Thank you so much for finding those necklaces, Miss Winchester! When I heard that my daughters lost them I almost fainted! I hope they learned to keep up with the family heirlooms the next time they borrow them!" Judith thanked Lucia again and expressed the hope that her daughters had learned their lesson from this experience. Lucia was not sure what lesson Judith wanted her daughters to learn from this, but it did not sound like that she wanted to teach them to be more careful when picking a place to explore. It sounded more like the woman's concern was what happened to the jewelry. Lucia kept her mouth shut and let the client talk.
"Well, I'd better get going. I've got to tell my family the good news. Thanks again, Dear!" Judith Fontaine thanked Lucia before shutting the door. Lucia paused for a moment, then turned around and began walking away from the Fontaine residence. She had done her job... now it was time to go back to Talonia and get some sleep. She was not going to walk back to Talonia, so another visit to the train station was in order.
-Talonia, Lucia's hotel room, two hours later-
After another lengthy train ride from Capital Crocus to Talonia and a fairly long walk to her hotel Lucia had finally made it home. She shut the room door behind her, then took off her backpack and walked towards the bed with the backpack's straps held in her right hand. She set it on the floor beside her bed. She set Lumie's candleholder in the middle of the nightstand beside her bed and took off the holster containing Shining Light, then placed it beside her pillow. Lucia then sat on the bed and unlaced her boots, then took them off.
Lucia was glad to finally be home. She had done a lot of traveling today and now it was time to relax. She had secured enough rent money for awhile longer thanks to the reward money Judith Fontaine had given her for retrieving the jewelry from Haunted Castle. Lucia needed to look into finding a cheaper place to live so that she could keep more of her savings to spend on things like home furnishings, but that could wait for awhile. Right now she really needed to sleep. Once she woke up later today she would get a cup of coffee and review the apartment brochures she had collected to date, but right now she was so tired that she could not even begin to focus on reading brochures.
Lucia wordlessly swung her feet around to the right and placed them on the bed, then began reclining until the back of her head hit the pillow. Lucia closed her eyes and soon drifted off to sleep. Today had been another successful day for her and she hoped that there would be many more successful days for her ahead. Maybe one day she would finally meet Diana face-to-face and get a chance to reconnect with her youngest sister.
[Post Word Count: 816]
[Total Word Count: 5,160/5,000]