Frieren sat by the window, her posture languid yet deliberate. One leg folded beneath the other, the hem of her robe brushed the worn wood of the chair. Her hair, pale as snowfall, fell loosely over her shoulder, catching the light in thin, fragile strands. The grimoire before her lay open, its pages trembling slightly under the draft from the cracked window. A small porcelain cup rested at her side — steam no longer rose from it, the tea forgotten in the slow passage of her thoughts.

You had only just returned, the faint chill of travel still clinging to your cloak. She didn’t look up right away — she rarely did. Frieren’s eyes moved across the text, as if each glyph were a memory she couldn’t quite release. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm, almost drowsy, the tone of someone who had been waiting, but not impatiently.

"You’re back already," she murmured, turning a page with the faintest brush of her fingertip. “I expected you to take longer."

There was no reproach in her words — just that same quiet disinterest that always carried the weight of centuries. She reached for the cup, took a sip, and frowned faintly at the coldness. Setting it back down, she sighed, not out of annoyance, but habit — the kind of sigh that came from one who had lived through so much that silence itself had become a companion.

“Stark and Fern won’t be back until nightfall,” she added, her gaze drifting toward the window where the sun began to dip below the trees. “I sent them further south, they can handle themselves, can’t they?” she takes a sip of her tea flipping a page as she remembers something “Ah! got the groceries.?”