"Foreign" (Growing Pains - 4/?) [Self-post]

The place she found was fully furnished, as she needed it to be. It had a little bedroom, a comfortable living room with a studio kitchen, and a bathroom with a tub more than deep enough to hold every drop of water needed to soak away the worst of her worries. The apartment was set in a building that, while modern compared to where she had lived in the past, was still homely in the way a rogue from a non-21st Century Earth needed.

The problem was that it wasn’t right. None of it was. It was all new to her. There was no familiarity or piece of it that reminded her of where she had come from.

The bed was different than the one she'd slept on at the inn over the last two and a half years. The shower head was much more powerful than she was used to. There was a couch and a kitchen and cupboards waiting to be filled with her things. There was no yew tree outside her window. There were no sounds of life outside in the hall when she woke in the morning or went to bed at night.

There was no sea in the distance when she stood on the roof. No smell of salt or freshly baked goods drifted to her through the air. No faces from her childhood, no expectant customers or parents or companions waiting for her to rise from bed to make her way to her family’s shops.

For the first time in her life, she was truly living alone. And it was... freeing.

And terrifying.

Everything that went wrong from here on out would be her fault. There was no one left to blame but herself. It wasn't a new concept, but it was all the more poignant now that she had no one else to fall back on. She had to be more conscious of the help she needed and ask for it when the time came.

It was an impossible task, to both live and survive, but she would do it. Amelia Ronsam was a strong woman and she would prove it to everyone.

Or burn down her new “home” trying.