Emma took off her shoes and stockings outside, and then tossed them into the nearest garbage can so that Darnell wouldn’t have anything to roll in. She hoped he was still house-cat sized. She didn’t want to face the lion again, not after the events of the morning. She still couldn’t get the stench of the village out of her nostrils. It had looked like her village, the one she had grown up in, where she had met Aethelstan, and that had saddened her. She had forgotten how poor it was, how ignorant everyone was. For a brief moment, she had thought she would have to live back there again, and she wasn’t sure she could do it. That brief foray into the past made her realize how much she had grown, how much she had changed, and how hard it would be to ever go back. She took a shower, using a lot of lavender-scented soap. Steam rose around her, and she scrubbed until she felt marginally clean. Darnell watched, as he always did, from the back of the toilet.
