Day 4: 14,172 words, 48,523 total

As in the last few days, I'm dead tired tonight. I hope I soon recover from this cold. But right now, I've had to retype nearly every word in this sentence because my fingers have just stopped working.

So snippet, and then bed:

Her view looked out at a corner of the town. It looked quite dark tonight, of course, but the moon cast bright blue light across the roofs. They glittered with frost. She had seen it often the last few mornings and shivered each time. Tonight, though, it seemed just a little added bit of magic to the world.

She took a breath. Another. Thought about dancing with Trevor, and him laughing so hard -- how it had pleased others to see him laugh, and thinking about how somber he had looked at other times and --

And she was falling in love with him. She knew it.

Another breath. She tried to center her thoughts, to bring some logic to it -- ah, but she had watched others fall in love at court and knew there was never any logic in it at all.

And she wanted to fall in love with him. She wanted his company, to go to dances, to...

But she couldn't. She wouldn't be here come spring. She had to go back to Princess Sondra when the time came, because not to would be wrong in ways that would mar her.

She sighed and pulled the shutter closed and latched it. Friends. She would be friends with Trevor, no matter what her heart told her. It would not be easy... but then nothing had in the last year.

Beth knew enough to be grateful that she'd been given such a gift as the joy she'd felt tonight. It would be enough.