With the twilight sky upon the city of Uthlyn, most students and teachers had left for the night, to return to their homes, to eat warm meals and sit by a fire and talk about all the wonderful things that they had learned...
Not Ileana. For the fourth time that week she had been sucked into overtime work, without pay. Some very degrading overtime work. But she couldn't let that get to her. Even as she bent awkwardly upon the ground on her knees, bracing most of her weight upon her front legs, her tail swishing to generate air in the stale atmosphere, the cotton sleeves of her shirt pulled up to bare her forearms as she scrubbed the tile floor, she just told herself how worse off she could be.
She could be out on the streets, begging for food. She could be hiding from the dogs of the mage-hunters, praying that they didn't catch a whiff of her powers. She could be dead, a little foal trapped in a box filled with hay. And since she wasn't any of those things, she was grateful.
Foregoing her underbust in favor of breathing, her blond hair tied up in a tight bun against her head, though a few stands still wavered down her back, brushing the silver fur on her spine. She had tried to even tie her tail up as well, but the loose leather strip tangled in it indicated what a success that had been. For now, she just focused her efforts on scrubbing, the suds soaking into her hands and making them wrinkled, until finally her legs were shaking from the effort of kneeling and the floor in the self of Hl-Ho was gleaming.
Huffing, Ileana gently rose to her fours, crossing her arms and holding the sponfe, inspecting her work. "Good job," she said to herself, stamping her hoof proudly. "Now you just have... forty more to do!"
She couldn't help but sigh, and replacing the last stands of hair back in her bun, she pushed her bucket along the floor, trotting carefully to avoid slipping. However, once she entered the study area, with its comfortable, roaring fire and the stained glass windows, Ileana couldn't help but pause in her work, blue eyes gazing upwards at the windows, stars reflected in them.
"Beautiful," she said, softly, her voice barely a whisper.
Maybe, tonight, everything would be different. Somehow.
