"Pearl can you stop for a while?" Rayah asked pearl, she couldn't take it anymore, she felt dizzy as the winds were blowing against them. She held on to Pearl as tight as she could.
Pearl sighed and stopped riding, she jumped down from her horse and helped Rayah down then went to tie Nala close to a tree.
Pearl then started walking away as if she was not with someone to begin with.
"Where are you heading." Rayah caught up to pearl who still pretended not to hear her.
"Are you gonna leave your horse here?" Rayah asked again trying to understand what pearl was trying to do.
"Yes and that's because of you. Poor Nala." Pearl replied as she shaked her head.
"I just asked to take a break." Rayah said.
"A break?" Pearl then turned around and walked over to Rayah and spoke a few inches close to her face.
"Look, we are not even up to a mile away from the palace and you already asked for a break."
Pearl pointed out to the castle. One could still see the buildings in the castle.
"I'm sorry." Rayah said sheepishly
"Yeah well we have to walk instead." Pearl said and turned around to continue walking.
"Okay that's fine with me." Rayah said.
Rayah realized that she was apparently weak but she dared not complain this time around. They had not reached were they were going yet she was already tired. Pearl chose to walk on foot and leave Nala behind because of her crazy fear of horses.
"Um pearl?" Rayah spoke out
"We're almost there Rah....
" Wait ." Pearl looked down at Rayah's dress.
"You can't go into the village looking like this." Pearl said. They had been walking on a lonely path but they were about to reach a village. People will stare while some may recognize that Rayah's a princess.
They might get mobbed or plotted against and attacked. Pearl knew that they had guards secretly following them right now to be able to protect them but it's way better to not give out chances to be attacked.
"Oh." Rayah also looked down at her dress.
'well this could cause a problem' Rayah thought.
"We have to do something about it." Pearl then pulled Rayah towards a small bush and bagan to tear Rayah's sleeves.
Rayah gasped "oh my goodness Pearl what are you doing?" Pearl pulled out a knife tearing this part of her clothes and that part.
Pearl continued with what she was doing while Rayah could only watch in bafflement.
"See, done. Not bad at all. I didn't know I had such tailoring skills, I'm so proud of myself." Pearl said as she squatted back up.
Rayah was definitely speechless, she could see shreds of her dress on the ground.
Rayah's dress now looked a normal villager's dress but if one looked closer, they would be able to see how quality the material was and detect that they were both people of high class trying to disguise themselves as commoners and that would be more worse so Pearl took some mud from the ground and robbed it on Rayah's already torn dress in different places .
Pearl let out a tired sigh as she stood up from squatting. " Let's go, we've almost reached the village."
Rayah and Pearl soon got to the village that was more like a town and Rayah felt amazed by the hustling and bustling of the people there. Rayah had only been there once but that was a long time ago she could not remember anything.
"Hello beautiful lady, do you want to buy these fabrics. They are really quality fabrics." A seller who was hawking his fabrics came up to pearl.
The man didn't even bother to look towards Rayah or ask her if she wanted to buy too, he just assumed she would not be able to afford it since she was dressed like a poor person.
Rayah was a little bit surprised by this.
"I'll pass" Pearl said rather to herself.
The man still tried to persuade Pearl to buy at least one of his fabrics. Pearl didn't pay attention to him at all, she just continued with where she was going.
The man at the end gave up, meanwhile, Rayah searched her dress pocket to see if she had something on her.
"Here" Pearl handed him some coins when he was about to continue his hawk.
The Fabric seller was very dumbfounded, he subconsciously opened his hands to accept the money. He was too surprised that a lady who looked like a beggar actually gave him these coins that he forgot to say thank you, he just stood where he was while his mouth was agape looking down at the coins in his hands.
Pearl saw what transpired from the corner of her eyes." Rah you can't possibly give any seller that comes up your way some money or you're gonna go broke. Trust me, there is going to be a lot of them." Pearl spoke out.
"Um, he looked like he needed some money real bad." Rayah said
"Of course, who doesn't need money." Pearl replied.
Rayah didn't know why pearl was being not so considerate.
"Well do you?" Rayah asked back.
"Of course. I know what you mean, I would love to have my own wealth in the future, not from of my allowance and entitlements as a princess. Without this title I'm not more than a commoner. So to answer your question, I need money too." Pearl gave her reply.
"I guess you're right." Rayah responded.
"Rayah let's stop by a restaurant to get something to eat. It must be time for lunch, I'm becoming hungry." Pearl said as they both stepped in an eatery and ordered for food.
"Do you not have wine with a low percent, this wine has a high percentage of alcohol." Pearl complained to the server who currently served both of them.
"My lady, it is because our customers do not order for wine with low percentage of alcohol so we can't sell it. I'm sorry my lady." The lady server apologized to Pearl then she added,
"I can go across to get it for you. They are popular wine merchants, they will have the wine you want my lady."
"Let me go get it." Rayah suddenly offered causing both the server and Pearl to look at her.
"Do you know the merchant's shop?" Pearl asked Rayah with a raised brow.
Rayah faced the waitress " It's just across right?"
The lady in a servers pinafore nodded.
"Okay I'll be right back." Rayah got up and left the eatery after taking Pearl's orders.
Rayah saw a crowd at the other side of the road before she and Pearl entered the eatery. She wondered why there was a crowd there and was curious to find out so she saw buying wine for pearl from the merchant's shop as an opportunity to check the reason the crowd had gathered.
As Rayah got closer, she could hear whisperings of excitement and chatters.
"Oh my, they look so good together I'm jealous" A girl from the crowd said to her friend gushing. Rayah wondered what it might be about.
Finally, she could see that there was a proposal going on. The man who was proposing was a romance kind of man, he got pipes and flute players to play a song as he gave the lady he had been courting a surprise proposal. Meanwhile, the lady whom was being proposed to was shedding tears. Rayah was not even able to tell if it was tears of joy or tears of sadness or heartbreak. The lady just stood there crying like she had lost a dear someone and had not even accepted the engagement ring.
People were so happy for both of them that they were gushing over someone else's engagement. Rayah rather found the position of the man to be funny, he was still on one knees waiting for his proposal to be accepted as the lady had not finished crying.
"That measly boy my daughter is seeing had better give her a befitting proposal just like this man. Well I do hope he doesn't, I don't want shama marrying a peasant like him." An elderly woman who was close to Rayah said to a woman by her side. Rayah felt the impact of her words, she didn't know if the man whom she spoke about just now deserved those harsh words or not.
'oh my I don't want Pearl to be worried if I'm not back with wine soon.' Rayah thought as she left the proposal scene to go buy the merchant's wine.
"But she said it was just across the road, why did she fail to mention what path the merchant's shop was on." Rayah was in front of three pathways, she didn't know which one led to the merchant's shop.
Rayah approached a woman walking with a kid but the woman refused to listen to her thinking she was a beggar.
Rayah sighed and tried to decide on which path to take. " Okay this one"
Rayah took the path in the middle because she saw that much people did not take the other paths. 'The merchant's shop can't be located were less people frequent. Yes that must be it'
Rayah thought that the path she decided to follow was definitely it and she was right, she could see a large signboard named Tedds All Wine from where she was.
'Well it is definitely some distance, Rayah thought and sighed due to the fact that the wine shop was still some distance away and she had to walk to get there. This was the hardest day of her life, Rayah thought again.
She wished she had just allowed the server to go get Pearl the wine as she had offered.
"Sighh... Rayah let out an extremely tired sigh.
"Oh Sorry" Rayah apologized as she hit someone causing the person's cloak to fall off her head.
Rayah gasped, this person looked like her mother a lot from her silver hair to the rest of her features.
The lady hurriedly put back the cloak on her head and left in a haste.
"Please wait." Rayah called out meanwhile, the lady looked back at Rayah before she began running. Rayah also ran to chase after her.