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Her daily chores were meager, they always had been. It wasn't as if she had much in the way of belongings anymore, her journals and papers, her books (her library if you please, and what a library it was!) a few gadgets meant to keep track of the weather, the wind and the water she had available, her few artifacts and her dishware. She liked her dishes, they were all marvelous and pristine, rather elegant for someone who never entertained. Oh yes, she was a neat-freak. Very little by means of cleaning to do, her chores were more of the tend-to-the-vegetable-patch kind. However, she'd done all that could be done in her gardens already the day before and there was no need for much of anything.

Absently, she decided to wash the few dishes she'd used on her early morning meal. The bowl and the plate and her cutlery. She sighed to herself as she listened to the mild wind whistle past her house and imagined she could hear the footfalls of a beast of burden approaching.

She shook her head and chuckled to herself. She'd had no visitors in ages, years, she'd tell herself chidingly. She wasn't lonely per se, she was quite a loner herself and she truly didn't long for company in the strictest sense. She was in 'exile' for a reason. One will eventually accept one's lot in life given enough time. Besides, she reminded herself, if there was someone approaching, not that there is, but if there was well, my own beasts would hear it and tell me... wouldn't they?

She chuckled again at the preposterous notion of a visitor. It had been so long. No one dared venture out into the desert where she chose to exile herself. The going was too dangerous for most people and if she craved company she'd go find the nearest town, which at last count, was three days ride away. Some days, she wondered if she wasn't just fooling herself. If perhaps she'd died long ago in exile and this was her own personal purgatory, certainly it wasn't her own personal hell. She was far too content and happy to be in hell.

She laughed at herself again and began to sing a song quietly under her breath, ignoring her silly thoughts of a visitor. Almost immediately, she forgot all about the prospect of someone making it all the way out to her private oasis, hell, purgatory or not, and focused on washing her dishes and trying to remember the next verse in the song.

As she finally remembered the song, singing more bodily now, she turned around, only to be startled into a yelp -- a harsh ending to her otherwise beautifully-sung song -- as there stood in her doorway, a cloaked and hooded figure.

"Pardon me, miss." The figure spoke. "Didn't mean to startle you."