Mera stood. Waited. Listened to the two pairs of feet getting further away, until she was surrounded by silence again. But even then, she kept still, listening intensively and with shallow breaths, to make sure, no one else was around, watching her. 

...

Nothing. 
To good to be true, but then again, why should they bother. She wasn't a considerable threat to anyone here. 
Well then, time to seize the opportunity. With one last glance around, she removed the heavy boots from her feet, clasped them with one hand, since she still carried her bag in the other, and tiptoed towards a nearby door. One, that was in the opposite direction than the servants took earlier. Setting down her bag softly next to the door, she pried it open and quickly checked for people, but no one was inside. It was a small room, full of what seemed to be cleaning supplies and the like, partly in use but rather dusty the further inside they were placed. Mera closed the door again and went for the next one down the hallway. 

After several similar rooms, and a few empty ones, that had let her down a few turns, a sudden rise of voices startled her. Scurrying down a narrow staircase, that she had just decided to skip, Mera hoped to avoid colliding with the speakers. Covering down at the end of the stairs, holding her breath and listening intently, she couldn't help but shale her head disapprovingly at herself. What a poor place to hide. Should those people take the stairs down too, she would be discovered immediatly. But glancing around, all that surrounded her were stone walls, opening into yeet another hallway leading away. Hiding was so much easier out in the woods. 

Luckily, Mera was spared an encounter, and after silence had cloaked her for a while, she dared to get moving again, following aling this new hallway. Her trip took her deeper inside the castle, hiding occasionally from passing servants in random empty rooms, somehow never getting caught. What a huge place. What a lonely, lifeless place with so little people inside. But then, she finally found, what she had been looking for all along: a pantry, and a rather large one too. Allowing a huge grin to spread across her face, she shoved her freezing feet back into the boots, quickly massaged her cramped hand and then opening her bag. 

The bag was half empty on purpose. Her plan being to find and steal some of the general food supply, so she had something to get her through the first days of life here. By then, she hoped to have found out, which found was edible and which personal could be trusted to not try and poison or starve her. It was a solid plan, she thought, at least for the first few days. And after that. everything would surely work out somehow. Maybe she could even keep sneeking down here, getting more food herself, she debated, while stocking potatos, carrots and two bottles which seemes to contain some kind of juice between her few clothes. 

Since it was a rather large bag, there was still some room left once she was content with the amount of food acquired, so she decided to stuff her boots into the bag as well this time. Torn between feeling smart about it, regretting not thinking of it earlier and getting cold feet again, she decided to push all those feeling aside and focus on working more efficiently moving forward. That entailed tying on of the pieces of rope she found in a corner to the bag, so she hcould hang it over her shoulders, instead of carrying the now way heavier bag with pure grip strength again, as that was leaving her most definitly by now. 

She turned to the door through which she had entered, firmly convinced that she would be able to find her way back to where they left her, before anyone came to actually look for her, and started walking, as a sound echoed through the other door. Crying. Small, whimpering, like a baby cat. A baby?! Without a second thought Mera turned on her heels and headed toward that new sound. By all means, this cellar was no place for a baby!