Finger through your books and scrolls. Maybe you have enough time for one chapter, or a page.
From Create Your Own Story
You walk over to your bookshelf and peruse the titles you have available. Each of these books was painstakingly copied word for word by some poor scribe, although you do have some original volumes. Your father allows you to indulge in this little hobby of yours, but the message he sends is clear - 'Rightful Womanly Manner at Court', 'Conducting Oneself with Due Grace', 'Western Etiquette in the New Era', 'A Treatise on Sewing and Fabrics' and 'The Mother's Blessing' are just a few of the authorised tomes he has you reading. You've read them all, of course, but you hardly enjoy them as much as then... unauthorised literature.
You have a few friends with connections, or so you like to tell yourself. A stable-boy who is smitten with you, a rebellious lady-mentor and your own mother are happy to sneak into your father's library and bring you something from his collection. Ancient tragedies and comedies written by 'the Greats', scientific journals written by doctors from foreign lands millennia ago, tales from travelers who lived among the savage, man-eating tribes of the lands beyond the Red Wastes, and even raunchy romantic novella from the Serene Merchant Republics. You will read anything you get your hands on, simply because it is the one thing you are allowed to do that isn't 'courtly' or 'womanly'.
Ever page you turn and every word you learn is your own little rebellion, your own little taste of power. As a second child and a female, you will likely never see real power, and will likely be sold off to some old noble or his bratty son, so you will take what you can get while you can.
