Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Tarnished

If I'd been a shifter, I'd have run out of the enclave on four legs, but being a human (or something like it), I was stuck walking.

I'd made off with a stash of the better vegetables and bread, because Luc could just get Tynn to feed her, and I was done with being pure. And I was done being Tynn's leftovers and everyone laughing at stupid ignorant little Theia thinking the gods were fair.

I pulled my old leather hat down over my head to shield my face with shadow and walked out of town past the guards and watchmen in the gloom of dawn. Just another fieldhand heading to work, or whatever they thought. I needed to be several miles down the road before anyone realized I was gone.

And then I had to get far enough to where nobody knew who I was. I also decided I'd head in the opposite direction from Everfell, lest a certain wolf shifter Captain think I was stalking him.

"Whatever's out here is better than waiting around to die of humiliation," I said to myself about five miles outside of town. I had moved off the main road, which was carved with deep ruts from passing wagons into the high grass. From a distance I was so thin I'd pass for male, and that was marginally safer than being identified as female.

The grass came up to my thighs, but was parched and reedy and mottled gray-and-yellow in color, and the farther I walked from the enclave, the more sparse and remote it became. I'd never been this far out of the enclave in my eighteen years of being there, but I'd seen plenty of maps, and there weren't that many roads between here and other enclaves. I'd chosen Sandhaven.

Which sounded sandy and nothing like a haven. Or maybe it was a haven from sand.

Either way, that's where I was going. There were not exactly a thousand better options unfurled before me.

Sandhaven wasn't the capital—that was Haven. But Sandhaven was in spitting distance of Haven, and surely there had to be other foundlings in Sandhaven and Haven. I didn't have to be alone.

New friends. New possibilities.

I wiped at the tears. The bugs had swarmed on them again.

"Gahh!" I exclaimed, swiping flies away. They practically crawled on me trying to lick my sweat. "I am not that tasty! Stop it!"

The flies and bugs and gnats buzzed in my ears. The damn things even liked to nibble my earwax.

I hefted my satchel and kept trudging. My shoes were not great for this, but I'd always had tough feet. Good for a foundling. I'd grown up barefoot until I'd managed to find a pair of cast-off sandals my size at about thirteen. Shoes had never felt quite right. I wore them, but when you've spent your entire life up until more than halfway to adult, shoes never feel quite right. And socks? Socks were the devil. I'd rather have had cold feet.

I followed the edge of the road, eyeing each sad, creaking cart that rattled by. This was a major road, so there'd be wells along the way, and while that meant I wouldn't shrivel up like leather, it also meant more risk.

I trudged along from well to well for six days before my scant food supplies ran out, which I had expected. I'd also thought I'd be closer to Sandhaven. Which was stupid, because Sandhaven was a couple of weeks by cart, and the carts trundling down the road pulled by various livestock were outpacing me. I wasn't walking as fast as a plodding donkey.

"Depressing," I muttered. But I had a hat. Stealing the wide-brimmed leather hat on my way out of town had been a good idea. Should have stolen more food. My feet had held up, though, even if my shoes had given up and fallen off my feet.

More proof shoes were stupid and unnecessary.

Out this far there wasn't much of anything: just dry, cracked dirt parched as rocks, and some stubborn grass. And birds of all kind. Buzzards, crows, raptors.