She'd forgotten about the flies. Back in the glen, the late spring breeze made the

morning brisk enough to keep your sleeves rolled down.

But these lowland marshes are sheltered from the mountain winds.

And as the shadows of the tall grasses grew shorter throughout the morning, it was feeling like

high summer already.

And the flies.

They're already nipping at Inara's wrists and neck more aggressive than she thought insects could be.

The moonelph had spent last autumn camped in these marshes with her family, but by then the cold knights had been keeping the flies at bay.

Inara stops to dig a scarf out of her pack. She wraps it around her caramel neck and short silvery white hair, hoping it'll keep the bighters away.

She feels giddily light without the weight of the pack pulling her shoulders down.

She bends forward to touch her toes, then tilts up into a handstand. She hangs there for a minute, then lets her legs fall forward, landing back on her feet with a hop. It's the kind of trick clan members would roll their eyes at,

as her older cousins called her runt thorn. But now Inara fields worlds away from her clan and

their settlement.

The first day of journeying after a season or two in one place is always an exciting one.

But this is her first day alone on the trail.

No cousins racing ahead of her, no ants chattering behind her, no uncles nagging at her to eat supper.

She crouches back down to find some of the oat cakes her father had made her.

Under her thieves tools, purchased from a metal worker in the city

they'd pass through last summer. She finds the woven basket her father had pressed into her

hands that morning. She opens it and says, what?

Nestled among the oat cakes is the palm-sized pouch that her mother kept the family

sigil in.

...