She's free, and what she gains is what she needs. Of course, they have every right to complain - some of them are fathers, some of them are ambitious and need more and not all of them will go on like this for much longer. Some of them have been living like this just as long as her, if not longer, jumping from one day to the other and dilly-dallying while waiting for the next distressed shop owner with a wild pests problem. 

But it's none of her business, and she never asked. Mostly, all she dreams of is her next meal, the next job, the next reward. There is no one else to worry about but her. 

And mostly, that's what her life always was. She does not remember the Land she came from, but it was probably not worth knowing much about since her parents left quite fast. And she does not exactly remember them either - she was only a newborn baby when the Old Man found her in the middle of the forest. Or so he says. 

And she never struggled to understand why they just left her in the wild. It only took looking around at people in the village to know. Their pupils are round. Hers are slits. Their teeth are blocks made for smashing food. Her teeth are long and some of them are thin and sharp, made for tearing. They grow hair, but not fur on their cheeks and their arms and legs like her. They don't have stubs of bushy tails, or horns on their heads. Their nails are fragile and dull; hers are sharp, strong, long, anchored to her fingers  and oh, so dirty and impossible to make pretty. She knows why her parents were afraid of her - everyone else seems to be. She's somewhat of Beastfolk heritage, Beastfolk were never seen too favorably among humans, and she mostly sees and walks among humans. 

She built a life getting jobs and getting out of there, without lingering too much, and so far she never had much to complain about. She survived past being a kid with nothing but the Old Man's lessons and kindness, and when he deemed her ready to get out on her own she did nothing but nod, collect her things and leave.

And it's been a pretty sweet life. So much time under the shade of trees, looking up to the sky, huddling next to fires in the night, teaming up with hunters briefly and then just leaving when a better job came by, or when they saw her naked. Sometimes, she wonders whether someone would touch her the way they touch each other - she hears them sometimes, the humans, moaning in their homes and seducing each other in the forest. But the only way they ever touched her was with a cold stare, or just barely, getting close enough to know about her but not know too much about her. 

Maybe it's the magic, too. Most of them do not know how to disappear in a gust of wind and be transported to completely different places, with completely different people and cities and coins and landscapes. All she knows is the Old Man saw her conjure something with her body as a child, and knew exactly what she was. He taught her how to jump between lands, starting from the areas with the most magic concentration and then slowly teaching her how to follow the paths between Lands. He was a good man. He taught her how to live on her own, how to get what she wanted. He never taught her how to create those paths, between Lands or between her and the humans. He taught her his way of surviving, and his craft was not in making friends. He was a hunter, a man working odd jobs and then leaving for other Lands, she was only following him around and looking at what he was doing. But sometimes she dreams at night, of being touched, of being looked at the way the humans look at each other. Sometimes she spends hours following couples and looking at them. She would lie if she denied some kind of curiosity, about why humans need each other. 

 

 

She sits under a tree and considers the faint voice she heard in her ears while sneaking up to a wild animals, calling for all young Travelers to learn about all the knowledge Titania has to offer. She only landed briefly a few times in Titania, mostly helping with people's small jobs, moving their possessions from one home to the other, and she only ever heard in passing about the history of Titania's City and Academy, about the Seers and the current one - a boy, strangely. She never cared enough to look into it, to be fair. All of those news always seemed to concern people and beings so far away from her, people who did things she couldn't even dream of doing. But the voice promised knowledge about magic, about fighting. There was something about community, but Zira did not pay it too much mind about that. There is no community she can be a part of, out there anyway.

But the knowledge of magic, of fighting, that is what she thinks about. Being better at those things would help her so much in hunting and working, she would be stronger and those flashes of fear running through her when she comes across a big animal or a bigger person would probably subside. 

She thinks about it a bit. She thinks about it a while.

And then she decides it might just be another job, but this time she would be in the lustrious Titania, with food and a place to sleep maybe. She gathers her things - not a lot of them - and closes her eyes, focusing on the last image she remembers of the place while a familiar pit opens up in her stomach. She saw it from afar, but it should not be too hard to reach the Academy from the small village she was in the last time. 

 

When her eyes open again, she takes a long breath for her stomach still gets a bit upset when she travels so far, and this time the space between her and this Land was maybe the widest she's had to cover. 

She ended up in the same village she lived in for a few days years ago, and looks around to the people. Nobody seems to notice her too much, and she figures that might be because of all the people that must be popping in every now and then, all heading towards the Academy. She does not smell a lot of excitement in the air, but it's mounting. 

The place seems to have changed quite a bit since the last time, but the one thing that seems to have stayed the same is the big Academy, silhouetted against the evening sky. She takes a bite off the chicken leg she brought with her, and pulls her hood above her head before heading towards her first destination. And somewhere in her stomach, a quiet and unknown kind of excitement warms her up.