It did indeed take a little less than an hour for them to reach the village, Aeric wasn’t sure if it was the enchantments but he didn’t feel the movement at all. He didn’t get car sick or anything either. It had to be the most comfortable way of traveling he had ever experienced. He jumped out of the carriage and stretched, he looked over at Jeorg and smiled, “Your carriage really is comfortable, that was the most pleasant ride I’ve ever had.”

The elderly man smiled at him and tipped his hat, “Glad to be of service.”

Aeric turned and held out a hand for Aliami to help her down, in turn, she merely raised an eyebrow and hopped down. “I’m not that old.”

Aeric shrugged, “It's not about old, it was considered the polite thing to do back home. Maybe to help stabilize people who wore heels?”

“What are heels?”

“Another thing you’re going to enjoy selling no doubt. Lead on master merchant, I don’t know the way.”

She chuffed and walked towards the village, the people in the village doing their business gave them a glance but seemed otherwise uninterested. She headed to the village center and then took a slight left leaving the village proper just a bit before walking up to a building.

“How come Jeorg didn’t just set us off here?”

“No vehicles allowed within village limits”

“Ah.” Aeric said as he looked around the village and could imagine how much blockage a carriage could cause. “Makes sense.”

He followed her through the village and Aeric took his time giving the village a once over. Most of the inhabitants were beastman of some kind. There was a rare human as well but no avians, nor did he see any of the golem people. There was a single dwarf that walked past them but the majority was either a mouse-like beastman or a squirrel-like one.

“Is it a single group of people that settled here? Most of them seem like they belong to the same tribe or something.”

One of the mousemen looked up and folded his arms, “You sayin we’re tribe-like just cause we aint livin in the city like you folk?”

Aeric blinked and looked at the man, scratching the back of his head. “I actually thought that all beastkin were members of a tribe?”

The mouseman blinked and looked at Aliami, then glanced back to Aeric. “Plenty a beastfolk live in the cities. We ain’t all part of a tribe.”

Aliami pointed to her own chest, “Me and mine are tribal nomads, but not all beastkin are like that. There are plenty that prefer living in cities, some that prefer living underground. It varies, not all are suited for the life on the plains.”

The villager nodded, “She speaks true, we prefer that quiet life out here, ain't many monsters ta worry bout. Couple a families decided to settle a village here togetha. S’why you see so many mouse n squirrelkin round. We tenda have large families.”

“Gotcha, sorry if I caused offense, I’m not from around here and still learning the customs and cultures of people.”

“Nah ain't no problem, sorry I got all me fur raised. Just used ta city folk bein all rude n the like.”

“The village should be pretty new though, right? The city’s only been around twenty years.”

“Aye, we settled this land, mayhaps a decade go? Most of us born elsewhere, few of the newuns true born to this land though.”

“Does that make a difference?” Aeric said as he cocked his head, “Being born here or moving here, for your rights I mean. I assume people are considered citizens after a couple years of livin here.”

“Nah, ya just need ta go ta tha clerks and getcha papers. Can be a true citizen o tha land within a couple a weeks. Old bear Ursin makin it easy on us small folk, he wants us ta move in and grow our produce.”

“Aaah, he’s giving incentives to people who want to settle the land?”

“Aye, lands are right safe too. The bears move quick when danger’s round. Always willin to help us towners. Good man that Ursmir, takes care o ‘is people.”

Aliami smiled and nodded to the man, “We do try our best, we did found the city because we wanted to do better than the other places after all.”

Another mouse, this one feminine walked up to the conversation. “Wacha talkin to outers for, Morr, we gots work ta do.”

“Just makin some talk with the city folk, talkin bout life as a towner. Spect it aint that much different from livin in ta city.”

“Ain't it different?”

Aeric smirked, “Wake up, work your ass off. Eat food, go back to sleep?”

The female mouse laughed as Morr chuckled, “Sounds bout right. Only thing different is ta work we do. Bet we get our paws bit dirtier then you get ya’s”

“Probably, but I’m pretty sure towners have tailors too. So it can't be that different of a job.”

The female mouse nodded, “Aye, we got our own tailors, I seen some of tha stuff ya city folk make though. We ain't got ta time or ta materials for that ere.”

Aeric nodded, “Most towners probably have a different job at the same time. Small communities might have too little work for a full-time tailor.”

“Aye, but as much fun as this is, I gotta get ta work. You folks have yourselves a nice day.”

Aeric tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing, “The same to you.”

Aliami smirked and glanced at him, “What was that gesture for.”

“I was tipping my hat, it felt like the proper thing to do. I just forgot I wasn’t actually wearing a hat.”

She shook her head in response as she walked further down the street. “We might need to get you to do some more storefront work though. Get you used to the various people, you’ve been hiding in the shop too much. I know you needed some time to settle but exposure would help you properly settle in.”

Aeric was silent for a while as he put his hands in his pockets looking at the quaint wooden focused architecture of the small town. “I haven’t even realized how I was hiding honestly, I thought I was doing well.”

She looked over at him but said nothing, waiting for him to continue his line of thought. “I’m so used to going with the flow that when I landed here, I just did what I normally do, set a few goals. Complete them and go from there. Found myself a job, a roof over my head. Then I just focused on working, if you’re good at something and you can earn money doing it. You can make it in any environment.”

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, “Such was my thought process, before I knew it focusing on work became the norm. Clothing was… normal. Even if I made them for people of races I’m not familiar with, it was comforting. You and the girls were a constant reminder of how I wasn’t home anymore, and over time I got more used to it. The act became the norm, you and the girls became people again.”

He pointed a thumb over his shoulder where the mousekin had headed towards, “Then I have such a normal conversation about town versus city. But held with races that don’t exist back home and it just… it hit different. Sometimes I feel like I’m pretending everyone is human but with some kind of suit or something. But that’s doing a disservice to people and their cultures. I realize that people from other races are still people. I know that logically, but sometimes when I expect something, like when I pat Treeka on the shoulder and feel the feathers, it throws me off.”

“I’m getting better with it, and I don’t think people have noticed. I think the good part is that all the non-humans are just as strange to me. I’m not scared or anything it’s just… How do I put this, “It’s being in a different country with a different culture and people. You know you’re the outsider, the tourist. The one that doesn’t belong. It takes years before you properly assimilate, Xii brought up traveling and it was both exciting and nerve-wracking. Maybe I’d feel more at ease when visiting other countries? Because I’d be an outsider, but it’s while traveling so It’s not like it’s my home that feels off? You know what I mean?”

Aliami sighed, “I always thought you were adjusting creepily well. You should have told me earlier.”

Aeric rolled his shoulders again, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets. “Yea well, you’re not exactly normal to me. People back home might've run screaming at the sight of you Ali. You’re huge, you have big ass teeth and you’re basically the ultimate form of a predator. I know, logically, that you’re not a violent person. That you’re trustworthy and I can count on you to listen if I need it.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that I scare you.”

“No. My body isn’t used to being around so many people bigger and more dangerous than me. With Xii I can just act like she’s a skinnier human with face paint or something. It’s unfair to them maybe? I don’t know, I'm not only scared though. I’m also excited and magic is awesome and… Emotionally it’s just taking time to settle. I still think the atmosphere or something is the cause of my jumbled emotions though. It’s better than it was.”

“Any way I can help?”

“Don’t make me go outside too much, not yet. Once or twice a week I can handle, and I need some time to mentally prepare myself. I like knowing what the day has in store for me lets me know how much mental energy I should have prepared.”

Aliami coughed then turned to him, her brows were furrowed and she folded her arms. She stopped walking and Aeric paused and looked at her. She sighed, “I should apologize, when you arrived here I used a skill on you. It’s called Touch Of A Golden Future, it helps people find their ambition and focus on it. I thought it was normal to use it on a new promising employee. It took me a while to realize how using something that might affect emotions could be an issue. Immoral even. I visited the other people I used the skill on and asked around.”

Aeric frowned but held his tongue as he looked over at the leonid, his benefactor, the one who had given him a roof over his head and a job to center him. His friend. He rolled his shoulders again and folded his arms, he jerked his chin and motioned for her to continue.

“Well it helps people focus, makes them a little more ambitious than they otherwise would be. It also nudges luck a little to their aid, like when you did your custom piece, for instance. The one for Irma? The odds of you being alone in the store when someone comes and asks for a custom piece, those odds are minuscule. We’d kind of been making sure you weren’t alone so much so you didn’t get overwhelmed. I’m now left wondering if my skill is the reason your emotions are so out of balance.”

Aeric took a moment and looked around, they’d left the village and were just a bit outside the perimeter. He sat down in the grass and folded his legs beneath him before changing his mind and letting himself fall down on his back, staring up at the blue sky. Speckled with small white clouds, the weather was beautiful, as it often was around here.

He let the thoughts flow through him. Did he feel betrayed? Not really, culturally a merchant using her skill like that was considered normal. Beneficial even. She didn’t know she was doing something that might be wrong at the moment, she probably thought she was helping him out. He wasn’t even sure she hadn’t. Maybe all that focus and ambition had helped him settle a bit, he certainly felt a lot better about himself now that he considered himself a skilled craftsman. He didn’t reach mastery of his craft yet, not even close. But he was good, more proud of his accomplishments than he had ever been before.

So that left the question, was he angry at Aliami? No, not really. To him, the intent behind the actions often mattered more than the actions themselves. People were clumsy and made mistakes, he was well aware of that. If anything, it humanized her to him, which might be a derogatory term here. But it was familiar, she had that whole ‘guilty but I’m a proud person’ look to her. Back stiff, but the shoulders slightly slumped. He smirked, that was so very like Sharon.

He let his head hit the grass. He’d been avoiding thinking about her, his roommate. A technical truth, but he knew in his heart of hearts that she had always been more. She had been a best friend, a companion he’d known since childhood. They’d gone through elementary, highschool, and college together. She was the spontaneous one dragging him along and he was the one making sure she didn’t go overboard. He’d kind of been expecting them to eventually get married or something. What they had… it had always been so comfortable. Everything had come so naturally.

He felt the liquid welling up in his eyes, he refused to brush them away as he looked at the clouds. Watching them become blurry as his thoughts centered on home. He missed Sharon and he missed Lokili. Their dog with the joke name, their little shepherd and spoiled princess. The dog that was always quieter than you expected from one of her kind. Always ready for a cuddle and she loved putting her head on your lap and just sitting there. Just quietly enjoying being there with you, he’d always thought she was a bit of a coward. Constantly twitchy and scared of things, but he remembered the one time a big black dog had run up to him and jumped onto his chest.

The dog had been enthusiastic and was just jumping up to say hello, Lokili was having none of it though. She’d jumped between him and the dog that was near twice her weight and growled and barked to get him to back off. He’d remembered the warm feeling that filled him at the time, his own cowardly dog. Putting aside her fear to stand up for him, the memory didn’t help stem the tears welling up. He knew that Aliami was probably standing awkwardly on the road next to him, unsure of what to do. But he ignored it for a moment, continuing the thought process.

And his dad, he’d always lost a bit of his spark when mom died. He’d always been a passionate artist and mom was the one who kept him in check. She was more of a rationalist but she did love his art. She helped him grow to become the artist he now was, she supported him both emotionally when he needed it as well as financially till he had made a name for himself. Dad was the emotional one and mom was the pillar, so when the pillar toppled and disappeared… It took a while for dad to recover his spark, most of the time after mom had died he’d focused on raising Aeric. He was determined to at least be a good dad, and he had been.

Those were the ones he had been closest with in life, and he’d probably never see them again. Both Sharon and his Dad would do better here, this world was so… colourful. So vibrant, perhaps he was viewing everything through rose-tinted glass but, he’d felt more like his true self here than he had ever felt back home. Dad and his art, Sharon and her creativity, they would fit in here. He wondered if they’d held a funeral for him. Dad might crack. He could almost see Saron’s blank face, her dead eyes. He could hear Lokili whine as she crawled into his bed to get one last sniff of his smell.

He choked back a sob as he balled up and pulled his knees to himself, he let the emotions swim over him, and all the pent-up feelings released into the open. He lay there for maybe a minute before the tears dried up and he felt himself calm down. He took a deep breath and let himself flop back down on his back. He wiped away his tears with a hasty sweep of his sleeve and looked over at Aliami, who was staring at him with a pained expression.

He smiled at her and patted the ground next to him, “I think I needed that, I feel better now. I should probably have told you I’d forgiven you before I went on the crying spree though.” He sniffed, “It just made me realize some other things I had to get over. I miss my family, all three of them. Imagining them thinking me dead… It hurt. But a burden has been lifted, I think I’m better now. Too much and too many emotions the last few days.”

Aliami glanced at him and released a monster of a breath. “As long as you are okay.” She dropped into the grass next to him and she let her head fall back as she stared at the sky. “As long as you’re okay…”