Cutting Them Seeds More

Aureum didn't waste another moment. From when she determined that punching her problem was useless, she took action as other avenues occurred to her.

In short, she used the cloak to fly high and find the nearest village. The trails of smoke from the beginnings of breakfast made finding it easy, and gliding toward it was quick.

And money meant her problems would be just as quickly solved.

"I want the lightest, shortest, and sharpest sword you have."

She spoke without introductions to this village's blacksmith, who had the sign of the anvil above his door. She hadn't even needed that to find him, just needed to follow the sounds of banging. He looked up at this grimy young woman with a surprising lack of interest in her circumstances.

At the moment Aureum wondered if he heard her, he spoke.

"I'm not a swordsmith, Miss."

Or perhaps Aureum's problems were not solved.

Aureum looked away and sighed.

"Certainly you make knives? For cooking."

"Sure I do. But the edge probably ain't what you're looking for, wanting a sword and all."

"Would it cut?"

"It would."

His words didn't instill confidence in his own product.

"...what else do you make?"

"Horseshoes. Pans, pots, some needles here and there."

"Needles?"

"Sewing needles. 'Course most people here use bone or wood ones."

"..."

"..."

His indifference suffered none of Aureum's nonverbal rebuke.

"If you're looking to defend yourself, you might want to start with clothes."

"Clothes?"

"Your dress is too nice for a regular vagabond."

"It's dirty and torn at this point."

"That makes it worse."

"Any more free advice?"

Aureum's tone had a warning, but it was wasted on the smith.

"Well, since you asked, a pinch of prudence and all that. Don't stand out, don't travel alone, don't bother with nothing not needed."

"If you care so much, can I have a sample of your work? Like a knife."

"Using brute force is a death wish for yeh."

Aureum glared at him.

"Everything here is made to order. 'Cept for horseshoes. You'll have to wait a few days for a knife, I don't have the metal on hand. You'll have to pay."

The smith had a half-shapen horseshoe on his anvil as he spoke.

"A lot of horses in a small town like this?"

"Lot of travelers in a town between Nix and Triviis."

The smith corrected her. Aureum had finally reconnected with a main road to her destination.

"I'll consider the knife. Thank you."

The smith blinked slowly, once, at this first politeness, but Aureum was gone. He shrugged, adjusted his grip on his hammer, and continued banging away.

I didn't even do anything wrong. Why do I have to suffer being treated like some runaway?

As much as Aureum felt annoyed by the assumptions in the smith's prodding advice, she could get new clothes.

It wasn't worth it to stand out. Not while traveling alone. Luxurious dresses had their time, the same as plain ones did.

She thought about opening an account too. It would be best not to lose everything if the worst came to pass.

But going to a bank would have to wait. This rustic village was unlikely to have one. Besides, she needed to buy things.

Not just clothes. All the food Felixia had packed was nearly gone. At least that was easy to find.

Buying clothes was more of a hassle than Aureum expected. There was no dedicated seamstress, let alone a shop, anywhere in this rustic village. Still, about midday, Aureum ended up at an inn, newish dresses draped over her arm. They were plain, soft yellow or gray, and loose.

"I'd like a room."

"Five laevus."

That worked out nicely for Aureum, and she placed a quinque on the counter. The other woman took it.

"Upstairs, farthest to the right is open and cleaned."

Aureum thanked the woman and turned away, looking for said stairs. The layout of the first floor was open, with tables spotted throughout. The dim lighting didn't help the search.

"Whad'd'ya do to have come back missin' a tooth?"

"Shaddup!"

Aureum froze. That voice was oddly familiar. Turning her head, her eyes widened as she turned back away.

Of all the luck...

The man, the brute from yesterday sat there, with some cloth held to his face.

She shook her head. It would have taken him a good stretch of time to limp his way back here. It made sense. If this was the closest village, that meant this was the would-be bandit's childhood home.

Or maybe he just had the same thoughts she did after getting kicked in the face: a desire for warm food and a bed.

Well, it was time for Aureum to be on her way—

A waitress collided with her. It was Aureum's fault, she'd taken a sudden step without looking.

"What!"

"Ugh! Not now!"

Both the waitress and Aureum cried out at the collision. A whole plate's worth of beverages fell. They clattered to the ground with the sound of finality. Aureum stood, the front of her dress, and more importantly her new clothes over her arm, drenched in beer.

More driven by instinct than thought, Aureum turned to the thug. The waitress' apologies sounded indistinct to Aureum as she did so. As soon as they met eyes she saw the flash of recognition.

Everything felt heavy.

"You're that b—

"That man assaulted me!"

Aureum cut him off as she pointed at him. His mouth opened again.

"He took his knife and said it was my money or my life! He tried to cut me!"

Aureum took a few more steps forward. If the collision hadn't taken everyone's attention, this new series of events did. A tavern's worth of eyes.

"I was drunk!"

"Like being drunk is an excuse!"

"No harm, no foul. He's the one that looks the worse off."

The man sitting next to the thug interjected for him.

"I barely remembered what happened, it was just a joke!"

The knave added to his defense.

Aureum stopped walking towards him.

"A joke?"

She turned to look upon her unwilling audience. None of them kept her gaze.

"Threatening my life is a joke to you?"

None of them said a word.

"Is it a joke to all of you? All of you gathered here?"

She didn't even have a name to call out a single person by. So they remained a crowd untouched by her.

Which wasn't unusual.

The woman by the counter, who must have been the owner, gripped her arm.

"Come on. I'll give you a bath on the house."

Aureum stood without moving for a drawn-out moment, looking for anyone who would hold her gaze. Only the thug, completely unashamed, looked at her.

She shook herself from the owner's grip.

"Get it ready, I have another errand I have to do first. And wash these too, on the house."

She plopped her new clothes into the woman's arms and stormed out in the same mess she was in.

———————————————————

It was deep in the evening before Aureum returned. The free bath was taken, gladly, as the owner had put the tub in her room.

The green dress she'd worn was trashed, as on top of everything else it was now definitely stained.

The cleaned clothes were folded on the bed. The landlady must have gotten a favor from someone to have them dry so quickly. It didn't look like anything had stained.

Aureum took a second to sit on the bed and rub her face after packing everything up. The pillows looked very comfortable.

Shame I won't be using them.

It was time to go. She wasn't going to waste more time on this place.

Down the steps, through the first floor, and out of the building through the back door, she exited. Her shoulders relaxed as she stepped under the open sky.

She had let her guard down too soon. Around the corner of the inn, on the quickest way out of town, she nearly tripped over him.

The thug, the cause of all this hassle in the first place.

She froze.

Is this supposed to be what others call fate?

He was laid out on the street before the night had even deepened. While she'd been at her wit's end figuring out what to do, it was obvious what he'd been up to. He still gripped the bottle in his hand.

"Not worth givin' nothin'."

He murmured something that meant nothing to her. Aureum had to decide between the risk of going by him or the risk of waiting it out.

"Not worth my father stayin'. Not worth my ma's time! Even my pearl's no good on my shoulder! Freakin' waste of space..."

Wait out the pity party, it seemed. But this was all free entertainment as far as Aureum was concerned. He still blocked her path.

"All I'm good fer is cuttin' down trees!"

Backing away slowly shouldn't get me noticed.

"I bet even that creepy woman thinks the same about me... Well, I'll show her! I'll show her alright."

Nevermind.

If it's a fate as cursed as this, I might as well nip it in the bud.

Aureum slipped her hand into the pocket of her vest.

"Show me what? What?"

"Eh?"

He was too drunk to even recognize her. Even as moments before he had been talking about her. Unless he had a lineup of "creepy woman" he didn't like. Possible.

All the efforts of the day felt like a waste.

"Look, I might have kicked you in the face, but what were you expecting when you attacked me?"

"I'd a... I'd only attack if yeh'd deserve it, heh."

He still didn't recognize her. Very drunk was he.

"Right. And I deserved it because I was in your path, and an easier seeming mark than anybody else."

"Heh heh." He laughed.

The edge in her voice went unnoticed, but he did see her forced smile vanish.

"You terrified me."

She lowered herself, taking her hand out of the pocket and holding it out in front of her.

His only response was just a small hiccup.

"I'm not even going to sleep at this tavern because of you. And the rest of this village."

"So? Ergh." The thug wiped something from his face.

Much like the bum's cries while he was drunk, nobody cared about Aureum's worries. The world could be cold.

"Is it just we take what we want then? But what if nobody has what we want? How can we take it then?"

"W-we, we take it from more people!"

Aureum pulled out the sewing needle from her pocket.

"Hic!"

"Well, you could build something. Make something of yourself. Help others out. Things usually are stacked against that direction, I guess.

At least you could not hurt others. Does that really take too much effort?"

She dropped a needle from her hand, letting the wind catch it and rotate it. Both she and the thug watched it for a second. It spun and it shone. Then it rose alongside the breeze to the height of the man's face.

Faster with each spin, now it was several times a second. His eyes were so focused on the sight, he didn't notice the drop of sweat fall down Aureum's face.

It lifted its point and shot to his right eye.

It stopped, right before it met its target, bobbing in the air like a hornet from the force of it.

The thug wet himself right there, jerking his face from it. It constantly honed on his eye.

"Whether being nice or not takes effort or not... I know my answer to those who try to try to steal from me. It's probably the same as yours."

"Who'd a—What'd'yah—

"Remember. When you try to steal from people, they feel pretty obliged to anything that's yours. So don't steal from me. Don't try to hurt me. Don't play it off as a joke."

"Pudor! Hey, Pudor!"

Aureum let the needle fall. He pulled away from it as one would from a snake.

As whoever called for him came around the corner, Aureum had already walked away.

———————————————————

"Of all the things that came from Malum's backside."

Aureum sweated and shook beneath a tree. Carrying the tiniest droplets of water from a coat, and carrying a metal needle were two entirely different tasks. The latter felt like a ton of bricks.

The needle had been Aureum's last-ditch solution to the problem of defense.

She'd asked around for a swordsmith, but of course, there wasn't one in such a small town. She didn't have the time to knock on strangers' doors asking if they had a knife, so she'd returned to the blacksmith and asked for as many needles as he could make that day.

Now she had another bag that clinked. It was, thankfully, much smaller than the rest. A few she kept on hand in her vest pocket. That needed a permanent solution as well. Maybe a case of some kind to keep them organized.

Testing it out on the thug was lucky.

Aureum kept misjudging her capabilities with this pearl. Or rather, knowing it was different from the first couldn't change habits built from nearly two decades of use.

She hadn't known such a simple display would take this much effort.

Her hand reached above her head as she looked up at it. It quivered.

"I have the same problem as usual."

Too little power.

Gaining power with a pearl was supposed to be a simple task. Relatively. Layer it. Anyone with patience could do it.

But even the thinnest layer needed a hint of wind.

Last time she hadn't had a breeze. Now she never had enough time to prepare.

At least her level of control was on point.

Learning true control of mana was difficult for most. It meant sending mana out into the world, the opposite process of layering or forming. Which made it a backward concept to grasp. Another reason why many reinforced their body.

Besides the intricate balance to be struck if the sorcerer wanted the results to be anything specific. Just for the needle, she needed a massive amount of wind pushing at it from different sides to keep it relatively still.

It would have been easier to shoot. Who would have thought a threat would take more effort?

Aureum lowered her arm as she slumped.

Well, with time her situation was bound to improve. The hope of a future was still more than what she had in the past.

"The answer is always layers. And layers. And layering. Should I just layer instead of sleeping?"

Despite her words, she did sleep that night. The next day opened her eyes to a glorious morning drowned by dawn.

There was little distance between her and Triviis. In this final stretch, she used her cloak with abandon.

At this point, she didn't much care if she was caught. Half of her mind felt that she shouldn't have left home in the first place.

When Aureum couldn't shake feelings like that, she would look up at the endless sky, or down at the rolling hills beneath her. Their movement in stillness was a comfort to her.