A wind from elsewhere slowed my body as I landed in a small open glade in the Moreland Forest, I could feel the grin on my face but couldn't help it.

The gliding fall from my mountain was always enjoyable, more than enjoyable, it was a rush.

A thrill of something that wasn't quite true flight but close enough.

While I had some small ability to make myself levitate, true flight still eluded me.

There was something about trying to use your own body as a focal point to lift oneself that just didn't work, or rather didn't work well.

A slow straight climb into the air with an almost overwhelming sense of being about to lose your balance was about all that I could do.

But using that, along with the wind, as I fell from some place already high up gave you that thrill of flight, of forceful movement as you tore through the air.

Righting my robe and satchel and taking a quick look around then back to the mountain, I oriented myself and set of northwards. I stayed close to the treeline, I had only flown into the forest about a thousand paces so, I made sure to move a little closer to the edge as I trekked onwards.

It was going to be another hot day, being summer right now it seemed like each day would always be another hot day, but it was still quite cool here beneath the trees.

Only a little light made it through the gently swaying trees to dapple my robe in different shades, that and being morning still left me warm but also cool enough to keep the heat at a pleasant level.

Having travelled in this direction many times before, I allowed my mind to wander a little, only occasionally checking that my direction was still on the correct course.

I was feeling some excitement deep down, I would be heading to Diggin first.

Years back when I had first come to the mountain, Diggin had been nothing but the beginnings of a small, work driven village.

A settlement for the workers at most.

On one of my trips there roughly two years ago, I had found the place slightly abuzz with excitement. The miners who brought out mostly copper from the mines had apparently struck some silver.

The promise of wealth to come out of their mountain was enough for the place to boom. Each time I had visited afterwards there had been major changes.

The most obvious was that the size had increased, more and more people had moved there, shops and other small businesses opening up to support those new arrivals.

More trees were cleared and land worked over for a little more cattle.

The place looked to be doing very well as the material for building more was right there, the stone of their mountain and so buildings shot up rapidly.

This had been great for me personally, as Diggin had been the closest place to my mountain, it was the next mountain over in the Clearwater Ridges.

More kinds of foods or materials became available and I hadn't needed to trek all the way to Moreland's Rest.

Well, I didn't need to go to Moreland's rest most of the time.

While a small book shop had opened in Diggin, their selections had been limited. The old man Roy, who opened the book shop didn't seem to actually care about whether or not they sold any books.

Rather it was more like a place he could be surrounded by books all day and occasionally share them with others who came in.

That seemed to be all the old man wanted.

I had bought plenty of books of him, though he hadn't always known it was me who bought them. When I had learned a little illusion magic, I'd managed to change the appearance of my face temporarily and later on as I had gotten better, even the appearance of what I had been wearing.

Moving around with a new face had settled that nagging worry that I could be recognised by someone who knew who I truly was, but with that taken care of I had been free to visit both Diggin and even Moreland's Rest without fear.

I had still avoided going near places that I had spent time at though, both of the inns, all the guardsmen and even some of the areas near Marley & Hall's, though I could admit to myself now that avoiding them had been unnecessary.

I moved at an easy pace, I would reach Diggin tomorrow at midday but tonight I would walk for as long as it took for the sun to wane before I stopped to bed down for the night.

I stopped only once to open my tablet of chests, I took out the single piece of dried deer meat, to eat it as I continued onwards.

I ended up stopping on the edge of a small clearing, I used a little magic to pull nearby duff and dead fall into a small pile.

With a whisper of will, the pile ignited and I spent a few minutes walking around picking up slightly larger bits of wood to feed into the small fire.

I didn't need it for warmth or even for cooking, but it was nice to gaze into the flames while out in the open at night.

I sat on my unrolled bedroll, a cup of wine in one hand and cheese that I slowly ate in the other, until I felt myself relax and settle down.

I slept and let the fire burn itself out.

In the morning, after a brief look at be sure the small fire had indeed died out I was on my way.

I reached Diggin just before noon having made good time, I walked down the narrow road that led between two small fields and towards the thick but short wall that now surrounded the little village.

My first order of business was to buy some food, not a lot and not to fill my chest but enough to last me the few days walk to Moreland's Rest.

I bought a small wheel of cheese, a fat cooked hen and indulged myself in buying a couple of sweet pastries, one of which didn't even manage to make it into my chests.

I got a few strange looks from some of the villagers but I couldn't blame them, without one of the faces I wore when I came here, I was just a stranger to them, a stranger in a tatty robe who had come to their small village at the end of nowhere.

Still, I didn't let it bother me.

I headed to Roy's book shop, mostly out of habit, but also to check if he had anything new or of interest to come in lately.

I caught a glimpse on myself in a window, I didn't pause but still felt my face frown slightly.

I was a little wilder looking than I thought, the robe wasn't that strange but that combined with my very long and messy hair and the unkempt beard, it acted like a mask to most of my face.

Just two severe eyebrows, my green eyes and a slightly hooked nose on display.

I made a point to push my hair back behind my ears and try to finger comb my beard down into something less bush-like and more dignified.

I'd have to do some serious grooming later.

I cleared my throat slightly and tried to put on a more friendly face as I entered the book shop through the wooden door.

*******************

Roy looked up as someone entered his little shop.

It was a young man, no more than twenty years but with a hard edge to him, something wild around the edges too.

It was easy to see just in the way he moved into his shop.

The young man had dark hair than was an indistinct colour, neither black nor reddish but something slightly in between. Strong eyebrows that seemed to be in a half frown even as the mildly impressive beard twitched in what Roy assumed was a friendly smile.

“Good morning.” The young man said and Roy had the strange feeling he'd heard that voice before, dismissing the thought he instead stood up from his comfortable chair behind the small counter.

“And you too.” Roy replied. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

The young man, who had looked towards the books after greeting him turned his gaze back to Roy.

“Ah, nothing specific. Just thought I'd come in and see what there was see before I moved on.” The young man said easily.

The young man then paused slightly and asked casually. “You happen to get anything new in recently? Anything interesting? I'm always on the look out for new books.” Once again Roy felt like he was forgetting something.

“New is relative when it comes to books.” Roy answered almost reflexively but added quickly “Any specific topics you're interested in?”

A small flash of white teeth from under the dark beard and twinkle in the green eyes. “Just about anything that has a use for it, I'm not much for fiction.” The man said.

Roy thought for a moment, raising a hand to indicate he was thinking and not just ignoring the young man. After a moment he thought of something.

“Well, I've got a book on desert life in Great Southern Sands? Haven't read it myself yet but I got it from my usual supplier in Moreland's Rest, and they're always reliable.” I told him.

It'd come with the non-fiction marker on the box and Harbour didn't mess up when it came to books, even had a catalogue of exactly the books he could get.

I just remembered that it had looked to be in good condition when I'd unpacked it, most of that delivery had been fictional works, lots of stories.

The ladies who lived here bought a surprising number of them. He'd left the new books mostly unsorted because, well he had been in the middle of reading when the books had been delivered and if he wanted to carrying on reading it then he could!

It was his shop after all.

“Hm.” The young man said sounding thoughtful and pulling my wandering mind back out of my own thoughts.

Too old for this.

I'll be forgetting my own name next.

“I think I might take that off your hands but I'm doing alright for coins right now, do you have anything else I might want?” The young man asked.

“I'll go look for it, it's still in the back.” I told him turning to walk into the back. “I'll see what else I might have.”

The only other book I found from the new delivery that had the non-fiction mark was actually loosely related to the other book about the Great Southern Sands and I pointed this out to the young man.

“A Brief History of Suldar.” I said. “So you might get a few mentions of the desert in it too.”

The young man frowned down at the second book. “Jakeem Musari, that's a Suldari name if ever I heard one. I wonder if anything in the book is true or...”

“If it's just what he wants the rest of the world to think?” I finished feeling amused, the young man flashed those white teeth again in a grin.

“Exactly.” He said then stood up a little straighter. “I'll take them both anyway, maybe I'll get a few laughs out of this one even if I don't manage to learn anything from it.”

After a brief exchange of coins, the young man thanked me and headed for the door.

“Take care, Roy.” The young man said as he left the shop, I idly waved in his direction and sat back down to carry on reading.

I picked up my book, it was just getting to a tense part of the story, I had just been about to find out if Esmerlda would accept the dashing Duke Wolfrick's marriage proposal or if she would reject him when I suddenly looked up at the closed door, slightly startled.

How the hell had he known my name?

I was sure I hadn't actually introduced myself otherwise the young man would have told me his own name.

I sat for a while, frowning to myself, worried that I really was losing my marbles in my old age.

***********

I'd taken a room in one of the three inns in Diggin.

I'd briefly considered buying some new clothes but I didn't want to stay here long enough to get one tailored and buying fabrics to whip up something of my own was ruled out as the fabrics here weren't very good.

There was much more to choose from in Moreland's Rest, so I'd wait until then.

I was sitting in a hot bath in the copper tub that had been brought up to my room.

Before me, an exact copy of my head floated in the air, it was slightly ghostly looking as it was just a weak illusion but it served well enough as a mirror for now.

Using a knife, I'd taken a hold of my hair at the back of my neck and cut through the mass of it. I pulled away my hand with a good foot of hair dripped in it.

It was short enough now not to look out of place, I pushed the remaining strands out of my face to tuck behind my ears.

I pushed my hand out and opened it to let the mass of cut hair float through the air and directly into the small fire in my room.

I pushed a brief gust of air at the fire quickly afterwards as the smell of burning hair reached my nostrils.

The air pulled the worst of the foul stench up the chimney and out of the inn.

I repeated this by taking off as much of my ragged beard as I could with the knife, the only difference being that I sent air after the floating hair immediately rather than let the smell waft back out.

Then I set about gathering a lather and rubbing it into the butchered and hacked hair that grew out of my face. I'd only actually shaved a dozen times before, mostly when I'd been surprised to discover the hair of a man coming out of my boy's face for the first time.

I smirked to myself, at that youthful feeling of pride every young boy has when they start to get clear signs that they're approaching manhood.

Even after cutting myself terribly, I'd continued the practise of shaving almost as soon as I could find enough hair on my face to justify it, until eventually I just stopped once the novelty wore off.

Now I had a much better idea of how to do it and how to do it properly, even if I did end up using a little magic to assist.

When I finally pulled my focused gaze off my neck and cheeks, rinsed the rest of the lather off myself and looked back up to my reflective illusion.

I was mildly startled at my own reflection.

Gone was the mostly hair covered wild man, instead there was a young man with damp and tousled hair haphazardly shoved out of his face looking back at me.

The face itself was very pale.

Almost as if I'd been living in a dark mountain for years.

Green eyes, thick brows but despite clearly being the face of a young man...

That boy was still there, not overtly, but suggestions of him were there if you looked closely.

Small hints of a boy that had gone into a mountain all those years ago.

Shaking my head slightly I dismissed the illusion and went about summoning my own water as I stood up in the copper tub.

I rinsed myself off with it then got out.

I spent a little time using clean summoned water to soak my clothes with then ring out into the tub before laying them out to dry close to the fire.

I thought about using a little magic to dry them out more quickly, I thought about getting dressed and heading down to get a meal in the common room too, but decided against it.

I wasn't particularly hungry and if I was being honest with myself, I was feeling a little lazy.

I'd take a nap instead, if I woke up too late for a meal then there were always the bits in my chest I could eat to tide me over until tomorrow.

I was awoken briefly what I thought was several hours later and had to put on my damp robe as the tub was taken back out of my room, but quickly I found myself returning to my 'nap' that soon enough became real sleep.

I awoke early, having gone to sleep before even a child's bedtime. I realised the odd looks I'd gotten when the two men had come to take away the tub last night had been because I looked like an entirely different person, vastly different to the one who had been in the room when they had first brought the tub in.

My sleepy mind hadn't made sense of it at the time though.

I waited in my room for a while until I could smell the scents of cooking breakfast, then I was down in the common room drinking some black tea with my breakfast.

With no other reason to stay here in Diggin, I took my leave and headed west along the road on my way to Moreland's Rest.

As the day moved on, the heat increased and I ended up tearing a strip of my ragged robe off and using it to cover my mouth and nose.

Hood raised to stop the sun beating down on me too hard and face covered to keep the worst of the road dust away, I marched onwards.

I encountered several other travellers heading back the way I had come from, to Diggin. None of us stopped of exchanged pleasantries beyond a simple nod as we crossed paths.

It was mid afternoon before I heard the sounds of horses and a wagon coming up behind me and I moved off slightly to the side of the road to allow them to pass.

I continued to walk but the wagon slowed as it reached me.

“You heading to Moreland's Rest, stranger?” A voice called out and I looked up to see three men on the wide wagon.

The one who had spoken was the driver, an older man with a shorn head and pleasant expression on his face.

The other two, slightly younger men were neutral as they looked at me.

I realised my covered face and drawn hood might be the cause of that, so I pulled down my hood and improvised scarf before I spoke.

“I am heading that way, you have room for a suspicious looking character such as myself?” I asked with a quick smile, already having guessed the reason the driver had stopped.

“I might, just depends on what kind of suspicious you are?” The driver answered easily.

“The kind that would be grateful for the ride.” I said and shortly afterwards I was sitting on the last space on the large bench seat.

The wagon was huge and carried ores in the back, overflows of copper than would just be waiting around in Diggin for their turn to be smelted down.

The wagon was well made and I asked Jim, my magnanimous driver a question.

“This made by Marley & Hall?” I asked him and his eyebrows rose.

“It was, how'd you know?” Jim answered.

“Looks like good work, just a guess.” I told him truthfully.

“Well, you're obviously not as much of a stranger to these parts as I thought, but I can tell you've not been here for a while.” Jim told me, obviously expecting me to ask the question.

“How'd you come to that conclusion?” I asked obligingly.

“It's just Marley now.” Jim revealed. “Hall's gone.”

“What happened?” I wondered aloud, I'd not heard anything about Marley & Hall since the day I'd left with that little travel carriage.

I'd been to Moreland's Rest a few times with a 'different face' but hadn't heard anything.

Clearly something had happened but I supposed in a town like Moreland's Rest, maybe as large as ten or fifteen thousand people now, there were bound to be things happening all the time. Things that many people probably wouldn't hear about.

It was Kim, Jim's son who answered me.

“Hall stole their coin and left.” The stocky but muscled man told me.

I felt my eyebrows rise.

“All their coin?” I asked and all three of them, Jim, Kim and Reggie nodded. “From the bank?”

Reggie shook his head at hearing my question but it was Kim who answered.

“Didn't use the bank, had their own safe or something.” Kim told me.

That wasn't as unusual for a place like Moreland's Rest, while most places large enough had a bank branch, they were mostly used by travelling merchants or the nobility as a place to deposit and withdraw what they needed before moving on.

Most townsfolk would either keep what coin they had hidden away in their homes or in the case of those who had any significant amount of coin, use their own safes.

“How did it happen? And what's happened to Marley and the rest of the workmen?” I asked.

“Well...” Jim said, clearly settling in to tell a long tale.

While most of what Jim told me was just gossip, guesses and things Jim 'knew without having to be told', I got a few details.

Marley and his business partner, or rather former business partner Hall had been having disagreements, apparently some of the workmen had seen them arguing more and more.

Things had been tense between them for some reason.

Jim couldn't give me a confirmed reason why, but it had been clear that things had just gotten worse between the two of them over time.

Hall had disappeared on day and Marley had gathered all the workmen to tell them that their company coin was gone, their office was trashed and there was no sign of Hall anywhere.

The conclusion becoming even more apparent when Hall's house had been searched by the guardsmen, only for it to be discovered mostly empty.

Marley had had to make some hard choices, with the clear evidence that Hall had taken their coin and run, the local Justice had officially turned over full control of the business to Marley.

A business that now had almost no funding, one that had basically a physical place that was owned by them, that being the warehouse and work yards.

That and a slightly tarnished reputation and teams of workmen who needed to be paid.

Several men had lost their jobs while the others had had a hard time of it trying to keep up with their contracts.

At the end of Jim's version of events, with input from both Kim and Reggie, Marley's business was still going but only barely.

Marley had seemed like a good man to me, in fact most of the workmen I'd met seemed like solid dependable men though it had been years ago and from a child's perspective.

Hall, had not seemed unfriendly or even someone who was particularly greedy, he had just seemed a little terse, a little rough around the edges?

I hadn't thought the man the type to steal from a long time friend, that was for sure.

But again, I had only been a child and had only impressions of the men I'd met briefly.

I could have misjudged them easily and had apparently done exactly that, with Hall at least.

All three men agreed with me when I told them that I'd thought Marley a good man and undeserving of such a fate, they'd told me that both Marley and Hall had been respected by most of the workmen and miners from Diggin.

Marley & Hall being dependable and providing top quality products for years to the workmen of Diggin, they'd all been quite shocked to hear of the betrayal.

We stopped by the side of the road and had a fireless camp that night, the horses were tended to, I'd shared my cooked hen and cheese with the three other men as I'd likely reach Moreland's Rest tomorrow just before evening thanks to the horses and wagon.

After that the four of us had bedded down next to the wagon and slept soundly.