Skinny knew when she had gotten deep into a mess. Earlier in life she would’ve ignored how bad a situation could be and pressed deeper in for a variety of reasons. A bit of fun or adventure. But she wasn’t as foolish as that anymore.

What had she been thinking, letting herself get close to people? To be responsible for people? She hadn’t wanted to do it. It was one thing, taking jobs from the wanderers of this continent. They were short-term trades that she could take or leave. It gave her necessities and let her roam around the forests and hills with minute purpose, hunting and trading with other wanderers, villages, or camps. She learned new paths, visited untouched places, and committed all to memory.

It was another thing altogether taking a job guiding people, folks she barely knew, from one spot of trouble to another. But she had done it. Partly because she was already going the same direction, hoping to hop to Tovo, the northern continent, for a while. But mostly because Keen wanted her to, and he was a clever pup.

Skinny looked at her pack of items, carefully inventorying them to make sure they were all there. She ran her sure finger over her ropes, mess kit, vials, waterskin, dwindling rations, and her sundial, and bundled them all up together. Pulling on her silver metal armbands, covering the tattoo of her family crest, she stroked the sigils on the bands. An unseeable force of spellwork started and they tightened up and clicked together automatically. I hope I don’t have to sell these just to get a ship. She frowned at the thought. They were the last remnant that she still had of her home in Erto. Anything less valuable had been sold over the years when times trekking the wilderness got tough. But the metal bands she could never part with before. There was the sentimental value of a gift loved and given in love by her brother. And then there was their practical value. Like many things in Erto, they were more than what they seemed and could be used in an instant to restrain a creature or person by stroking imbued sigils on the inside. They opened, unfolding like rope, and remained so until she twisted them and stroked the sigils again. Tools as versatile and discreet as that were hard to find on this continent.