The old man that ran the shop was probably born with the look in his eyes — even if Addison had seen him playing with a few of the local kids. She wanted to stick her tongue out at him in an act similar to those same children that he seemed to have a tolerance for, but a breeze picked up in that very second. An especially well-timed gust of air swirled around her legs, right into the hole in her knee. It moved upwards and then around until it dissipated.

She had already gotten too far away to make rude facial expressions and remembered she would have to come back for new clothes eventually.

She would have to come back for most of the shops eventually. The well-timed wind had forced her thoughts on the future ahead of her. She may not be able to pick just et, but living among her species had its temptations. The mature realization settled in her stomach heavily.

There wasn't anything about it she liked. The stares continued as she moved through town, and it made her like it even less. Being reasonable seemed beneath her when none of the adults had done the same for her, but causing messes seemed stupid. So she walked.

She walked until she reached the outskirts, and the street turned back into a well-worn path leading towards the forest. She followed it south, eyeballing the tree-line and thinking about all that the massive forest offered both her and all the other folks that lived nearby.

Things like the flower she held in her hand. Flowers, wood, animals for hunting, freshwater from somewhere beyond them, surely. The forest stretched for miles and miles. She had never seen the end of it — not really. The edge, sure, but never a corner where the trees began to thin and turn into something else. Would they turn into more dusty plains? Another village? Or was it mountains on all the other sides? It suddenly seemed strange that she had seen so very little of the world.

She was born on Earth — should have been destined to grow and explore its surface, and yet she had only seen the spaces that her guardian's handpicked for her to see. A bar on a crossroad, this path that led to her witch, the inside of the forest once or twice a year when certain types of mushrooms grew nearby. So very little. Her fingers tightened around the stem in her hands and found a baby thorn that pricked her skin.

Instinct brought Lori's name out like a curse word, and then she felt rather silly as if the woman had done it on purpose.

"What the blazing devil are you doing here?" a crackling voice called out.

The sound startled the breath out of Addison, who let out an audible gasp as her body tensed, and her feet froze mid step. Her eyebrows shot up, and both her eyes widened as she looked up in front of her for the source of the voice.

There, half a dozen feet away from the front door of her shack, was Mathilda.

Addison hadn't realized she had walked that far already. It felt like she had just left the herbalist shop a few minutes ago. She was just thinking about the trees and the forest and — her mind caught up to all the daydreaming she had done as her feet had been moving. It wasn't as if the witch was even a full day's trip away.

"Well?" Mathilda crossed her arms, a stern look on her face.

The same stern look that had been on everyone's face recently. A measure of heat back into her chest that had left while she had been walking. "I'm bleeding is what I'm doing. Or do you only have to pretend to care about me when you pull me through the ceiling?"

"Watch your mouth." Mathilda turned around and made her way inside before yelling from inside the door, "And come in already."

Addison shook her head, trying not to roll in her eyes.

The witch always knew, and there were enough fights she would have without adding to it. Picking her battles, or whatever it was called, when people caved on arguments, they probably wouldn't win. She pulled her finger to her mouth where the bleeding was and walked the last dozen steps up to the front door of her home in the realm.

The glorious, dusty, hellish home.

At least Mathilda would probably have a way to help her heal fast. Earth magic had some benefits.