Directions

When she was doing an especially weird voice exercise, Amycus stopped walking. At first, she thought it was because of the sound she was making but, after careful observation, she realized his lips were pursed. His knitted eyebrows were also a big clue.

He was looking at the map instead of practicing his magic as he often did nowadays. A thing that she would have found weird, but considering he had not looked at the map for some time now, it was plausible.

Probably they were lost, though she hoped they were not.

"What's wrong?" she finally asked after seeing him looking in the direction they were going, as always, following the river upwards.

"If I'm not mistaken, if we keep taking this route, in a couple of days we're going to be inside the deeper parts of the forest."

Oh, right. The dangerous parts.

"Let's see," she murmured as she motioned him to show her the map. When he finished telling her all the important points, she nodded. "So we can go and take this path, right? We would deviate from the river and walk for what... a day? Two?"

"If we take into consideration our sleeping time, I think three."

"Okay, then. The problem would be this path that it's man-made, we would have to cross it, right?"

"Yes, though I think it should be safe to follow it now. It leads to a town, after all. We could say we are orphans or something."

She thought about it before nodding. "I'm sure those men sent letters to whoever their boss is, but we have been quite careful..." She then sighed. "The problem is that I took all their important things and killed the other slaves."

Amycus frowned, his lips pursing. "Speaking of that, there were only a couple of gold coins. Are you sure they are going to make a big fuss because of it?"

"Well, the money is not that important," she said with a hum as she put grabbed the collar hanging from her neck. "The problem is this."

"Oh, yeah. You said you were going to look into what it did, now you know?"

She nodded. "It holds stuff. From what I see, there's a good amount of gold. Probably to buy more slaves or other necessities."

"Necessities?"

"Yeah, I've seen some spices and... er, well, unusual clothes."

He tilted his head slightly to the side. "How unusual?"

With a sigh, she took one of the dresses she found out. This one was a deep dark red with black accents. The corset was mainly black that shown the collarbone and arms of the person. She admitted that it was pretty but for the current time, it was quite daring. Not to mention the skirt, which was long on the behind and short in the front, letting the people see most of the legs of the woman.

For her, it was a fairly decent dress, a little on the old style, but considering the dark blush Amycus was sporting on his cheeks, this was pretty risque.

Better not to show him the men's clothes, which were a bit indecent, too. Not to mention the underwear, which while a bit sexy, didn't felt as comfortable as to how it looked.

She put the dress in its place and said, "So, yeah. We could hide this and continue with our lives but it's better to have it as walking around with the money in hand is even more dangerous."

"I understand. And we can sell those clothes when we don't have any more money."

She nodded, happy she could get more time to inspect this piece of jewelry. It didn't have many runes, so she was quite intrigued by how it worked with seemingly little difficulty. She probably needed her books, which were hidden inside the space on her wrists. Though she didn't think it will help much, considering the difference in how language evolved here.

"So, are going to take the path you showed me before?" When he nodded, she added, "Then we should eat a lot today because we aren't going to be able to fish when we are in the middle of the forest."

"Yes, it's better if we clean ourselves well, too." Seeing she didn't argue, he blushed slightly as he looked away and murmured, "It's also better if we can change from the clothes we are wearing. They clearly look like slave's clothes."

Well, she didn't know how slave clothes looked like but considering they both were wearing brown clothes and she remembered the other kids inside the carriage were wearing similar outfits, it was safe to say little Amycus was knowledgeable.

"Okay, then you clean yourself first while I search for a pair of pants that don't have a hole in their butt." At his spluttering, she added longingly, "I wish I could use pants, too."

Still covering his face, he spoke, his voice coming muffled, "If you want to make it known that you're a mage, then be my guest."

She tensed. He was right. Here only female mages were permitted to wear pants as it was easier to move when in combat. It was a show of status only allowed to them.

Though it was also to identify them, as they had similar power as men and could work in the government, too. And while this was a world where women could work, if they worked, it was considered shameful. Only female mages were the exception to this rule.

Did she want to be known so early in the game when she was ignorant of the world as it was? It was true that this was a world where the strong eats the weak, but while she didn't know all the rules it was better to remain hidden.

Amycus seemed to read all of this from her expressions because he nodded. "Yeah, I thought the same, too."

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Go to shower while I search for some comfortable clothes."

"Right. Though could I grab that bar of soap inside our bags?"

"Sure, kid," she said distractedly as she watched him, wishing the space in the collar wasn't so small to only contain a couple of things. They could catch fish to eat, but she didn't know how it interacted with the other things, so better not to risk it.