At night, sometimes she would dream of flying.

It was never a sure thing – sometimes the glimpses of a sun-kissed landscape from hundreds of feet in the air would come every night; sometimes they would evade Miriam for months at a time, peeking in like gifts.

And oh, they were gifts.

She was never a disembodied spirit in these dreams. Her muscles ached after a long flight, when she settled her large frame in a field or on the cool rocks of a mountain cave; she could feel muscles she didn't have when awake aching as they flapped her wings and even as they folded back for the night.

Waking up from these dreams always made for the hardest mornings, but this time was different – she had been flying over a village very like her own, and when she trumpeted her glee at seeing the sun creep over the horizon she awoke, swearing she could hear the echo of the dragon's roar in her very human ears.

The village was small, but its only well was still busy when she trudged down the main road the four miles from her fringe homestead, small handcart bouncing behind her. People she'd known all her life nodded groggily to her, waking gradually but doing everything they needed to in the morning by rote – everyone did this, she noted, but her.

She was always sharply awake after a dragon dream, and she loved it.

The muscles under her shoulder blades twinged slightly as she lifted the full water buckets back into her cart, and she smiled to herself.

“A good night, Miriam?”

She looked up through the strings of dark hair that had fallen in her face and grinned at Ban, a man almost ten years her senior who had been pursuing her hand since she was of age for marriage. She enjoyed the flirting, and he seemed to be enjoying the game they both knew he would never win lately as well.

“I couldn't possibly say,” she said. “But there are, perhaps, a few sore muscles. Here and there.”

Ban laughed, lifting the last two of her buckets onto her cart. “Well, tell the lad he should be up in the morning doing your chores if he's going to tire you out so.”

“And who's to say I didn't tire him out even more?” He laughed even harder, and a few of the village folk nearby joined him. Miriam had always been bold. This was nothing new.

“Either way,” Ban laughed, clapping her on the shoulder and grinning down at her. “You should bring him out to the Stag some night. It's no secret you've got a man out there; he'll need to meet us someday.”

Miriam rolled her eyes and hoisted the hand cart up. “He'll come when he's good and ready, I always say.” She winked and turned on her heel, walking away while they laughed.

There was no man, of course – there was only her studies, and they had gotten more and more difficult as she had fallen into them. Living almost a hundred miles from the nearest city, magic wasn't something that could be easily learned; villages like Havenbrook that barely had a name to mark on a map – and then only because of their tavern, a regular stop for travellers – did not warrant a library or a school. The tomes she had collected had come at a steep price, and only her oath that she would return them to the library in Korath let her haggle the scholars even that low.

She did not want Ban or any of the rest of the village knowing all that, though. They would worry, and she was handling herself just fine. Just fine indeed.

The walk back to her house seemed longer with the water and Ban's joking weighing on her; her morning chores seemed to stretch on even further. She was soaked through with sweat and grime from a deep clean of her floors - a chore she detested and put off as long as she could manage it - when a sharp knock sounded at her door. She was frowning, befuddled, when she opened it.

“I am looking for… er.” The man started, and suddenly stopped. Miriam looked down, seeing that she was still only in the thin shift she had left on while cleaning, and that it was sticking to her body in entirely inappropriate ways.

She slammed the door.

Her cloak was nearby, and she wrapped herself in it before opening it back up to find the man still sitting looking befuddled.

“What is it you were looking for?” she asked, sounding more confident than she actually was.

“Er… yes.” The man stopped, cleared his throat, and glanced to the left of the door - presumably into the forest where he was trying to banish his impolite thoughts. Miriam tried to hide a smirk but failed, straightening up and reclaiming some of her lost confidence. “I am looking for Miriam. I was… told that she may be able to help me.”

The sound of her name made Miriam really take a look at the man at her door - he was large, but in rough shape; scratches and bruises on his face, pieces of armour that once may have been matching sets for seven or eight different men, clothing that was ripped and stained. His cloak was oilskin and well cared for, and it stuck out like sore thumb compared to the rest of him.

“You have found her,” she said. He looked up and for the first time their eyes met. Hers were the same mossy green they’d always been, but his… his were gold.

Not yellow, and not the pale brown she’d seen on a few men in the village, but… gold. Shining. Real. They seemed to… gleam when she told him he had found her.

“I need a spell. I need… something to hide.”

--

“My name is Fidal.” His hands were wrapped around the clay mug she had given him as if clinging to it to hold onto his consciousness. He was clearly losing the battle, his eyelids drooping to hide the golden bands of colour that Miriam could hardly look away from.

“You mentioned.” She had changed, a fresh shift under her simplest skirt and bodice. It wasn’t proper for company, but no proper company would be asking her about magic, either. She needed to be able to move. The fact that they complimented her eyes and hair… well. She was only human.

“The men who are after me are… let’s say they are misinformed as to my intentions,” he said. He glanced up at her, clearly expecting more questions. She pursed her lips and raised one eyebrow. “They think I am dangerous. That I have magic that they label as unnatural.”

“And do you?”

He furrowed his brows and opened his mouth, about to snap an answer as he looked up and stopped at the sight of her lips curled up in a smug smile. His returned one. “In their eyes? Absolutely.”

“And in yours?”

“Entirely natural magic.”

“Where did you study?”

“I didn’t,” he said, offering a little shrug as if in apology. “I have had this since I was much younger. My family has always been this way.”

“Why?”

“It is in our blood. Not something we can avoid, really,” he added with a small smile.

"Why are they hunting you, I mean." She sipped her own drink, looking over the brim of the cup as he sighed.

"I was foolish enough to have made my nature known in the middle of Market Square." That caught Miriam's attention.

"In Koranth?"

"The only one worth mentioning." His smile was thin and forced, and he looked almost wistful as he clearly thought about the city. "Koranth is full of men and women who claim open-mindedness, but magic is still..." He trailed off, looking out the nearby window. "It's still not trusted. Or really accepted."

It was very strange to her, having another practitioner in her home. Stranger still was the thought that Koranth may not be the promised land of free thinking and magical acceptance that she had been raised to think it was. Even the folk of Havenbrook knew that she was a caster, though they didn't know how far she had come. Would that knowledge change things?

"Either way, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would need to leave the city." He smiled, this time with a touch of sarcasm. "Some of the people who told me had blades that had been mysteriously unsheathed. I was not given much time to pack." He motioned to his clothes, torn and dirty. "I have been walking since."

"Since?" She blinked. "That would have taken you... days. How have you been sleeping - under the stars?"

"I haven't," he said. He yawned, as if reminded by her question. "I have been able to use some of my skills to move forward, but... one of my friends told me to seek you out. He said you would help me."

"Who?" She didn't have friends, not outside of Havenbrook. Even before he said anything, though, the hairs on the back of her neck started standing up.

"Magus Porliett," he said. The name of the legendary magus was said casually, as if he was just any other neighbour; meanwhile Miriam hadn't even met his apprentice's assistant on her one trip to Koranth. He had been deemed too important for her.

"And what... erm." She cleared her throat, still coming to terms with the idea that Porliett had known her name, much less recommended her for anything. "What did the Magus say that I could help you with, exactly?"

"Hiding," he said. His voice was getting raspier; his eyelids drooping under the weight of every passing minute. "I need... I need to hide, Miriam. Please."

"Sleep," she said, as he slid almost drunkenly forward. "Sleep and we will get you hidden."