“Moon-cursed marsh!” Harper swore. She held onto her boot, trying to pull it out of the mud. In her frustration, she strained too hard. Her foot came flying free, and the momentum carried her backwards. She landed in the puddle behind her, something she had managed to avoid this trip, until now.

  Worse was the spike of pain that surged from within. Harper curled into a ball, ignoring the mud. After only a minute, the pain died down, and she sighed in relief. The attacks were growing more infrequent and no longer carried the edge they had before. Only a month previously, they were debilitating.

  Still, Harper looked around at the surrounding wetlands, and her filth covered clothes and a now familiar anger rose to the surface. She began swearing anew. First at the marsh, then at the Governor, and finally at Salamander.

  After a few minutes, she pushed the anger down and rose to her feet. Brushing off most of the mud, and checking her satchel to make sure that her infusion of the Aquatic Domain remained intact and the contents within dry, she continued onwards. The village was only a couple of hours away.

  Harper soon reached a tree that she was somewhat familiar with by now. A massive knot decorated its side and distinguished it from all the other trees. She took it as her cue to angle to the right. Her detour from the rough trail added another fifteen minutes to her trip, but she deemed it worth the effort.

  She gave the shallow pond a wide berth. Supposedly it would only go up to her hips at the deepest, and barely reach her knees if she walked directly between the trails on either side. Harper didn't care. She wasn’t going anywhere near it.

  Becoming a full courier was the one bright spot from that accursed trip to the Uweyvi tribe, but even that was soured when she got her assignment. Her main area would be in the far north-west area of the colony. The reason was the same that she had been on the efferan trip. Her waterproof bag.

  The area bordered both the New Golvoran and Roglar colonies. Deliveries between Arboren and New Golvoran were handled further south. Contact between Arboren and Roklar was done through a few of the bigger villages in the area. The terrain in part of the area was much the same as most of the terrain in the Roklar colony. Swamp.

  Upon hearing of her assignment, Harper had done everything within reason to have it changed. When that didn’t work, she went a little outside of reason.

  She had requested, or more accurately, demanded, she be assigned elsewhere to the Governor. It wasn’t the mud, insects, or humidity she really hated. It was the water. She remembered the feeling of drowning all too well. Her fear had overtaken her common sense.

  She was lucky that the Governor had not fired or kicked her out her on the spot. The Governor had sternly reprimanded her. He told her that her assignment was final, and if she did not like it, she was welcome to leave. Most infuriating of all was the hint of pity in his eyes as he did so.

  Harper spent the rest of the walk stewing in her own misery. She seemed to do that far too often these days. Finally, she reached her destination. A village sat on one of the drier areas of the marsh. Most of them were stilt houses, built high up to prevent water damage and the swamp’s smaller denizens from getting in easily.

  A lake lay on the west side. At this time of day, most of the small fishing vessels were out. They were either checking traps or waiting for their lures to attract a fish.

  The populace consisted entirely of atorans. They were a shorter people, with wet, rubbery skin, and a variety of colors. This particular village mostly consisted of yellow tones for the women and brown for the men, but she did spot the occasional orange or dark green respectively.

  Their hands and feet were slightly webbed, useful for a species that spent so much time in the water. Their faces were not far from human, only having somewhat flatter features. Antenna-like external gills stuck out of the sides of their heads. The women had three on each side, and the men two. The difference between genders in the same species was greater in atorans than most. The atoran women were more aquatically inclined, while the opposite was true for the men.

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  Dark blue or violet eyes turned towards her and heads nodded. It was only her third trip to this village, but they were already getting used to her being their Arboren courier as the new status quo. They were not friendly, but nor were they unfriendly towards her, most of them anyways.

  “Hey, the knock-off rustless is back.” Harper purposefully did not turn towards the mocking tone. She already knew where it came from. An old atoran woman by the name of Nam delighted in heckling her. Rustless was a deragatory term for ranva. The rivalry between the two peoples, despite them being more similar to each other than any other species, was well known. The word was a reference to their metallic hair, which didn’t rust, even with all the time they spent in water.

  Ignoring the cantankerous old coot, she made a bee-line for the village elder’s abode, not too keen to get drawn into a conversation. She had learned last time that some of them could talk forever, not letting her get a word in edgewise. Country bumpkins, she thought sourly.

  The hand-off was quick. Harper gave the elder the correspondence and collected the deliveries that the Roklar courier had left here for her. Then she was on her way again. She wished that she could take her horse, but he would fair more poorly than Harper in the uneven footing of the marsh. The risk that her horse would be lamed on the uneven and unstable ground was too great.

  As she walked, she considered her goals. Manifesting the Aerial Domain remained her highest priority. Unfortunately, she was squarely back to where she had started before she had even left Magnon. She felt the Domain close, but she was missing something. Even when she thought of the time she had nearly manifested it, right before she shattered the primavis core her parents had given her, she couldn’t quite understand it.

  It still made no sense to her. Why was she the closest to it when it mattered the least? Without the expectations of leadership of the house, when she could take all the time she needed, that’s when the Domain of Sky was in her grasp.

  It was something she would just have to ponder until an answer appeared. The Domains were erratic that way. That made her think of the Aquatic Domain. She felt even closer to it than before. It was a change that she normally would have welcomed, but now she scorned it.

  Images of an endless expanse of water assaulted her. Of nothing but water and blood as far as the eye could see. It strangled her in its grasp, escape was impossible. A struggle that was both desperate and fading. The darkness grew only clos-

  Harper jerked herself out of her stupor, forcefully moving her thoughts onto other things. No matter how hard she seemed to try, a small part of her lingered there. Thankfully, she had something that had proven to reliably distract her.

  She unclasped a pouch, one that occasionally wiggled around. Reaching inside she pulled out a growing lizard. Briar blearily stared at her. It seemed that she had disturbed his sleep. If he was irritated, it was quickly forgotten as Harper began feeding him pieces of jerky.

  She set him on her shoulder, where he dug his claws in just enough to stay in place. In another month or two, he would be too big for her shoulder and the pouch. She would have to find another solution. The young woman had not hatched the thorny devil with emotional support in mind, but he proved surprisingly apt for the purpose.

  She had spent the entire week she was bed bound with him. When it came time to resume her duties as a courier, she had found the idea of leaving Briar behind uncomfortable, so with her he came.

  Resuming her mental checklist of priorities, she briefly tested her aetherspace. Mentally reaching for it was still slightly painful, and actually opening it was not a process she enjoyed. It was the source of her pain. Her Alius dying and being forcefully shifted into her human form was very damaging for it. Hopefully in another couple months it would be healed enough so that it would be like the incident never happened.

  Soon, hopefully this next week, she would begin regrowing her Alius. It would be slower this time, she lacked the original body and the anaconda core was damaged, but it could be done. Amice Green had assured her that she would be supplied with materials to do so when she was ready. Harper planned to take full advantage of that fact, and to begin practicing in her Alius as much as possible.

  She never wanted to enter a fight in such an unfamiliar body again. That was the main reason she lost, she knew. If Harper had managed to catch the salamander earlier, she might have outlasted her. Being both underwater and having all the air squeezed out would see any creature go down quickly. It was one of the things jailor anacondas were known for.

  Not that she would be entering deeper water anytime soon. Or ever. The sooner she got something with a pair of wings, like a wyvern, the better.

  Several hours later, Harper had reached the edge of the marshland and the village sitting there. She found and fed her horse, and was on her way back. It would take the better part of three days to reach Mentril, but it was a generally peaceful ride.

  Her area was well settled, and had been patrolled for longer than most of the area further south. The difference in danger was only marginal compared to the northern colonies. Besides the marsh, she was content with her assignment. It might get boring after a while, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Better boring that tumultuous.

  She’d have more than enough risk once she resumed her hunts with Vayuhn.