It was pure happenstance that she fell over the books. If she’d not been what she was, she wouldn’t have fallen on them, actually. Nor would her hand have shot out into the road and burned her palm and forearm. Roads, despite how often the humans used them, weren’t very pleasant things to a creature like her.

That was why she got all of the farm jobs. She wasn’t one to go into the cities. Her skin was too delicate. She sucked on the burn on her hand, licked it a few times and sighed as she flipped open the pages. The books reeked of magic. Simply drew magic into them, then breathed it back out. It was an ordered type of magic, but then it wasn’t as if she were completely untamed. She could manage some ordered magic here and there.

It felt good, actually. She couldn’t read a lick, but it felt warm and nice and bubbly around her skin. She shivered and tittered softly and swept them up in her arms. Infusing her with delight, the books seemed to get smaller as she hefted them and then put them into her pocket.

There were no words. It was merely magic and magic. In a way, she moved the magic as a brook might move a water skin. Order and non order, the pair were the same. Except for roads.

She didn’t like roads. She hissed softly and then with a bitonal hum, much like the sound of a humming bird and a song sparrow mixed, she tripped further down the roadside until she hit the crossing. Scampering up a tree, she danced along the overreaching branches into the one opposite, old oaks and locusts, she loved them so! With a pat of good humor to the spiny locust, the slender girl, dressed like a peasant’s child, melded in with shadows and was gone, eastward. She had a tale to tell and she needed a good audience.

__________________

‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis