Fabrian wiped the corner of her mouth. Sweat dripped down from her temple, smearing across her mouth. Her chest heaved and her legs shook as she braced her hands on the wooden stave. Cleri cheered her on as she reset her stance and glared at the hay-stuffed training dummy in front of her. Two of the other guards, Hail and Darian, were also onlooking—mildly impressed Fabrian hadn't quit. 

“Two weeks has done wonders for you,” Cleri chirped. “You can actually hold the staff without toppling over now.”

“Not helpful,” Fabrian said through gritted teeth.

On the other side of the training dummy, the sun slowly started to creep up over the horizon. A swath of vermillion and ruddy rays poured over the horizon-line and caused the four of them to look up. 

“Time for morning patrol,” Darian said.

Cleri and Hail booed. 

“How will we be able to bully the newbie now?” Cleri complained. “See you around, Fabrian. Be good for Netali.”

“It's amazing that anyone likes you,” Fabrian said, leaning against her polearm as she regained her breath. 

Hail laughed and shoved her two companions forwards. Cleri waved nonchalantly as they were forced away by the others. Fabrian watched the three of them go with a fond look. Her chest clenched and she pictured herself back in officer's school, horsing around with the other second lieutenants who'd graduated. None of them were close friends exactly, but they all fell into an easy companionship together. Graduation made for sad farewells, saying goodbye to the people who knew everything you had studied, trained, and fought for. 

Now there was no one. 

Fabrian gripped the stave and hobbled back to the wagon she shared with Netali. She needed to freshen up before gathering firewood and scavenging ahead of the caravan. Netali had finally given her a tentative job of scout. Her job included combing through the forest along the road and keeping an eye out ahead of the wagons. Two days after Fabrian had arrived, Netali had received a carrier falcon with a message from a sister merchant caravan reporting more and more bandit sightings along the North road that led into Agan.  

Fabrian had offered her services then. Netali had agreed that it was a good idea and gave Fabrian a more detailed map of the merchant roads—which included frequent stops for different caravans, checkpoints that needed to be crossed when traveling in any direction, as well as towns with listed wares for trade. When she traveled ahead, Fabrian would mark any spots on the road she thought were suspicious, and from there Netali would deploy guards to investigate. 

Pulling back the wagon’s canvas cover, Frabrian found Netali struggling to lift Fabrian's backpack.

“Can I help you?” Fabrian rested the stave against the wall and beelined for the short vanity and washbasin on the floor. 

“I was curious why your rucksack looked like it'd pop a seam,” Netali grimaced, “Only to discover that I can't even lift the stupid thing.”

“Sounds like a skill issue,” Fabrian snorted, soaking a wash rag to wipe the sweat off her arms and the back of her neck. 

Netali gave an offended look to the backpack. “Do you really need all of this in your travel bag?”

Fabrian walked over and opened the flap to the backpack so Netali could peek in. 

“Rocks?” Netali frowned. “You stuffed your pack with rocks?”

“The terrain around here is fairly flat, so an easy way for me to build muscle and core strength while walking has been to carry weights with me.” Fabrian rooted through the small crate of her slowly growing belongings, looking for her cotton doublet and gloves. While it wasn’t all that cold, she’d already had her fair share of poison oak (or some fantasy equivalent of it) in the forest, and she didn't particularly want any potential rashes and blisters.

When she turned back to the merchant, Netali had turned her pensive expression to her.

“What?” Fabrian asked.

“A word of caution,” Netali began slowly, “but don't push yourself too fast. The last thing you want to do is injure yourself. Especially since you’re starting at such a low bar. You have no idea what you’re doing and that intensive training will do more harm than good in the long run.”

Fabrian furrowed her brow, and her expression darkened. “I don't know what I'm doing?”

“You've lived a sheltered life until now,” Netali said, crossing her arms. “You need to stop and ask yourself if this is really necessary.”

Maybe it was the sweat or maybe it was how her clothes clung to her skin unlike her military fatigues. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn't heard from her real family in weeks. Maybe it was the way Netali’s brow furrowed with worry and how her chin tilted when unimpressed that reminded Fabrian of her mom and sister. And it ate Fabrian alive, seeing them in Netali and knowing that they were millions of miles away—with no way for her to find them outside of the residual traces in the merchant’s fragile friendship.

“You have no idea what kind of life I've lived,” Fabrian bit out. 

She reached out and hoisted the bag onto her shoulder. She hated that her body strained against such an easy task. She hated that in another life, the weight of the bag would have been easy, just another aspect of her day.  

“Don't just butt in on something you know nothing about,” Fabrian grunted. “I'm not sure why this is one of those moments where you care, but don't. I'll do my job, I'll earn my worth of room and board. That's all that matters.”

Netali drew herself up a bit, an hot and indignant flash of anger striking across her features, and her gaze darkened. That reminded Fabrian of her father. 

Refusing to look back, Fabrian hopped down from the wagon and trudged away.

The minute she left the eyesight of the caravan, Fabrian regretted her words. Guilt tugged at her lungs and heated embarrassment crept up her neck. It wasn't like her to get emotional like that. Especially not when Netali only showed genuine concern for her well-being.

She batted at an offensive sapling with her stave, watching as it bent forward and popped back upright as if nothing happened. 

As she picked her way over the forest floor, Fabrian hopped over a creek, something small and trickling due only to a recent uptick in rain in the past week. She paused and crouched down, staring at the water as it ran off into the forest. Foreign green eyes of the nameless queen met hers through the murk. Her proud face still seemed gaunt, and her neck too narrow. In her previous body, Fabrian could’ve snapped that neck so easily with her hands. Hands that knew hard earth and hardy trees—hands that carried crates of pecans and oranges from grove to grove. Hands that learned paperwork. Hands that learned to lift weights, to hold a gun, to fight.

Fabrian pressed her forehead to her knees and before she knew it, a sob heaved past her chest. 

“I miss my eyes.” Those were papa's eyes.

“I miss my face.” It was mama's face. 

She’d been able to see every trait of her parents in herself. Her thick, wiry hair was her father’s. Her body was stocky and strong like her mother's. But this face, this body, this person, meant nothing to her. 

Fabrian leaned forward on the balls of her feet, and just like that, something tweaked in her back.

The pain was instantaneous, and she toppled over with a shout. She laid there on the ground, electricity pinging through her spine up to the base of her skull. 

She replayed Netali warning her over and over again.

Fabrian had gone and hurt herself.

Splayed out on the forest floor like an idiot, she stared up at the increasingly vibrant rays of sunlight that pooled on the ground like liquid topaz. Her eyelashes fluttered and if it weren’t for the fact that she could barely move her legs, Fabrian would've thought it was pretty.

Footsteps crunched over the fallen foliage somewhere in the distance.

Great, this is how I die. Eaten by some wild animal like a wolf or a bear. Fabrian smiled weakly at the forest ceiling. Today's stupid award goes to me!

There was an irritated sigh. “What did I tell you?”

Fabrian tilted her head back, squinting at a figure through the bright sunlight.

Netali stood there with her hands on her hips, staring down at Fabrian and shaking her head. She had a bow and arrow strapped to her back and a slingshot tied to her waist along with her usual jewelry and regalia decor. “Did you stop to think if this was necessary?”

“No, but I did stop to think.”

Huffing, Netali plopped down next to Fabrian, resting her hands on her knees. “If you leave like that again, I'm kicking you out of the caravan, no questions. Got it?”

“Got it.” Fabrin murmured, looking away.

Netali let out a long and exaggerated sigh. “So, are you just going to lay about like a fish out of water or do you want to talk about things?”

“Things?”

“For instance, why were you so offended by being told you knew nothing of what you were doing.”

“Oh…but you were right. I was pushing my body too hard. It gave out.”

“Obviously,” Netali snorted. “But you knew that. Me saying it just verbalized something you were already aware of.”

Fabrian pursed her lips together. She ran through the scenarios. She lied and Netali would be none the wiser. She told Netali the truth, and she was treated like a lunatic. She dissed Netali again and was kicked out of her only secure means of food and money.

“Or we can sit on the forest floor like a couple of socially-dumb nitwits.” Netali said, exasperated. 

Fabrian refused to look at her. “Before I was born, my grandparents bought a piece of land. They cultivated it, treated it well, and planted trees. Their work yielded fruits and nuts—the land always gave them a generous harvest in return. Then came my parents, then me, and then my younger sister, Daphne.”

She felt Netali's gaze.

“I grew up learning how to help care for the orchards with the other farmhands. And when I was old enough it was decided I would take over the business…until I joined the military. I dunno. Becoming an officer, devoting myself to protect others…that became my everything. And then one day…”

She could see it so clearly, as if it were only a second ago: the soldier bursting into her room while she had been on a call with Daphne, the explosives going off on their base, waking up in her sister's story.

“And then one day, there was an explosion, and I woke up here. In the body of apparently this really bothersome queen.” Fabrian gripped at the straps of her backpack. “And I've been lost since.”

Netali inhaled and waited as if holding her breath. Then, “Are you done now?” she asked.

Fabrian blinked and stared at her in confusion. “Done?”

“Yeah. Somewhere in there I was waiting for a ‘I’m sorry for unreasonably snapping at you, Netali’.”

Again Fabrian found herself speechless for a moment. “I'm sorry, Netali. It was wrong of me to snap at you earlier.”

An uncomfortable quiet settled upon them until Netali spoke again. “You know, I kept questioning why the former queen would make such a drastic change. No one really liked her. She was the insufferable-without-ever-actually-doing-anything-wrong type. But when you showed up, and were witty and willing to learn everything you could to help put yourself at an advantage—I thought, surely, had you acted like that as the queen, I would've followed you in a heartbeat. Others would have too, I believe.”

“You believe me?”

“Magic is not unheard of here.” Netali said. “Knowing that the queen and the Prophetess Amelia von Lorraine were acquaintances makes me wonder if your appearance has anything to do with them.”

“That girl had mentioned something about her and the queen having an arrangement!” Fabrian shot up excitedly before her back cracked again and she returned prone on the floor.

“Tch. You're going to keep hurting yourself unless you take that stupid pack off; give it to me.” Together, they managed to worm off the heavy backpack and dump out the rocks inside. 

“You really believe me.”

“When magical transmigration is more believable than the previous person having a change of heart, you know it’s bad.” Netali helped Fabrian roll onto her front. They were able to coordinate Fabrian into an awkward shimmy onto Netali's back. Once she was settled, Netali handed her the empty pack. “So is Fabrian your real name? From wherever it is you said you're from?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds made up.”

“Most names are.”

“Well, Fabrian.” Netali grabbed Fabrian's stave and used it to keep her balanced on her back as she carefully made her way through the forest. “You're a real pain.”

“Sorry…” Fabrian said, she couldn't exactly argue. She was literally being piggy-backed like a child.

“But I understand wanting your own power and strength.” Netali stared resolutely ahead of them. “I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't. So rely on me, if you can. Cleri, Hail, Darian, Armon, even the tanner, they all like you. If you asked, they'd probably help you too.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Good.”

Fabrian hid her face against Netali's locks. “Thanks, Netali.”