Sofie sighed, staring up at the sunbeams dancing through the leaves as the wagon slowly rolled over the rough, worn road towards Ilerith.  It was not her first trip down this road, which only added to the tedium.  She was somehow always shocked by the distance between her village, a small Vieran community called Leyna buried deep in the woods, and the town.  The tedium of the trip caused her to drift back to memories of the past…

Her mother always said Sofie was a special child, but the truth of the matter was she was a stubborn child that went out of her way to not fit in with her people.  She was only 15 years old when she first ran away from the village and made her way through the woods to a nearby town.  She was enamored with the sights, sounds and smells of the busy hive of people of all shapes and sizes.  It was such a unique experience, completely unlike anything she had experienced before in the forest!

It was a short couple of days later when she was hungry, feeling alone and lost when she happened upon a group of orphaned children.  The kids were making their way by stealing whatever they needed to survive, sleeping in whatever shelter looked comfortable and acting like something like a family to one another.  They offered her some bread they had “gathered” from a local merchant, and friendships quickly emerged.  She stayed with them for months, or maybe years, her memory wasn’t the clearest when it came to timing.  Eventually, though, she felt a yearning to see her family and home again and returned to the woods, saying fond farewells to her new friends in town.
She grew up like this, stealing away to the town every so often to escape from what she viewed as oppressive Vieran society.  Her mother hated it but generally stopped trying to prevent her from leaving after the second or third time – Sofie always came back anyway, so keeping her there only seemed to cause more grief than good.  Besides, her mother had reasoned, Sofie didn’t seem to get along particularly well with the rest of the village, always clashing with the elders and her peers alike.

So Sofie would run away, spending time living on the streets with her friends, doing whatever they had to in order to get by.  She struggled with feelings of being a pretender a lot, since unlike the rest of her friends she had a family to return to whenever she wanted.  The other kids never seemed to make a fuss about it, though.  She had noticed as the years went on that less and less of her friends were there every time she returned – some of them managed to find jobs and escape from the streets, some of them left to find greener pastures elsewhere, and some of them suffered worse fates.

Eventually she returned to the town to find all of her friends had dispersed.  One of them had joined the church and managed to inspire Sofie enough to do the same.  She signed up to be a priestess, preaching the word of… Frankly, whatever member of the Twelve happened to be in vogue at the time.  She had largely signed up as a show of youthful defiance against her family and to keep some kind of contact with her friends, and her heart wasn’t really into the preaching side of it at all.  Never-the-less, it was a calling all the same and she eventually found that she could channel some of the Mist in order to work the lesser miracles associated with white magic to heal and protect the sick and injured.

… And that’s how she found herself on this wagon to Irelith today.  Her position in the church required her to travel to various locations on missionary work.  Her Vieran family and friends were all too happy to see her go, to get a break from her contrarian nature and thankfully she was happy to leave for a time as well – seeing the sights of the world at large, and getting in touch with other cultures.  She was even happy to be doing the missionary work.  It felt good to help people in need, it really helped her feel in touch with the people, and most of them didn’t even make much of a fuss about her ears.

How many more hours was it going to be again?  It felt like days.  Sofie stared down at her feet, wiggling her toes a bit.  The last time she had been to a town she saw some of the women had put some bright paints on their fingernails and toenails, the look was quite striking.  She giggled quietly to herself, deciding she would try it for herself one of these days.  It sure beat the boring browns and tans of the forest.  Turning her eyes to the horizon, she squinted off into the distance down the road, certain that she could just barely make out the outline of the castle.  She’d be there soon, ready to help the people with whatever they need.