Miria could never really pinpoint why she found travel so exciting. Growing up, she didn't travel and didn't see the need to in her young adult years. It wasn't until after her family had died that she traveled, mainly out of necessity, and she assumed she would hate every mile of it with every passing day. The open horizon, however, with its silent promise of hope and change, was ever-enticing. She distrusted the city walls, unable to anticipate what was around the corner, unable to gauge a person's intentions by the invisible pressures city dwelling held. The dangers in a city were all internal, driven by money, politics, and stature, and no one person reacted to these things quite the same way.

The dangers of the open desert, however, were external. The caravan only survived so long as the jinni that paved their way also survived. Bandits lurked in the rolling shadows of every sand dune, the heat of the merciless sun like a vulture waiting for someone to grow too foolish or too cocky. Even the vastness of the desert was a danger; one could wander aimlessly for days and not find so much as a rock to distinguish one sand dune from another, and natural sustenance was a rare occurrence. These external dangers, however, were what formed truces between enemies, what turned a caravan into a community, what forced people to work together. Without each other, the caravan would erode, and no one wanted to die the slow, suffering way of the desert. Only while traveling did Miria not worry about her wares being stolen; where would the thief go alone without a caravan leader to guide him? She did not worry about being mistreated by the caravan leader; she had paid for his protection, and maintaining a good reputation was his livelihood. A person was not burdened by money or politics or status; the desert made every intention transparent for the sake of survival in this harsh land. Ironically, this was when Miria could truly relax.

Currently, she hummed softly along to a slow, bright tune crooned by two women towards the front of the caravan. Her cart lurched and swayed on the firm yet uneven sand, and her body swayed in contented ease with the motions. Like everyone else, her body was shrouded from head to foot to protect her skin from the blistering sun and to retain her body's moisture, but her face was clearly visible, a soft smile playing on Miria's lips and teasing the corners of her eyes in the form of laugh lines. To her left, a father and son on an ox cart were arguing over some previous bet between battling beetles, and she inwardly chuckled over their light-hearted banter. To her right, a boy no older than 17, from her guess, was talking her ear off while riding on a mule. Raha didn't seem to notice; the donkey liked travel as much as Miria did. She always assumed that Raha thought it a welcomed change of pace from munching on straw in a stable all day in the city.

"It was no contest," the boy boasted, too bashful to look Miria in the eye, but his voice burst with the unrestrained confidence of an adolescent. "The jinni simply couldn't keep up with me. I overpowered him in that fight, and he had magic on his side."

Miria nodded, her smile rehearsed, but said nothing. Between the boy's haggard robes and the stiff, uneasy gate in which his mule moved--the same way Raha would move around a stranger--the kid must be a runaway or the victim of some unfortunate circumstance. No nosy mother or stuffy father came to claim him, and he didn't seem to know how to stop talking as though she was the last person on earth, simply because she smiled at him. She doubted the truth of his story, that he had won a fight against a jinni, but if it was true it would only be due to some hidden fact, such as that he battled a shackled and weakened slave under the watchful eye of a master. Whatever the real story was, Miria paid it no mind. She could put up with the boy's chatter today, though she could see it getting tiring after a while. She hoped that her silence would eventually force him to move on to someone else in the caravan. Right now, she would allow him to try to impress her with his tall tales.

"Do you own a jinni?" the boy asked.

Miria lifted an eyebrow as her humming died away, sending him a sideways glance. "No one is bound to me, and I intend to keep it that way," she said.

"I wouldn't mind owning a jinni someday. It would be nice for me to order someone around for a change."

"Or you could live by your own means, answering to no one, burdened by no one."

"You mean, live on my own? I'm doing it now. It's not impressive. Besides, men with jinni are powerful, and I want to be powerful. Take our caravan leader, for instance; he's got a jinni paving our way for us."

Beyond the line of trodding oxen and mules and bobbing heads, a jinni girl lead the way. She was slight of frame, with long dark hair piled in a messy bun behind her, long deer-like ears bent back along her head. Square-shaped birthmarks of brown, white, and grey dotted her tanned skin around startling blue eyes, along her forehead, and against her cheeks. She was barefoot, on tip-toe, but she moved with the assurance of someone that did not have feet scorched by the sun-baked sand. Her pace was swift enough for the carts to move at a comfortable pace, though she looked not the slightest out of breath. She held her arms out on either side of her, like a bird yearning to take flight, and the sand firmed to a concrete hardness in the wake of her steps. This hardened sand made cart travel easy, and the makeshift road returned to loose sand only after the steps of the last person in the caravan line. Immediately behind the jinni was the caravan leader, comfortable and proud on horseback, fully armed in case bandits decided to show themselves. Attached to the horse was a chain connecting the beast to the metal collar around the jinni girl's neck. Unlike everyone else, the jinni girl wasn't shrouded -- thin, flowing robes framed her body like a toga, baring her arms, shoulders, and parts of her legs. Despite her seeming hardiness to the harsh desert environment, she looked like a creature not quite suited for the desert; her features were too soft, too dark, her movements too delicate, like a doe caught in a barren wasteland. Her entire life would be spent pacing the desert sands in this way, though she was needed too badly for anyone in the caravan to question the quality of her life.

"I would think it more powerful to be able to survive this world alone," Miria murmured quietly, reminded of the urn in her cart and the jinni that had left it there. It would be days before they reached the next town; Miria was anxious to get rid of the thing.

"Nothing good comes of being alone," was the teen boy's reply.