The Mire was a crummy place to be. Whenever solitude overtook her, Miha found tears at her eyes. Her life was over. What was she without tumbling?

The woman looked down at her fine-tuned, fit body. It was the perfect instrument for performing wild and impressive feats; it could bend in almost any way she requested. What good was that now, if her lungs could not follow and provide her with enough air?What was the point at all?

Miha heard the sound of a wheel catching on a rock. She knew the road well enough in her head; after the rock the wheel would fall into mud. As usual, rain was falling on the Mire.

She pulled her street clothes around her and wiped the tears from her eyes. She would not acknowledge that her clothes were growing soiled. The corner of her trousers caught in the door. When the woman looked down, her eyebrows shot down.

Her clothes were crying. That was the only thing she could conclude. Somehow, in the same way that she had been crying tears, her clothing was crying dirt. She had never known clothing to clean itself in such a way.

Her second deduction was that she was merely going insane. It was the status quo of the Mire, was it not? It would simply mean she was joining her caste-mates in a steady decimation of the mind.

With a groan at her own morbid thoughts, she hurried out of the meager rat-infested hall and didn't look back.

The cart outside was one of the carts that came monthly from the Temple. Miha stepped behind a gruesome pillar by the front entrance of the main building and watched the activities around the wooden carrier. As usual, a head of chestnut hair bobbed from the back of the cart.

The green-appareled woman did not seem put off by the filth and mud. She barely shivered in the chilly rain. Miha rested her tangled curls against the post and watched the woman she had come to appreciate. The woman always brought new medicines and did strange things to the ones they already had—something with magic that Miha didn't understand, having no knowledge of magic or mages.

This chestnut-haired woman wasn't necessarily a nice woman. It wasn't that that drew Miha. It was how even the younger—Miha assumed younger—female was. Where she might snap at the poorer inhabitants, she would not hesitate to holler and glare at her higher-classed acquaintances, either. She did not discriminate with her sharp tongue. It was a respectable trait.

Still, the taller woman did not dare step from behind her uncomfortable pillar. It was something she had never done and intended never to do. She was filth in her own eyes—why would she subject herself to the humiliation of stepping before someone she would once have been nigh equal with? Now she was the feces on the woman's muddied shoes.

Miha bit her lip and turned to press her back against the hard material. She watched the main entrance, where soiled men and crude women were soliciting remarks no child was fit to hear. This would never be Miha's home. Stench was not her normal, happy reality.

"Rosethorn, he e'nt lettin' us through tha door," one of the younger visitors called. He was pointing at one of the rowdiest Mirelings there was; the man was standing in the path in a drunken stupor and slurring incoherent phrases.

The chestnut-haired woman—Rosethorn!—stormed to the door and placed her fists on her hips. She looked down at the man—it was possible because that particular man always stooped.

"Do you like plants, boy?" she snapped at him. Miha smiled at the disrespect and condescension in Rosethorn's voice. It wasn't because the man was poor or even a drunk, it was because he was being a ruddy rude tosspot.

He looked up and sneered. "E'nt matter. Plants e'nt harmful. Don't scare me."

"Is that so?" the woman challenged. A horrible bark flew forth from her lips. "That's a very unfortunate belief. Most unfortunate in how incredibly mislead you are."

As she spoke, vines from the Mire snaked forward and wrapped around the man's ankles. He looked down, shocked, and then jerked his head back up to gaze at the woman fearfully.

"S-sorry! Ya cun get un in!" he called. It wasn't satisfactory to the green-clad woman. She hitched her chin and the man flew to the building, landing upside down against the wall and soon being enveloped by vines.

"You just hang until you have your thoughts straightened, then, hmm?" Rosethorn remarked in a cold voice. "And don't you ever block this door from me again. I have solutions worse than vines for the sad occasions when people decide to annoy me a second time."

The man blinked and didn't even bother to attempt movement. Miha smiled and laughed. For once, the man's world was as crooked as he was.

Rosethorn turned to discern if anyone had seen the events. As Miha was now leaning against the pillar facing directly toward the entrance, she was no longer hidden at all. The plant mage looked her up and down with a piercingly intellectual gaze and then, having heard the laughter and seeing the dregs of a righteous smile on Miha's features, appeared to hold a small grin of her own.

She then turned and entered the building, urging her young assistant to pick up the supplies.

Miha blushed and held her stomach. Someone important had seen her in an outfit of such filth. When she looked down once more, she realized to her own astonishment that she wore no filth on her accoutrements. They hung well and fit her as they had in her tumbling days. Only her skin housed the ever-present dirt of the Mire, for it was impossible to scrub from the skin.

She ran as the confusion set in. Everything was too much. What in the Mire's foul scent was going on with her life?

Miha was behind the main building of the Mire in no time, breathing hard and in great gasps. She couldn't get enough air. As her head grew dizzier and her mouth drier, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a yellow veil. She held it close to her heaving chest.

Somehow, she kept herself walking through the squalid streets of the backward end of the Mire. Everyone looked her up and down, eyeing her now-neat clothes. It was a curse in the Mire to have clean clothing. Why did that have to happen? How did it happen?

At the end of a dark passageway a man stopped her by putting a hand on her chest. She gently removed it, still attempting to draw as much breath into her body as she could. It wasn't working well.

"Little sweetie," he cooed in a condescending manner, "Little sweets with clean clothes and a heavy chest. What you doin' round these parts, hmm?"

He stressed the last sound and glared at Miha. She closed her eyes and looked down. "I'm going…to work…"

The man laughed out loud. That was not the sort of thing someone was supposed to say at the Mire. Few people had jobs—the ones who did shut up about it, so they wouldn't get beat for having something the others didn't. Miha had forgotten. This uncivilized place was not her comfort zone.

"Shouldn't be wandrin 'round here all fancy 'nd ready for work," he told her. His hand went back to her chest. "Not totin' such a fine instrument as yur one he-a."

Miha opened her eyes and tried to step back, but the man caught her wrist.

"Now now, don't you try runnin' from me, twig." He grabbed the yellow veil from her hand and laughed. "Ah. One-a them. What they do, kick ya out? Didn't spread yur legs 'nough?"

His laughter haunted her. The man pushed her into a small alley and blocked her path out. Behind her she felt tall boxes. She was trapped in a wet puddle of filth from the rain.

"Why don't you jus look lika little wet runt-kitten," he mocked as he circled the veil around in the air. "I knows what you dumb yaskedasu really perform."

He reached forward and ripped her shirt from her body. She cried out in pain, almost mourning the threads themselves. It was her one true outfit from her tumbling days. It was her connection to her old life. It was dying.

"Nice 'n pert, eh, the way I like 'em," the man taunted as he grabbed for her chest and ripped her pants down. She bit him, but he only laughed and tore his own down too.

Miha closed her eyes tight and forced herself to leave her body. She didn't want to be connected to it any further. No good could come from living in the mire, no good at all. She couldn't scream because she couldn't even breathe.

The rain had lessened when she woke up. She didn't remember falling asleep, but as soon as Miha was awake she regretted waking at all. The woman throbbed down below, from every entrance she knew of. Her throat was sore.

She cried to think that she was thankful her ears hadn't been used as a plug; if men were equipped anatomically with what their soul deserved, they would have been no wider than toothpicks.

The grown woman looked up from her slumped position to see women of the alley looking at her similarly to the way confused alley cats would. She pulled up her trousers and wrapped her ripped shirt around her front, tying it behind her back. Silently, she reached around in the disgusting puddle until she felt the familiar cloth of her veil.

She plucked it up and whipped it through the air, not caring that mud was flung everywhere—mud was nothing new to any singular area of the Mire.

"Good afternoon, ladies," she told her crowd. She didn't acknowledge the tears hanging from her lashes—they could be confused for rain anyway. "I hope you enjoyed the show."

With that, she was running again. They watched her go without speech. How could they speak, when the same thing was not uncommon to them? Their age was their one saving grace—the men weren't normally interested in sagging chests when they could find a younger plug like Miha.

The air was growing thick. Nothing looked familiar to the woman. This was fog, she knew, but it was dark and dirty. She could never see much in the Mire at all, but when fog came into play…

She screamed.

"Yazmin!" she hollered uselessly, gazing up and down every alleyway. She had to find her way home. She couldn't live here anymore. She couldn't be here after so many months. How long?

Men and women leered at her. Children tried to tug at her trousers, but she moved on. Her breath was in vain. When at last she fell from pure exhaustion and lack of air, she was no where closer to a landmark she could recognize. She was in the middle of what appeared to be a wide Mire street halfway in another dirty puddle.

This was not a life. This was the Trader's hell. This had to be her repentance, and not a life.

Miha looked up to the sky and saw nothing. She was living in a grimy dome of uncouth citizens. What could she see? Even in clear daylight, what could she see for her life? What could she make?

She screamed once more and curled up in a ball. If she hadn't already been breathing hard from her coughing disease, she would have now from pure panic.

She was going to die alone, one of these days, either in her small and empty room or in one of the filthy dark passages. There was no such thing as love. Light was just a common misconception shared by the privileged world.

Miha cried. She was above her shivering and gasping, but she wasn't above the fog. She could never leave this place. In this moment, she could see what was keeping her hear—the dirty fog she could not press through. But even when the physical weather did not call for it, she knew it was always there, providing an invisible but equally soiled wall that barred her escape.

Nothing mattered anymore. She was alone, abused, and ready for an end. She damned the poor for having no money for carts to pass through Mire streets. There was nothing to her hit save the filth flying from the windows.

"Stop!" a voice called from somewhere that felt very far away. Miha turned her face to see the blurry shape of a cart. How could there be a cart in the Mire? No one had money for shoes, let alone a horse and carriage.

A woman jumped from the cart and ran down the mud-speckled street.

"There's someone here!" she barked harshly over her shoulder. Miha almost smiled. It was Rosethorn.

Her smile turned bitter—this was her death. She could never possibly be more humiliated.

"Get her in the cart," the chestnut-haired woman demanded. "No, you'll drop her, you dolt of a boy. Help me get her in."

Strong arms wrapped around Miha's frail form. The other woman did not seem put off by the stench that seemed to surround Miha. She was lifted from the soggy streets and carried a short distance to the cart she had viewed earlier in the day.

Her breathing was next to impossible and her shivering nearly had her chomping her lips straight off.

"She's too cold and I don't think she's taking much air in," Rosethorn said to her younger colleague. "We need to bring her back to Winding Circle. I think she's the tumbler we had months back."

The boy nodded curtly and helped her settle Miha into the cart.

"Drive," the green mage commanded. The adolescent jumped to the front seat and took the reins. Rosethorn settled herself in the back with the rest of the material and took a blanket from a corner of the open rear. The woman spread the blanket over Miha.

"We'll get you back to Winding Circle. You'll be fine."

Rosethorn's voice wasn't particularly soft, but its pure realism comforted the ex-tumbler. She was sick of the sugar-coated horse dung she had been receiving from the better-off and she was sick of the morbid darkness in verbal form that she received from those now on her level.

"I…thank…" Miha managed, but couldn't continue for a fit of coughing. She felt a strong hand on her back patting and drubbing.

Other would have tried to respond in words, but Rosethorn just didn't seem like that kind of woman. She gave Miha a squeeze on the shoulder and sat watching over the woman.

Miha reclined in the clean sheets of the infirmary. She hadn't witnessed such cleanliness since the last time she had been in Winding Circle. The light that filtered through these windows seemed cleaner than the sunlight that ever touched the Mire.

Voices were sounding from an office in the corner, but she barely offered her attention. She was much more content to bask in the comfort that such a place gave. This could be a home to her like no other place could, now. It was horrible to think that she would soon be delivered back to the Mire—so she didn't think about it.

Her name was mentioned a few times by the voices in the office. Someone was talking about magic, but it didn't make any sense to Miha. It wasn't that she wasn't bright, this was just an entirely new world to the woman.

She looked down at the sheets and drew her fingers over them. Spirals and pictures formed in the wake of her little appendage. She smiled to find that it was a picture of Rosethorn, drawn in the wrinkles of a clean white canvas of cloth.

"That seems eerily accurate," Rosethorn commented as she finished her walk to the bed. "I never thought I'd see myself in the sheets in such a way."

Miha laughed and spread her hand over the cloth. It seemed to flatten before she even touched it, but she ignored it.

"They're right, then," the plant mage said as if to herself. "You have ambient magic."

It took Miha a moment to realize that the last statement was to her, and that Rosethorn was standing over her expectant of an answer. Was she missing something?

"Ambient magic?" Miha questioned, looking down at the blanket. She couldn't remember feeling so dimwitted in civilized company in a long time.

"We can explain and get into that later. You have a special ability with cloth and thread. A 'stitch witch,' so to say." Rosethorn paused and sat down on the bed. Her back stayed stiff as she turned to Miha. "The important part is that you are invited to stay at Winding Circle to complete your novitiate. Is that something you would be interested in?"

Miha gazed on speechless. Was Rosethorn not a singing cherub? That was the reality she must be living in. Rosethorn was not a sharp-tongued woman speaking about daily events—no, she had to be a messenger of the Gods.

"It would be more than I could ever hope for."

A strange smile overtook Rosethorn's features. "Then don't waste your time hoping and we'll get you working on some real mind food."

Once more the woman paused, crossing her arms over her chest. "We won't have you stay with the other novices—they're all far younger and would drive you out of your skin. We decided it was best to re-open Discipline Cottage. We use that for students far form to the norm or those who don't do well in the regular dorms. Would having a smaller cottage suit you?"

Miha nodded. "The Mire is like staying with my impish teenagers, I think. Too many hormones coupled with too many substances and not enough funds."

Rosethorn laughed. It was a beautiful sound.

"I think we'll get along just fine," the woman said as she patted the bed and stood. She turned to look at Miha once more. "I'll be staying with you at Discipline. I thought that would work best. I know all about being the black sheep in the crowd."

The ex-tumbler smiled. "I think I'm more of a black bird."

She received a peculiar look from the Dedicate. "A bird, huh? You should remember that in the upcoming years. I'm rather fond of birds myself."

With that, the woman left the infirmary.

Miha was given new clothing and led to the Hub. She was warm, full, clean, and sheltered. The woman felt safer than she had in her entire life—even during her tumbling years.

When she walked out of the Hub toward Discipline Cottage, she looked around and felt no invisible fog pressing down on her. She was a free bird.