She came to a village of sod houses, like little hills. Most of the people working the fields were Centaurs, pulling plows, and all doors were built for them. Selen reached a pub called the Winter Hearth.

She was there to drop off mail, mainly, but looked around at the spacious Centaur-centric furnishings. Hardly anyone was here this morning, but one Centaur was sitting at a high table with his back half on the floor and trying to force an axe-head onto a new handle. Looking guilty as he rapped the metal against the table.

"Hey, careful," said the bartender, a Kobold with green-brown scales like old copper. "Bird, is that the mail?"

Selen walked over and set down the stash. "This bundle here is for your town. I'm headed for, ah, Whispering Glen next so save anything headed back to Grandbridge."

The Kobold rooted through the string-tied pack of little paper bundles, and pulled one out for himself. "You stare," he said, with a faint hiss to his voice.

"I'm sorry. I haven't had much chance to talk with Kobolds."

"A city girl, yes. Fearful that we are all plotting against you."

Selen waved her hands in front of her. "No, no! Just not familiar."

The barkeep was compact and muscular, scaled as though perpetually armored. A pretty cool look, actually. Which reminded her... In the space between worlds, she had been given several choices of who to be, and had seriously considered becoming a Kobold. She said, "I haven't been outside the city lately. Ran into some kind of tree-climbing thief critter last night."

"Ha. A slinkeye. Did it steal much?"

"I don't think so. It stepped on me and woke me."

"And you're still here, so it didn't bite you much. Good."

Most of what she'd brought to this place was little boxes. Curious now, she said, "What exactly did I bring you?"

The bartender seemed to be in charge of the pile or at least had made it his business to root through it. His claws cut through a bit of twine. "Letter from the Duke's men, to pester us about farm progress no doubt. Gossip sheet. Medicine. Seeds of a different vegetable than we've tried here. Hopefully that thread my neighbor ordered. Ah, something from my cousin." He rattled a little wooden box and pulled out two magicite shards, glowing faintly.

She stared at the thumb-sized crystals, a bit of magic being passed casually between towns. She said, "I've been talking with people in the city about printing. Getting books into more people's hands. If it were cheaper, would that help people around here?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

His head tilted on his long neck and he peered at her from a different angle. "If nothing else, it would give a handsome letter-inspector more things to read aloud on dull nights. So long as they are not lectures from our betters."

"I can understand that. What would you want to read?"

"We have what we need here. We might buy a book of tales from far away."

I could probably fill one of those, thought Selen, but she noted the market for just a single book. It didn't occur to these people to buy several. She said, "Maybe your group could write one. Or something about how you do farming here with Centaurs."

The Kobold's tail twitched high and he drummed his claws on the bar counter. "Funny, bird."

"I'm serious. You probably know some things that people in Grandbridge or a hundred miles downriver don't, and maybe they'd want to learn. Think about it." She yawned. "I need to move on. If there's no eastbound mail...?"

The bartender looked through the package pile again, then met her eyes. "Not this week. If you do ever become a printer, speak with me again. It is odd to hear an outsider take an interest. Now, buy a meal and you can sleep here a bit; you look like you need both. You should still reach the Glen by sunset."

She took him up on that and got in a nap before moving on. While nibbling on diced sweetroot chunks and cheese, she looked around the village. Almost all farms with just a few obvious shops like a smithy. A library was way too much to ask for. The people wore simple clothes of what was probably linen and used tools of iron. The most outstanding thing in sight was a public bath house along a stream, with a few attuned magicite crystals heating the water slightly. The farmers toiled through tall stalks of wheat just as they'd done for countless centuries in another world.

"I want to give everybody better stuff than this," she said, as she walked and flew out of town. "But they'll have to do most of the work."

#

She spent the long hike brainstorming. She'd been focusing on dyes or pigments where she left off, and knew by heart how certain types were made, along with historical tales behind them. A daring heist of red beetles. Roman laws about painstakingly harvested purple shellfish. The infamous green Victorian dye full of arsenic. It was foolish to separate the technology completely from its history, half because the background was so interesting and half as a cautionary tale. But here she was bringing ideas from a whole other world.

While she was skimming along the ground and flying in low arcs, something slammed her in the eye. "Ack, ow, ow!" She spun out of control and crashed, getting mud on her clothes and scrapes on her hands. She'd gotten a bug in her eyes. Ugh! How did real birds handle that? She pressed on, grumpy.

Only a dirt road with wagon ruts marked the way to Whispering Glen. As her shadow grew long ahead of her, she crested a hill and looked down into a valley of wind-rustled trees and a cliff face of brown and red. The wild forest gave way to apple orchards and stubbly grain fields.

This village was mostly farmland, not surprising. A couple of Centaurs looked up from their work of planting, but there was a more obvious group of Kobolds and a few fellow Aves too. The birdfolk were tending basket-like hives of bees. Selen called out from a safe distance: "No protective gear?"

"Feathers!" they said. They had goggles, at least. Selen watched them smearing goop on the hives, then moved on toward a log cabin marked with windchimes. A chilly breeze stirred them.