Gelia looks down at her Laratin and sighs. She never did feel completely at ease in a large group, and this qualified as a large group. She muttered and excuse, and went outside.
The cool air hit her face and she breathed deeply. Stretching her wings slightly, Gelia took off, circled once around the bar to unstiffen her wings, and then swooped down to the nearby lake. Freezing a small amount of water into ice near the center, she sits on it, and thinks.
Banishment had treated Gelia badly. She had been shunted from system to system, marked by the three vertical slashes on her arm, the nearly universal sign of banishment. She was required to show this whenever she requested work, or a place to stay. As a result, jobs and beds were few and far between.
She had taken to handily scuffing that place with dirt, covering up the slashes. One alone would look like a scar from some battle. But now she had to decide what to do with herself. Where could she find a place to stay? Have a life? Or was she always going to be on the edges? Alone?
Alone forever?
