It would be the closest he would ever get to having a family of his own. Were-cat females didn't marry, and they didn't allow the males to interfere with their raising of the children. Were-cat males accepted this, probably felt relieved by it, but Tarrin wasn't born Were. The Human instinct to nurture and protect children was strong in him, stronger than it would be in other males because of his unique origins. Of all the males, Tarrin was probably alone in his desire to be active in the lives of the children, especially his own. Mist's son was his son as well, and he wanted to be involved in the child's life. He wanted to hear his son call him father. He wanted small arms stretching out to him as small legs drove a small body into his embrace.

In time, maybe. Mist's son may not be the one to fulfill that dream, because of Mist herself, and the fact that he had no idea how long it would be until he would go home. But there would be other children. Were-cat females being what they were, and the fact that he'd be staying in one place and easy to find, they would guarantee it. If not Mist, then Rahnee, or Kimmie, or Singer, or Shirazi, or some female he'd never met. One of them would stumble into his life some day, one thing would lead to another, and he'd have a child in his home.

But those were misty dreams of a time not yet even certain to be. They would have to wait. He had crossed the desert, but he wasn't there yet. There were still a large number of Goblinoids roaming around, probably all rushing west now that he'd crossed the mountains, so he had to get into the Frontier as quickly as he could. He wouldn't be safe until he was where no Goblinoid would dare set foot. Once he was in the Frontier, he could relax. At least as much as he would allow himself, given what serious things were happening in Suld. After he got into the Frontier, the Goblinoids and the ki'zadun would no longer have a certain path to cover to catch him. He could come out north, in Aldreth, or in the central or southern reaches. He could even go to Shace and approach Suld from the south. They wouldn't be able to predict his movements, so he wouldn't have to worry about an army of Trolls waiting for him once he stepped out of the ancient forest.

And even that was going to wait until tomorrow. Absently weaving together a Ward that would stop everything but air, then setting it so it would last until morning, Tarrin closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

There were things that he needed to know.

It was the only reason he was doing this. Walking down the first of the streets of the nameless Arkisian town not far from where he landed wasn't something that he would have done willingly. Tarrin's change in his attitude towards strangers had softened, but it still hadn't been changed very much. He still wanted nothing to do with these people, these strangers, but necessity sometimes overrode personal desire. He wouldn't have entered a human city, full of untrustworthy strangers, otherwise. Unfortunately, there were things he needed to know about the surrounding area, and in particular about any possible Goblinoids standing in his way to the west. The maps he Conjured could show him where to go, but they didn't show any possible dangers on the path that he had selected for himself.

For that kind of information, he needed some outside assistance. And that meant talking to people. He could only do that in relative safety in the city, for he doubted that any Arkisians would stop and talk to him in the countryside, where his size and his obvious outlander appearance would put them off.

That was all they were going to see. Tarrin didn't feel like starting a riot, nor did he particularly want to have to run from or fight endless waves of militia, Watch, or army men, so he strode into town in his human form. The Arkisians probably weren't ready to see a Were-cat walking down their main street. They'd get enough exercise seeing a foreigner human. It had been quite a while since he had taken human form, and surprisingly for him, it didn't hurt nearly as much as he remembered. The itching was still there, though, and he knew that that itching would become pain after any length of time confining himself to a form that was no longer natural for him. The shift into human form dulled the wary ferality of the Cat inside him, but it also unsettled him slightly more because of the loss of his acute senses, making him feel more vulnerable. Those two cancelled one another out.

He'd had to make new clothes for himself for human form. His human form was a little more than a span shorter than his natural form, and that made the clothes he wore in his natural form too large. So he Conjured up clothes that would fit him-finding out in the process that he could access his Druidic magic while in human form-sent his Were-cat clothes into the elsewhere, put them on, and was ready to go. He opted not to get fancy, Conjuring the same clothes he usually wore, but he did give up the boots that he'd had before and go with a new pair of soft black leather boots. Though he was much shorter in human form, he was still very, very tall, much taller than the usually short Arkisians, but there was nothing he could do about that. He'd just have to live with it.

His size had already started to work against him as he strolled into the town just before noontime, having taken his time coming down out of the foothills to reach this place. They already began to point at him and stare, and the children had started following him from a distance. Strangers were uncommon in towns like this-he should know, he was raised in a place that saw maybe two strangers a year, outside the mysterious visitors from the Frontier-and it was probably even more uncommon given their distance inland and their position by the Sandshield. Strangers were probably unheard of here, and here was one, just striding into town as easily as he pleased. He looked around at the town as he moved into it, seeing many similarities between this town and the city of Shoran's Fork. They had the same whitewashed walls, the same red tiled roofs, the same long shuttered windows flanking the doors and lining the upper stories of the buildings. But this was a northern town, and the necessary differences in building were apparent. The roofs here were not flat, they were angled rather sharply to help the snow slide off of them. The streets were a little wider, as streets in small towns tended to be, taking advantage of the available space, and they were unpaved. This town was large compared to Aldreth, but it was little more than a bump in the road compared to some of the cities he'd seen, like Suld, Dayise, and the monstrous Dala Yar Arak. It had maybe one hundred or so buildings, a nice sized town surrounded by farm fields, with a small, lazy river flowing just on its eastern edge.

But the people didn't look strange. They were Arkisians, which meant that they were actually Arakites. They had the same swarthy brown skin and black hair, the same sharp features and thin, willowy appearance. They also had that irritating Arakite attitude, looking at him like he was some kind of diseased leper; it was obvious to any of them that he wasn't Arkisian. Neither Arkisians nor Arakites grew as tall as him. Arkisians were a stand-offish bunch outside the coastal cities, and that seemed odd, since the kingdom's main source of income was trade. This far north, deep into Arkisian territory, they seemed to be borderline xenophobic, as parents hurried children off the streets in front of him, and adults gave him a very wide berth and stared at him openly.

But at least they weren't fleeing in terror. He had a feeling that it they knew what he really was, they'd either run away or attack him with torches and pitchforks.

He intended to make this as short as possible. Tarrin's Were-cat pride was getting irked at the reaction he was getting, and that short-tempered attitude was going to cause him trouble. Tarrin didn't fear these strangers, not the way that he used to fear them, but he still didn't really want to have anything to do with them. He wasn't in the habit of trying to be civil to people who weren't civil to him.