Eira did not believe in omens.
This may have been an odd belief among magic-users, but it wasn't particularly so to the young woman whose tripping steps had currently led her along the forested banks of a small tributary stream in Adela. She may have grown up with magic in her blood and the knowledge that there were still things out there that she didn't understand, but she had always faced these things with a logical outlook and an utter lack of superstition. Omens and portents were just easily-explained coincidences weighed down by the worry of petulant priests and hedge-witches to Eira, things mortal creatures clung to in an attempt to protect them from the terrors of the next world - and creatures that would send you there in this one. She understood why humans paid heed to those things, while retaining an utterly irreverent lack of respect for such backwoods divination herself; after all, the lion may understand why hens fear the fox, but never condescend to be afraid themselves.
Superstition was all very well for the defenseless in the realm, but she'd personally found little use for it, and so she'd ignored everything that may have given a fearful nature pause: the clump of dark brown tea leaves that had appeared as two predatory eyes in the bottom of her cup that morning, the inexplicable thump that had knocked an old tome off of the shelf of her Ketra residence (a ratty old tome of Goblins, Gremlins, and Ghouls that she'd helped the original author with, but intended to expand upon further sometime in the future), or the frustrating disappearance of a treatise on rare swamp plants that she'd sworn she'd left on the hall table last night but now couldn't find at all.
Her mood hadn't improved with the trip into town to replace her copy of the plant compendium, and when the charming manuscript seller that she'd often stopped to talk with playfully warned her "not to let the trolls get you," because of recent sightings in the fields around the capital, she could hardly summon the ghost of her normal radiant grin. But as she continued along the bank of the stream under a sun sliding towards late morning, hazel eyes trained on the ground and golden hair a-glitter in the light, she felt the deep peace of the forest settling into her bones. It had been a rough morning, to be sure, but it was a beautiful day, and if she was right, this forested wetland area would be just the place to find the Arisaema dracontium nigrum she'd come searching for.
