Shifting his satchel a bit on his back, Wizard continues down the path he's found, blue eyes bright and alert as he looks around eagerly. This place doesn't look cultivated, exactly - it's a forest, after all - but it's much less wild than the woods he'd been picking his way through the day before. And there's the path, of course. He's thrilled to have a path, because now he can move freely, instead of struggling through vines and thorns and climbing over saplings, and there's well-maintained packed dirt under his bare feet instead of rocks and pine needles and twigs and all sorts of other pointy and painful objects. Woods, Wizard had decided much earlier in the week, are not his sort of place. They're hard on his feet, and they're full of deer and wolves and other horrible beasts, and his hair kept getting caught on things and pulling and that hurt, and his clothes weren't that good in the first place but that doesn't mean they needed to be even more tattered than they already are, and he'd found a stream but there's no food anywhere. But most importantly, there aren't any people. Wizard is not the type of person who takes well to solitude.
As he rounds a curve in the path, Wizard's face lights up with an irrepressible grin. Through the trees, he can see the edges of a village not far away. Whooping happily, the young man breaks into an odd bounding run, satchel bouncing on his back, and races towards the village. Breaking out of the trees into full sunlight, he slows down for a moment, spinning around to take in the new place he's entered; when he stops spinning, his long brown hair, held together more by dried mud and tangles than the string keeping it in a loose ponytail, smacks him in the face. Used to this, Wizard calmly pulls strands of hair out of his face and reaches back to loop the ends of the string around the locks that have straggled out of the ponytail, the grin never leaving his face. People! There are people here! And houses and stores, and unfettered sunlight, and possibly food if he asks nicely enough and offers people shiny things in return. And probably horses and other animals, he realizes after a moment, skittering backwards away from a barking dog, but this isn't enough to dampen the grin on his face. He just needs to find an interesting-looking person, introduce himself, and see-
"Eeep!" Looking around with wide eyes at the village, Wizard hasn't been paying attention to where he's stepping as he bounces eagerly around, and he doesn't notice the cat until he nearly steps on it. The hisses loudly and Wizard automatically dodges, fearing for his bare ankles; caught off-balance, he missteps and manages to land sprawling in the dirt. This is okay, falling happens sometimes, and at least he didn't get cat-clawed, but it still takes him a moment to catch his breath. When he does, he rolls over, satchel digging uncomfortably into his back, and finds himself looking up - well, up at an angle, anyway - at a pretty brown-haired woman with strange ears that he wouldn't mind seeing closer up. "'M I in yer way?" he asks, belatedly realizing that he's sort of fallen into her path. Scrambling into his feet, Wizard smiles sheepishly at her, curiousity and cheerful friendliness lurking behind the apologetic expression. "'M sorry, I didn't mean t'be! 'M Wizard, who're you?" he asks curiously, his head tilted slightly to one side.
