In Greek and Roman mythology, a harpy is a half-human, half-bird creature that is often associated with storm winds.
(Mentions of a dead animal as warning.)
They say that motherhood is supposed to be the highlight of being a woman.
The greatest achievement a woman could do ever was becoming a mother.
....Yeah. screw that logic.
You hated the very idea of society telling you that you HAD to be a mother. That you have to get married to some man, any man and be his perfect stay at home wife being at his neck and call (life long servant was more like it-) and do nothing but do all the housework as he went out to do whatever he wanted to as you slaves away keeping HIM happy and giving him as many kids as HE wants without any expectations for him to lift a finger to do anything at all to raise them. Leaving you to go through all the sleepless nights and raising and dealing with fights and tantrums and no more free time-
....
As soon as you found out your parents were planning on engaging you to the laziest boy in town just because his father was town leader, you ran away. Packed up everything in the middle of the night and skedaddled as fast as your legs could carry you. There was absolutely, definitely, positively NO WAY IN HELL you were going to be wed off and suffer the same fate as lots of other miserable women in your village. Nope! You'd rather die alone with a hundred cats than allow yourself to be trapped in an endless unhappy marriage for the rest of your life.
But traveling around wasn't that bad.
You often had to find shelter or stay in one place to work for a long time through the cold months but you didn't mind. You got to see lots of cool places and many different kids of people. Humans, dwarf blacksmiths, an elf or two, and once even a traveling merman salesman traveling up a river you were crossing but stopped by to look through his wares. In the end trading him some pieces of silver for a small kit of bandages. Never knew when that might come in handy.
"Where might a young lady like you be heading off to all by yourself?," he asked repacking his things into his bag with the sounds of water sloshing around him.
"I'm on my way to a village past Mount Vermillion." You pointed a hand across the bridge and towards the large mountain in the distance which made the merman pause. "I heard there's plenty of job opportunities there."
He looked at you with a furrowed brow. "Mount Vermillion? Why go past through the Harpy territory?"
You blinked confused. "Harpy?"
He nodded. "They're bird folks. Live up in and around the mountains there, and they aren't really too kind to strangers encroaching on their territory. Least that's what I heard. You sure you're going through there?"
Harpies? You've never heard of them before but in any case it's not like you were going to be intruding on anyone's property. You were going to strictly stay on the roads and just walk on through. So they shouldn't bother you.
