Miriam stood drumming her fingernails thoughtfully on the cheap folding table, her other hand holding one strap of her traveling pack over her shoulder. 
At first glance the arrangement had sounded like a mess waiting to happen, but with a little consideration it was easily... /rephrased/... into something perfectly workable.

She gave her pack a little heft and ran through the mental checklist of supplies she had refilled from the camp (ignoring the mutters of a few of it's more permanent 'residents'. Let them mutter. The Lliyani currency exchange rate was monstrous and she didn't want to deal with it.) Excuse for stopping by fulfilled, she left the tent for the watery sunshine outside.

There was a murmur and shuffle of feet on the camp's border as the perimeter guard changed shifts. The sound brought a rush of memories to mind. Good simple work, that. Uncomplicated. But a low paying grunt job and hardly worth the bad memories that went with it.

Miriam made her way to one of the largest tents. A sparse handfull of feathers scattered the ground, swirling like a tiny flurry of colorful snow as she pulled the door flap aside. Two long tables stacked with cages, some empty and some filled, stood against either side of the room. 
A harried looking middle aged man dressed in the most functional robes she had ever seen one of this profession wearing looked up at her from his seat next to one table. Two clipboards filled to bursting with papers sat in his lap. 

"Yes what?" he snipped impatiently.

She flicked her eyes over the cages. "I'm sorry, I see you're too busy. I heard the transfig work was going well in this camp and thought I would come by to see for myself." She half smiled as if embarrassed. "I like to watch how the NC are coming along in the different locations. My favorite of the Lliyani projects- but of course I don't want to bother you."

Miriam was then treated to a fine little show. The man's nose twitched a bit as his desire to get work done had a skirmish with his desire to show off his hard won results to an admirer of his sorry little lowest-rung-of-the-ladder transfig assignment. NC were hardly a step up from working with dragon~flys and not much to be proud of.

She could just hear him thinking. /But apparently this wide eyed redhead doesn't know that. Well, no surprise./ She just smiled as the man suddenly broke into a grin and stood to set the clipboards aside.

Miriam then cheerfully endured several minutes of ranting on the technical aspects of proper NC transmutation arcana, at least a third of which was obviously pure bull thoughtlessly exaggerated by the momentum of a chatty workahololic-eccentric on a roll. She nodded and 'm-hmm!'ed appropriately, reminding herself often that she /was/ going to get paid for this.

Delightful, working for someone who can't lie for a change.

"What about those?" she finally asked once the chatter slowed down and she could get a word in. She nodded to four small wire cages set aside from the rest.

He followed her nod to look over at them only reluctantly. "Eh. Whatever you do you still end up with a few failures in the end. Most of those didn't handle the alterations well. They're wasting away pretty quickly, there's no point in working with them any further."
Indeed three of the cages inhabitants were so burdened with odd little features that they seemed to want nothing more than to lie sprawled flat and dozing on and off. But the fourth one- Miriam leaned in close to scrutinize it more carefully. The other mage saw her confusion and made an irritated noise.

"/That/ thing. I'm so sick of that, you can't imagine. It's one of these freak genetic sponges we see once in a great while. We've layed every alteration we have on that little scrap of fur and none of it takes. Extremely rare, and extremely useless."

/Only if you don't have the patience to bother breeding it to see what the genetics carry/, she corrected silently to herself. "So these four are kind of just dead weight?"

"And a pain for me to deal with. I'll have to hike out and find someplace to dispose of them soon enough. We can't dump the bodies all in the same place or the locals start to notice." He grumbled as if the chore was likely to ruin his whole week.

"I'll do it," Miriam offered pleasantly.

The other mage raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Why? Where?"

In answer Miriam nonchalantly snapped her fingers in the air, creating a quick flicker of flame.
The man laughed as if this was a profound reminder, all eagerness and earnest quickly vanishing from his expression. "Right! Sure, that'd be great. Thanks." He nodded dismissively, relieved.

Miriam quickly stacked the cages together and shuffled back outside while the exemplary specimen of his profession went back to brooding over his clipboards as if a janitor had just stopped by to empty his trash bin. 

/What a charmingly blind little twit,/ Miriam thought most pleasedly to herself as she returned one more time to the supplies tent. She carefully condensed the four little creatures down to two cages- a tight fit that the nearly comatose things didn't seem to mind. She tied the wire boxes one on top of the other and dropped a cheap old length of canvas over the top to keep them out of sight.Cages full of altered creatures. You know. Kind of attracts suspicious attention.

Now. Time to write the letter.

'Dear K.C.,
I hope this letter finds you well- and quickly. (You know how NC tend to get lost in my neighborhood. Sending them is almost a lost cause.) 
My schedule cleared up early so I'll be on my way to visit you sooner than expected. I hope that's alright?
It's a long trip and I'm not sure of the way from here, so please keep an eye out for word from me in case I need help. (Rumors of dangerous people on the roads and in the woods. It worries me, but what's a girl to do?)
Circumstances willing, I should be seeing you again soon. It has been too long! I can't find cookies half as good as yours anywhere else, it's enough to drive me mad.
Le me know if anything new develops that I should know about and wish me luck.
Sincerely, Kailena Savel'

Miriam looked the letter over to make sure nothing it said would give anything important away if it were to be read by the wrong person. Probably the intended recipient was the only one who would catch what she was really trying to say. She smirked to herself a little bit at the title. 'K.C.' was an absurd thing to be calling someone of such... station, but Kalencirya was the name she'd introduced herself as and Miriam wasn't entirely comfortable with writing the name out on something that could get lost in transit.

One of the more sickly NC made a raspy, shuddering noise, and Miriam sighed at the reminder. Messed up as they were, just giving them food and water instead of shoving them into the corner to ignore as failures would probably be enough to save them. Probably. Hopefully.

She started up a little mental tab of expenses this gig was running her already. Postage, NC care, cart or boat if it came to that.... No doubt the woman had some giant draconic style cache of expensive and shiny objects somewhere. Surely it would be no big deal to her to reimburse her... what, messengers? Delivery people? 
Whatever. 
/At least the new collar is fancy/, Miriam thought dryly to herself as she folded up the note and headed out.

It was going to be a very long and probably very strange walk. That paperwork or seal or whatever proof of her legitimate business had better show up soon. All this trouble for as-yet no specified payment made her queasy.

The guards on the camp's perimeter let Miriam pass easily, one of them half recognizing her as a former co-worker from a long time ago, and she faded off into the trees with her cargo.