One of the monks came to give Finley the news. He was happy to hear that everything had worked out.

It took them all morning to wrangle the zombies that had been left out. With nothing left to do, the zombies that had not been stuck inside of the city had just been angels.

The mass of zombies wandered around outside of the walls. There were enough small buildings there to hold their attention. Even though some zombies had made it further out, the caravan was still able to pick some off. Bob and his team had pulled a wide circle, trying to get any stragglers that hadn't shown up to the party.

The home team-consisting of Anthony, Finley, Zan, Andrew, a few warriors and the orcs-prepared lunch for the away team. It was hard enough to deal with zombies on an empty stomach. If there was one thing that would make them feel better it would be showing up to a warm cooked meal. Even if the meal that they showed up with was yet another batch of stew. Borgan and Song had caught something that was thankfully not touched by the mark of the undead.

They had skinned it and no one wanted to mention to the away team that they were about to be eating some prairie dog meat. These things just didn't tend to pop up randomly.

"So I promise I'm not overreacting right," Zan said. "But this used to be a cute little animal before? Because I was a vegetarian back on Earth."

"What's a vegetarian?"

"Someone who doesn't eat meat. I mean I'll eat eggs sometimes and I didn't like fish so I would eat a fish here and there. But yeah I didn't eat meat," she said.

Finley was stumped. He had never heard such a thing. In his opinion, you ate what you ate. There were preferences, but when you were hungry there were not really that many options. There were far fewer options now for the group as any food producing industry had ground to a halt.

At the same time, he was considering grinding some of this prairie dog meat into sausages. He was definitely going to need something if he wanted to pull it off. He just didn't know enough about making sausage in particular to do it without some assistance. He really hoped that Andrew would be able to help him.

"I was thinking about making smoked meat and potentially sausages," Finley said. "I understand if you're reluctant to eat any of that, but I would like to have something and it would be a good change, but we can't get a lot of salt from the beach. We can keep meat for a while but salted and according to a client's answer we can keep it even longer if it's frozen solid, but I don't really trust that."

"Smoking meat and making sausage is way outside of my wheelhouse. And no, in this situation, I'm not referring to any of our covered wagons at all, even in the abstract."

"So you don't want to help me set up a shack to smoke meat?" He said, getting up from his comfy log around the fire and grabbing the oversized spoon.

"I did not say that. That does sound awesome. Does it make me a hypocrite if I am tired of stew and I just want to eat something alive?" She said. "Also, if you're willing to help me, I want to think that I'm going to get the Orcs to play some songs for us tonight. That shouldn't be an issue, right? I feel like we're far enough from the city to not draw any attention."

Finley grimaced, stirring the stew again. It was likely that any zombies that would be drawn out by smoker fire had already been drawn out. He'd also constructed large walls around their sleeping area so there was little risk there. He just couldn't shake the feeling of that first day that they had all been chased out of Dunnamore.

"I don't expect that they're going to show up here, but we all lived through that first escape. I really want to set up torches tonight as well if nothing else."

"I understand. That night that you guys saved us? I already thought I was dead. I get it. We are close to a city that used to be populated a lot. But according to Brandon, the gates are locked all around and they've drawn out all they can. Tomorrow? They're going to go in full force on all the buildings that are outside of Heirisburg."

Finley nodded along. He didn't know the right words to say and perhaps he might never but he could sit there and witness her. That might be enough. During breakfast that morning, Sonia had gone on about how they'd all had different experiences and he needed to be patient with some of them. The odds that he would need to use that advice the same day that he got it seemed a bit low but he appreciated the words. She had some job before where she did something about mental health and although he had no idea what the heck that meant, he rest of the people seemed to listen to her.

As long as she wanted to talk, Finley was willing to listen because he was not going to get rid of them anytime soon. At the same time they could not get rid of him.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

All the same, he felt like he was doing it wrong. He felt like he should be solving Zan's problems. But Sonya had told him just to listen so he did.

She told him about how she'd gotten captured and he listened. She talked about how she'd been flirting with one of the monks and didn't know where it was going to go. She talked about her problems with her spell book which apparently required that she get more pages through some quirk of her magical power.

"Wait, so you're telling me that you can't just create pages using magic?" She said.

"Creation is a thing that's very specific. Like there's no card that just creates food or water. Obviously if there was it would make my job very difficult to do. As a druid, I can make plants grow. But then to make food I have to make them flower and every time I do that it takes more energy than it's worth to do," he said.

"It's like you're spending more energy to create the thing that the energy would replace," she said. "I don't know how many calories is in a piece of paper, but I imagine it would take the kind of energy that growing a tree would. That's got to be a lot of energy. But that's not even an option is it?"

"Even if I knew how to make paper, which I don't. I have no idea which kind of wood I need. There's enough wood here to figure it out. Plus we can just raid the legion's offices here for supplies. They must have something good. They get the top shelf stuff."

Finley regarded her. He realized with a start that he hadn't even noticed how dark her fingers were.

"Is that the normal color of your fingers or did I miss something?" He said.

Zan raised her hands.

"Ai ya, yeah I was using some ink to write my notes into my spell book. I actually haven't jumped in the lake for a while. Come to think of it, did you want to go take a break?" She said, locking eyes with him.

"I can't see why not," he said, standing to stretch. He waved to Anthony who was working on the map with Andrew. "Hey, am I going to go take a dip in the lake with Zan?"

Anthony waved him off. Finley took this as acceptance and grabbed two of the dwarven towels that they had been using.

They climbed up over the ladder and down the other side. Finley realized that two of the monks that had been standing guard up there, had swapped out with some of the warriors. He remembered all the monks heading to the expedition with the away team, but they must have figured out that they didn't need them right now. He waved to both of them giving them a broad smile.

They went back to him and then gave a very warm smile towards Zan when they waved to her.

And for her part to not engage in that age-old act of greeting, instead just doing her thing. Climbing over the ladder and waiting for her, Finley raised one eyebrow, but decided to let that go. One of those monks was probably the one that she was pissed off at.

They got to the lake and Finley stripped down.

"You really are all green, you know that? I thought I knew you but now?" Zan said. "Are all elves like you?"

"Some are," he said, jumping in. "Ooh, it's warm!"

Zan then promptly disrobed, following him in. Her skin was an off yellow color that he had never really encountered before. In his travels, he had seen a lot of people with brown skin and the white pink skin that many humans were born into. Her eyes, a dark black, were also different from most that he had ever seen in a way that he couldn't put his finger to.

"This is about right. A little bit warmer and it will be just perfect," she said, dipping to below her shoulders in the water. "Ah this is marvelous. I know that the cleanse skill is great but this? We need to tell the boys. Maybe in a bit though."

She let out a contented sigh.

Finley was content just to let the moment be. The warmth enveloped him and brought it back.

He remembered those days spent at that silent meditation before all this had happened where everything had seemed like it was going to be all right. His wagon was full and his bartering skill was getting up to the point where he was able to set off on his own. He was going to be able to blaze his own trail and he was on the way to being able to support another person.

"You know before this? My main concern was working on my bartering skills and establishing a good trade route. I took a long silent meditation retreat to get my mind right before this happened. I had left the place and then I met Anthony. I feel like I dodged a bullet there."

Zan was attentive, giving him her undivided attention.

"Had I left just a little bit later, I might have been turned," he said, using both hands to keep himself upright.

"You don't know that you- you can't know that. We can't go back and imagine these counterfactuals. Imagine if you just just spiraled about that endlessly? That was me before. Now? I can't. I don't have the capacity for that. I'm here now. I need to embrace the now."

"Is that why you have been winking at the guys on watch?"

"Hey, he was the one that fucked it up, not me. If seeing me out here in my element makes him regret his decisions, who am I to deny that little bit of revenge?" She softly splashed him.

Finley wondered if he was being lured into some sort of weird trap. He had been warned about humans that only decided they wanted to mate with elves. She had looked at him carefully when he stripped down but he didn't think anything about it at the time. He probably should have thought about how she felt in the moment and how she perceived this exact time. Was she trying to court him? He wasn't even sure that he wanted that.

Humans were such a hassle. Zombies were easy. Elves? He wished he knew enough of them to make his own judgment. His life was difficult enough when he had to think about all the little things that humans made tabs on. They were almost worse than Tinkers in that regard. Sadly, All his humans were from the same or similar cultures and they had decided to do that as cultural Representatives in ambassadors that he needed a full account of what agriculture meant to them.