Forget what I just said. I would never dump ten thousand gold pieces on this roof! What if I couldn’t aim where I wanted the gold to go? With the sheer quantity I had, that would mean emptying out coins everywhere, and just look at those tiny gaps between the planks!

No, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

Then again, maybe walking back and forth on the roof with a big magnet would—

Oh yeah, Chora had a bigger, more immediate thing to talk to me about. Here she was standing before me, waiting quite patiently.

Sorry, I thought meekly. I stepped off the ladder, and Chora reached over to close the latch behind me.

“Okay,” she said, sighing out air. “What I wanted to ask about is love—I guess.”

I froze.

What the—this was not in a million years what I thought she’d lead in with! Loving who, what, me???

“Someone in the village…”

Okay, some of the turmoil was leaving my head now. But still. My confusion was so great that every word seemed to last a whole minute. I was overanalyzing every little syllable.

“…is really interested in me. I stayed with him the whole time I was there. Of course, I didn’t know that was how he felt until it was too late and he was already hurt…” Her words were laced with barbs meant for herself. “Well, I don’t feel prepared to be with him either way.”

Now my mind was crafting an image of this mystery person. A guy who liked Chora… It would’ve been cool to see her with a second battle partner who’d also flip and kick around, or maybe a reserved spellcaster giving her backup. But this was a wild fantasy, and it was increasingly off-topic! Besides, it was no good if Chora didn’t want it. But it didn’t exactly sound like she disliked him. Was I missing something? I tended to be missing something.

“My question is,” she said, “how do you remain comfortable in your selfhood?”

…That question had my brain fizzling out already. How vague can you get?

Apparently Chora could see the smoke coming from my ears. “O-okay, let me be more specific. The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve been comfortable alone. When I was traveling with you to the village and the mansion, there were times when you didn’t even pay me any attention. In the best way, like you’ve never needed a partner, and…maybe you never wanted one?”

Huh. Was that even true? I had to wonder. Across all those years on Earth, I’d never had a partner. Never mind all the different ways “partner” could translate into cat relationships—I didn’t have any of those, full stop. Any friends and lovers (if that was love) were out of my life in a flash.

So the idea that I never wanted a partner was…

Chora went on. “I like solitude, I like independence, and I like being able to wander. The more I’m alone, the more I have that. But every time I think about Robin and I remember how he feels about me, I just flash forward to me in eighty years. Am I going to be alright alone?”

That was the kind of ultra-serious flash-forward I doubted most people had. What would Bayce do? Probably imagine the most blissful happily-ever-after ever with her new beloved—the polar opposite…or, to be more precise, the flipside of the same coin.

I wanted to call it another very human idea. And apparently it persisted on Vencia the same way it had on Earth! This happily-ever-after where everyone needs to find one partner and produce two or maybe three children. But really, it was very primal—something to do with propagating the species.

To me, it did not matter at all.

“CHORA, U HAV FRIENDS,” I said. “U WONT BE ALONE! U THINK REED WOULD JUST LEAVE YOU BC UR NOT MARRIED??? MAKES NO SENSE”

“Okay, I get you, but…that’s only part of it. I do like him, and I think I’d like to be intimate. I just don’t feel…” She danced around the word. “Ready?”

“PLZ DONT USE EUPHEMISMS BC I DONT GET THEM”

“Ah. Then…” Chora’s eyes flitted away. “Then I guess I can’t get into more detail…”

URGH! I’d given her the exact wrong response! I didn’t mean to shut the whole thing down! Then again, to be honest, I was relieved at the thought that yet another awkward conversation was now awkwardly escaping. First Murder asking about Logy and now this—what was with people asking me for advice like I was a sage today?!

Then again, maybe I was dodging responsibility. I could at least give her, you know, an answer.

“MAYBE IM OK WHEN IM ALONE BC IM A CAT, N I DONT KNOW ANY OTHER CATS,” I said.

Um…I didn’t know if that made any sense because I felt fairly secure in myself when I did know other cats, but this conversation was never going to make total sense. I still didn’t have a concrete idea of what Chora was going through with this Robin guy, and she wouldn’t tell me!

Chora’s eyes drifted again. This time it wasn’t just a flit—it was a full-on lateral move. “But…what about when you’re…kind of a human?”

I, uh…don’t know if that counts?!

“Sorry!” She swatted the question away. “Sorry. People don’t like questions like that. We have other things to do.”

Wait, we do?!

Oh, right, we did! Imminent danger in the Vencian Wood, right?

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Suddenly Chora lobbed two dumbbells my way. I acted fast and became “kind of a human,” as she put it. They thundered into my now-shaking hands.

“When you start lifting weights,” she said, abruptly changing her whole tone, “you’re really supposed to start by training your core, but as we may be on a short timetable…”

Woah woah woah! Sure, I was curious about what kind of stuff Chora actually did up here, so part of me didn’t mind doing this impromptu session under her tutelage. But now?!

The other good thing about it, though, was that it took Chora’s mind off the odd conversation that just happened. In fact, was that a fleeting smile? Good, because I was starting to think—as I had when we were together in Outlast—that all she needed was to relax. Some guy might be in her life for two days or twenty years or a hundred, but whatever way you sliced it, she was a good and resourceful person.

I totally missed the window to say that. But as I curled and uncurled my arms and wrists, I figured that maybe if I said them, she wouldn’t quite believe them. Words getting in the way again.

“Don’t get overzealous!” she cried. “Proper form—oh, I forgot to tell you anything about proper form. My mistake. See, you’re gripping the weights so loosely that you almost hit that passenger pigeon. Also, it’s less effective to do bicep curls all the way past your neck…”

Several seconds of Chora lightly nudging my arms and shoulders into place later, I was lifting again, hopefully properly this time.

“Levels,” she said as she strutted around me, now like a drill sergeant, “seem to be far more effective at developing muscle mass than any form of strength or endurance training. But what they don’t provide is discipline. Attention to form. The diligence to perform the same exact action every time. To not create, but iterate.”

She was losing me again…but I got the point. Chora didn’t draw strength from creative solutions so much as the tried and true. It made sense, since it seemed like she drew all her magical power from martial arts, and those took commitment.

I was so lucky! I’d gotten this far while being way lazier than her! Humans had it rough.

I dropped the dumbbells onto a mat—and jumped when they landed more heavily than I intended. My arms were spaghetti, and my chest heaved.

Chora stopped and blinked. “Good time,” she said. “Really good. Those were twenty-pound weights, and you did a hundred at breakneck pace. Again, your form is only so-so, because you were slipping at the end…but it was better.”

Her awe gave me awe. Even if all I felt was stinging muscle pain, I’d really done astoundingly good. Did my power feel cheap? A little. But then again, I had earned it through countless adventures and, I had to guess, more life-risking encounters than Chora had ever been put through.

She put a hand to her chin. “It’s amazing. So much power and yet no muscle mass to speak of…”

Rude and yet true! I wasn’t exactly boney, but for someone who did as much walking and trotting as I did, my nekomata form had surprisingly little muscle tone.

Suddenly I thought to ask, “HOW GET ABS???” Sometimes when this form was in battle, my shirt would fly, exposing all to the world. Now, I was no expert in human psychology, but I believed that on a practical level, washboard abs could intimidate the competition. Maybe even wolves!

“That’s core strength,” Chora said. “Not a bad thing to practice. But for now, I have something else I’m curious about trying with you. Let’s go through some Lyen-Chunst stretches and positions, if you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind at all. I set my weights down and gave her a hearty “Meow!”

And at first, I simply un-Morphed and watched her demonstrate.

It started with slow, disciplined stretches. She was a true martial artist: her breathing was consistent, the positions she repeated looked almost identical every time, and she stared straight ahead, seeming never to blink. After her stretches, she transitioned to balance: standing on one leg and stretching the other, ending on a long and dazzling handstand. Then came the punches, kicks, and swivels on her feet. Now I could see how the stretches and the balance exercises merged elegantly with the techniques she used for combat. Actually, I was thinking about it wrong—those foundations were the backbone of her combat. After all, without the ability to balance so precariously, how could she expect to fight with the wind?

“Now you try.”

The command hit me with a jolt. I forgot this was coming! Was I supposed to have memorized all that?!

No, because when I stood beside her on the mat, Chora modeled the whole routine again. I mirrored her as well as I could, cursing myself when a handstand brought me crashing down.

“Mrrgh!”

Chora hopped out of her handstand—another amazing move—and came to my aid. I rose fast, partly to escape the shame of needing to be helped up during what was, for her, a routine exercise. But Chora was encouraging. “It never comes easy. That’s why it’s an art: it takes time and patience to perfect.”

But when you did perfect it, it let you do amazing things. As Chora transitioned into demonstrating Lyen-Chunst moves with the wind magic flowing around her and jetting into the trees, I watched in new amazement.

Bayce had never made or handed out any wind-element Spells since I’d arrived. Did she consider it too weak, or did she just not have the materials? It had to exist. But then again, it seemed more useful if you could hold onto that element forever…if you could use it to take flight.

“I’m still curious about what your element might be,” she said, coming to a stop.

“Mrah?”

…Oh. Yeah, I saw where this was going.

“You might really be an air adept. Agile, but harsh as the whipping wind.”

Well, I did like to jump…but couldn’t I like jumping and also be something else fast and hurting, like lightning or fire or even rushing water? And I did have Air Cutter in my arsenal, but wasn’t that more likely because Chora was coincidentally my battle partner when I leveled up that time?

Whatever. I cast my suspicions away, and all because Chora’s idea to have me try out some actual Lyen-Chunst was so exciting.

Carefully, with more light taps, Chora shifted my humanoid form into position. I was supposed to perform a low kick, swiveling at the same time, with the toes of my kicking foot pointed precisely at the corner of that exercise mat over there—which, by the way, would not even be hit by the gust of wind. It was a lot to remember.

But the critical part, of course, was summoning the magic.

“Reach within you and tug on your magic,” she said. “Whatever it might be. That element in your core, that charged aura…draw it out. And let it circulate in your leg.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and figured, Yeah, I guess that’s what happening. Because with a thing as amorphous as this, I seriously couldn’t tell if what I was feeling was magic or just my regular bloodstream. They did both circulate.

Still, I trusted her. Maybe that was the most important part.

“Mreaow!” I cried, feeling a real burst of power. I swept my leg and swiveled, doing my best to follow the echo of Chora’s form. And I did see the magic loosed from my leg!

Granted, it was exactly what I should have expected—off-white aura—and the plasma lump of it rocketed into the forest at a seemingly random upward angle, but it was something.

“That wasn’t an element,” Chora said bluntly. “Okay, maybe nonhuman animals just have different rules. Yeah, on second thought, I should’ve seen this coming.”

“Meow…” I gave her a cat-sound of sympathy. I didn’t want her to feel like a failure for this. Seconds later, I had her spirit board in one arm and spelled, “ITS OK THO. THAT WAS COOL! ALSO WHATS AURA?”

She moved on just as quickly as I had. “It’s the essence of magic,” she said. “It actually contains pieces of every element. The going theory of magic is that human aura changes over time while animal aura stays essentially the same, only changing briefly and out of species-wide instinct—a fancy weird way of saying ‘they get elements to attack.’”

Ah. That made…partial sense. But why did humans have to be so different?

“Furthermore, it’s thought that the complexity of human personality and how it’s shaped by human culture is what causes souls to incline toward particular elements.”

“OK THATS COOL BUT IT WILL NEVER MAKE SENSE TO ME. LETS MOVE ON?”

“…Note taken.”