As Chora went leafing and pawing through the fliers on the Outlast bulletin board, I caught sight of my first villager. She was an older woman in a bright-red shawl and a red-and-black dress, coming up from the plaza. It had begun to drizzle the slightest bit, but like us, she had no umbrella.

Her eyes lingered on Chora, in a way I couldn’t read. Was she suspicious? Or did she recognize her? Possibly both—but I really hoped not. The only reason she didn’t stare at me, I figured, was because I had hopped out of her view, to the other side of Chora’s shin.

“Let’s see if there’s anything that went missing…” Chora was still looking through. “A missing umbrella…magpies aren’t likely to steal that. They typically want bright and shiny. Ah, a missing parakeet, that’s too bad. Well, I’ll ask people we come across too. Like that one.” Suddenly she pointed at the woman who’d appeared in the corner of her eye. Even I, an impolite cat, saw how grossly impolite that was, especially by the way the woman wrinkled her face afterward.

“Wait—sorry, I meant like that fine person.” Chora abruptly slammed her arm down and turned to face her. “Good evening to you, ma’am.”

“…Well, good evening,” the woman replied, sounding…bemused? She slowly approached us, and I shrank back further, closing my glimmering eyes so she’d have no reason to look my way. “Talking to the spirits.”

“Yeah,” said Chora. “I mean, yes.” Her body tensed, and I could tell she was kicking herself inside for correcting mistakes that weren’t actually mistakes.

But the older woman was matter-of-fact. “You’re Reed’s friend.”

“…You still remember me?”

“Yes!” She sounded both bemused and offended. “You used to run around everywhere, nobody could forget you!”

Chora manufactured a laugh. “Well, I don’t remember you at all.”

The woman hummed. “Brat.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

I heard a hit and flinched—but then I realized it was just a hand patting Chora on the shoulder. “I’m kidding,” said the other woman. Any tension in her voice was gone now, or so it seemed to me. “You were very well-behaved those summers. A lot of energy, though. And with all that running, I’m surprised you paused long enough to remember Outlast at all.”

“Actually, I do martial arts now. Put all that energy to good use.”

“Really! Are you a grand master?”

“Uh…lyen-chunst doesn’t have grand masters. There are ranks.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there, whatever the highest rank is.”

I chanced a look at the other woman. She was smiling, her teeth glittering. Meanwhile, Chora still seemed stiff.

“I don’t even know if I’ll go for it yet…” Chora said, her voice falling to a mumble. Then she spoke up again. “Wait, actually, ma’am, may I ask you a question?”

“Call me Arlene.”

“Arlene,” she said. I peeked up and saw a slight nod. “So…have you heard about the magpies recently?”

“What about ‘em?”

“Them…stealing anything.”

“Leave ‘em alone. It’s never valuable.”

“Wait, but—didn’t they steal someone’s fancy wagon, way back?”

“Yeah, and he deserved it. I think if it were anything serious, Murder would’ve torn their guts out by now. They’d all be intestines hanging from the rafters of…of whatever kinda bungalow they like to live in. Oh, look!”

Her last sentence caught me off guard. I decided not to fight the instinct to obey, so I looked around, then straight up. And there it was: a cluster of magpies. They were standing on a wire holding several smaller lanterns, one right above the window full of potion bottles.

Speak of the devil, I figured.

“Hi!” said Arlene, waving. “See, isn’t that funny?”

“It’s a little scary,” Chora said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking like that.”

“Oh, hush.” Arlene waved her off. “If they spoke our tongue, we’d know, because they wouldn’t shut up.”

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I was getting a little scared, wondering if the birds, like the raccoons, were preparing to retaliate and pluck my very own guts out. But the more I watched them, the more they seemed to go about their own business. Some turned to one another and made soft caws while others hopped off and flew elsewhere in Outlast.

“They live here like anyone else,” said Arlene, “and they have as much a right to our spare change as anyone else.”

I heard a clatter—turned to see a magpie on the road clutching a dropped coin in their beak. They twitched their head around, then flew to the stars.

…If they collected every single coin that ever fell to the ground around here, then Chora would be right. They really would have a dazzling hoard of it. One that I could fight them for.

“See? They’re funny little birds.”

Chora sighed. “Man, this puts me in a bad spot. I told a friend that the magpies at the lycanborn mansion were no doubt guarding some sort of amazing treasure.”

Arlene sounded offended again. “Who told you that crap?”

“No one!” Chora cried. “I-I just made it up based on several things I heard in the air when I was on vacation here! And now I’ve wasted everyone’s time.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not worth flying off the handle for.” Arlene paused. “I think you’re just tired. You could use some hot soup.”

“Oh, uh—yeah—we were just heading out for that. To an inn.”

Arlene laughed. “An inn? No, no, no. That’s not the way to do it at all. Save your money. You know full well there’s tons of us happy to take you in.”

I saw Chora shaking her head. “Really, ma’am—Arlene—I hate to be in anyone’s debt.”

“Debt?! That’s not how this works, honey!”

Now I had another reason to tense up. Some kind of human cultural mess was happening before me (and above me), and I didn’t know what to make of it. Arlene wanted Chora to eat her soup, but Chora didn’t want to eat her soup because she might be expected to…feed her soup later? To pay off the soup debt.

I did some cultural calculations in my mind. Using context clues including Bayce’s need to save up for wizard college and Reed’s college professor mother, and extending that to Chora, I surmised that all three cabinmates had to be…middle-class! So Chora could probably avoid soup. But if she incurred a soup debt that started to multiply, that could quickly overwhelm her family. Wait, did she even have a family?

Never mind all that. Anyway, even if “soup debt” wasn’t a real thing, I wouldn’t want her to get on the bad side of gossipy villagers either. Because that was a human-culture data point in my mind too: that small towns breed gossip.

What would be most well-behaved of Chora to do? Should she accept the invitation, or book it out of here?

And what could I possibly do to influence that and end this situation before it devolved into some kind of argument?!

I must’ve been muddling through brainstorming for way longer than I thought, because soon a door had clattered shut, and Chora and I were standing alone.

…Ugh. I missed the end of the conversation again. And this time I could understand every word too, so I had no excuse.

Looking up, I saw Chora shaking her head, staring toward what I assumed was Arlene’s door. “Autism,” she said. “Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in.”

I blinked, uncomprehending, for several moments.

Then I thought, Autism exists in fantasy worlds?!

Wait, I thought-added, correcting myself. Of course it exists wherever human brains exist. It’s just weird that they have the same word for it.

Not a minute later, Arlene returned with a piping hot ceramic bowl of soup in her arms. Yes, “in her arms”—it was that big.

“If you won’t come in, I bring the party to you,” she said, gracing Chora with another smile.

Chora said, “I will pay you—”

“No you won’t—”

“—with a full stomach.”

“That’s a good girl.”

Chora hefted the bowl. Just as I began to worry that it’d all go sloshing down the road, she slowly crouched, lowering the bowl to her ankles, and smoothly, smokelessly Inventorized it.

“Oh! Forgot to give you spoons and such.”

“No need. The inn will have them. You’ve done far more than enough. Thank you for all your help, and I wish you a wonderful night.”

Arlene tut-tutted again. “You are just painfully well-behaved, child. Somebody raised you right. You take care.”

I could not for the life of me puzzle out the rightness or wrongness of Chora’s behavior in accepting the meal but refusing to enter Arlene’s home. Not until I looked up at her shoulders and saw them relax again.

The door closed. With a deep sigh, she said, “Alright, let’s head to the inn. I don’t like having long social interactions sprung on me like that…”

***

I flitted through the door and into the darkest corner of a kind of hotel lobby-slash-family room. Finding a dark corner wasn’t that hard. This place was lit by candlelight.

“One room and one bed for one night, please. No, no dinner necessary.”

The man behind the desk handed her keys and pointed past the empty couches and a felt-topped table, down a hall. It was hardly wider than Chora, its walls lined with candles. Doors were so packed together that the rooms inside had to be absurdly thin…

Or magic. Our door opened up into an impossibly large suite. It was still not much bigger than a typical dining room, but that suited me just fine. Muted colors, a bookshelf, and a portrait of a stately man hanging over the ready-lit fireplace made the room feel grander, self-satisfied. There was even a kitchenette area, though that was nightmarishly small—a single pillar-like counter with a single stovetop eye on it, below an I-shaped cabinet. The single bed sat at the other end on a rusty-looking but nonetheless regal bed frame.

I was so glad Chora would have a big plush mattress like that to sleep on.

She wandered over to the deep-red rug in the middle of the room and plopped down there.

I smacked my paw against the bed frame and wailed.

“I am not sleeping down here,” she said between steady breaths. “I just hadn’t realized until now how tired I was.” After another three sighs, she turned to me. I was sitting between the frame and her head, feeling calm and patient. “Why don’t you sleep at the foot of the bed? It’s too big and soft to waste on just me.”

I immediately thought back to the huge bed back at Reed’s that Chora’s small body was “wasting,” but whatever.

“…Ah, right, the soup. I’ll get that ready.” She rose with a grunt, took the soup out of her Inventory, and…fell back down with another grunt.

I waited.

She was asleep.

I waited a little longer. Maybe she was just resting her eyes.

But they’re never just resting their eyes.