In the forests of Quencia, where massive trees formed canopies upon canopies and wonders without end, a gnome aimed her bow and arrow. Her concentration slipped. She missed.

Instead of hitting the blue apple, it sailed into a thick, ropey branch.

“Sorry!” the gnome blurted out. She raced to the tree, removed the arrow, and patched the wound with a colorful bandage. The more she missed, the more she’d have to do this. It was hard work being an archer, especially a failure archer.

Chora came out of the shadows. The elf was twice her height, but the gnome’s pointy red hat almost made up the difference. “Hey, Reed, um…what are you…why? I swear I’ve heard you miss a hundred times over the past hour.”

Reed lifted her cap enough to wipe off sweat. “It’s that loud?”

“Yep.”

She sighed. “I just want to be well-rounded. I can’t go crashing into every battle. And my aim with a Fireball is bad enough…”

Chora shrugged. She had no sympathy. “I keep telling you to join the Monk path.”

“If you join the Monk path, you can’t dual-class!” Reed hadn’t dual-classed yet herself, but she was a Bard with obvious Warrior sympathies…and Trapper and Muse and Druid and apparently now Ranger.

“Well, to put it bluntly, we did have our entire childhoods to comb through our options.”

“Well-well, your childhood was fifty years longer than mine.”

“Oh yeah…” Chora blinked. “Anyway, I have to get back to training. Good luck.” She popped two apple chunks into her ears and jogged away.

Reed shook her head, a way to bring her concentration back to the moment. But it was hard to focus, and it only grew harder with time. Normally the Quencian Wood was her oasis, the closest thing to a sea of calm existing above sea level. Today, though…

Another arrow chunked far off-target.

A wind passed through the eaves.

Reed, now having abandoned the task, marched with determination. Her stubby legs scaled the roots that rose like little mountains. The path to the Gravity Tree was as familiar to her as the back of her hand. Every root was almost a vein, and the tree itself sat on a knuckle, a hill overlooking the Crystalline Pond.

The tree was crabbed and ugly. For most Quencian trees, bark swirled together, collided with itself, and exploded in splendidly shining leaves, fresh blooms, or simply pops of color that dotted the plant like natural graffiti. But the Gravity Tree was a very old tree. And a peculiar one, one that didn’t link hands with any other tree and stopped short of the canopy. It and its blue apples bent over the twinkling pond very much like an old woman, hands seemingly clasped behind its back.

But old trees had new growth. Reed walked straight to a particular branch. It was short, almost leafless—it had been cut before. The wounds sparkled greenish-blue, showing sap within. At first sight of it, Reed attacked the poor tree, sawing at this branch with a knife. She let it plop into the still water, rubbed a bandage over the wound, then watched the water bubble and steam.

“Aah! Aaaaaugh!” cried the being in the water. Soon, though, the pain of birth was over, and a fully formed young adult strode calmly out of the water. Even though being taken in and out of existence was painful for ents, generally they considered it worth it. Bayce’s condition was that if you tear her off the Gravity Tree and rebirth her, you’d better bring some gossip.

Bark was her flesh, and water became her gown. It also billowed out to become her hair and adorn it with a broad-brimmed hat. Her rough hands swatted diamond-bright water out of her eyes. Reed admired her careless beauty—especially as, being a gnome, she was expected to be merely cute, and industrious above all.

“What’s up?” Bayce said.

“A lot. There’s a dungeon I’ve been wanting to explore, b-but I’m not good enough, and…”

“Aw, honey. Calm down, and back up.” Bayce reached out and touched her shoulder. Ents came in a range of heights depending on how much of the branch you decided to cut off.

Reed pushed hair behind her ear. “Alright. The truth is, I’ve been distracted during training lately, because…”

Bayce beckoned for her to spit it out. Partly because she cared about her, but also partly so she could get to the gossip.

“Because there’s a girl!” she cried. “A girl I like. But I don’t think it’s going to work out. And I haven’t even told her! Which, come to think of it, is good. Because it—”

“Woah!” Bayce chirped. “Back up again!” She was laughing, not at Reed herself but at her sheer nerves. “And let’s sit down.” A few of the roots reshaped themselves into two suitable chair shapes.

Admitting all of this to Bayce was going to be nerve-wracking, but Reed assured herself that there was no one in the world who’d want to help her through it more. While Reed and the hivemind that was the Gravity Tree used to have a purely working relationship—she would carry out the chores that required traveling long distances or existing on the mortal plane for more than ten hours at a time, the tree would give her blue apples—but she and the branch known as Bayce were around the same age, and they’d become fast friends.

All the same, some of Bayce’s replies were…they did not help.

“You like girls.”

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“I like a girl for sure. It doesn’t happen much…”

“Okay. Well, just stop seeing her.”

“That’s the thing. I’ve only seen her once.”

“Okay. Well, see her again.”

“No!” Reed blushed. At last. “Not so soon.”

“Yes! It’s the ardor of your feelings that tells me you need to meet up sooner rather than later!” Bayce took Reed’s hand in both of hers. “Reed, don’t you know what that means? It’s love at first sight. It might even be love that transcends universes!”

“No!” Reed cried—but not, of course, because she could refute it. “I mean, probably not.”

“Reed, just suffer me for a moment. Pretend to be a hopeless romantic for my sake.”

The gnome took a deep breath. “Alright. I am deeply and obsessively in love with a girl I have only met once.”

Bayce smiled deviously. Or was that just her regular look? “Yes.”

“We locked eyes!” Reed blurted. “We even held each other.”

“What? Why didn’t you lead with that?! This is practically consummated already! Back up even more!”

Reed steeled herself while Bayce leaned forward like a kid at story time. “This is what happened… I was out in the woods asking around for samples.” Bayce imagined her bartering with trees, requesting fruits, sprigs, and nonsentient wood bits.

“At some point I took a wrong turn. But it might’ve been fate steering me right, because what I found was a girl lying injured in the grass. Apparently, she’d been cursed, because she tried to speak to me but no words came out. And the trap clamping down on her leg, that was invisible too.”

Bayce said, “You locked eyes with her, had a romantic epiphany, and freed her while cradling her in your arms.”

Reed, though she was blushing fiercely, still took a moment to assess the accuracy of this statement. “Almost. She’s taller than me, so she kind of flopped over on my head and shoulder.”

“But still.”

“Mmhm. And for some reason, she was naked.”

“What?! Why?! Even I’m not naked, and I’m a tree!”

Reed frowned and looked away. “I dunno, but…she didn’t seem to mind that part…”

Bayce had an oddly studious look on her face. If ents had blood, or flesh to see their sap through, maybe she too would be blushing. “So you saved her. Then what happened? You get her name?”

“I didn’t,” Reed said, sounding crushed. “When I freed her from the trap, though, that lifted the curse, and she told me…‘meow.’ She kind of bolted after that.”

“This catgirl likes you.”

“But don’t people run when they hate you?”

Bayce tsked and swatted the idea away. “C’mon! You’re just in denial. You’re great, and she has no reason to dislike you. She’s just embarrassed that you frickin’ saw her naked! Go find her!”

“W-w-what do I even do, go into town asking for a person who only says ‘meow’?”

Bayce shook her by the shoulders. “Yes! Yes! That’s exactly what you do! And do it as soon as possible, because she might be so embarrassed she’s leaving this whole country!”

“Oh gosh! You really think so?!”

“No, but anything to get you moving!”

And move they did.

***

Above and around the whimsical village of Outfront ran several lifts, all pulled by a constant magical churn of noncombustible kinetic energy. As if the view from so high weren’t enough, this was also a part of the woods where the canopy broke so thoroughly that light, unfiltered and unfettered, reached the very bottom of the forest floor. It seemed to twinkle like starlight as it hit the tiles of distant roofs.

Reed couldn’t help but gasp whenever she took a ride above this village, stuck her head out the window of the jostling car. Well, she usually couldn’t help it. This time she had a more concerning matter to focus on.

Namely: where was that “catgirl”?

She and Bayce had asked villagers on their way to this lift. They’d listened in closely on gossip, sifting through words for any sign of “meow.” But there was nothing yet, so Reed and Bayce dutifully took out their spyglasses and scanned the village below for any sign of…

“She wasn’t a cat, actually,” Reed said, mouth half-open in concentration. “She was a gremlin.”

Bayce said, “I’m sure she still is.”

Reed stuck her tongue out, well knowing she wouldn’t see it.

This was feeling like an impossible search. From this far up, they could only see inside of every other alley, and even then they were blocked by an impenetrable wall of hats. That gave Reed racing, panicked thoughts. That girl hadn’t worn a hat, but what if she picked one up and really liked it? Then she’d never find her from here!

The duo’s last idea—short of asking every single Outfronter for leads, which neither of them had the time or patience for—was to simply ask all the innkeepers. It would still be the labor of a few hours…

When they emerged from the car at the top of Outfront’s highest point, it was with a whole lot more exhaustion than they’d expected from standing so inert. Bayce was massaging her temples and Reed was pretty sure she didn’t even have a brain to suffer the throbbing of. She, however, did, and pressed her forehead with her knuckles.

It felt like a shame to waste the view. Nobody else would. People of all ages streamed past them from the lift car. The duo heard the casual talk and occasional “ooh!” of elves, gnomes, trolls, and brownies, caught the giggles of children, and even flinched at the bass note of a big cart holding a single human baby. Most everyone flocked to the railings, drinking in the sky.

Reed and Bayce leaned against the railing too, to regroup. They’d thought they were far enough to the side to escape the crowd, but they weren’t alone.

A gremlin was watching the clouds. Her long, tangled tresses were grubby and loaded with twigs, and forked when they hit a stubby manx tail. Her flesh was rough—gremlins looked callused at any age. When she turned, enormous, piercing eyes glimmered back at Reed, startled, then curious, then remembering.

“Mreaow!”

“She’s wearing clothes!” Bayce cheered.

Reed ignored the quip—at least she wasn’t horrified by how unwashed the girl was. Without hesitation, Reed smiled and extended a hand to shake.

Bayce slapped her hand down. Reed pouted and brought it back up again. Bayce almost slapped it again. “Reed, no. You’re not humoring me!”

The gremlin girl seemed lost, and the perpetual smile on her kitten-mouthed face didn’t help signal her emotions. She looked up and down from the hand to the commotion.

So Reed, very slowly, pressed her hand against the gremlin’s, and then…oh, phooey. Yeah, maybe she was being ridiculous. The gremlin remained watchful, hadn’t shrunk back. Reed gradually moved into a full embrace.

They stood like that for a few silent seconds. Soaring clouds and shivering leaves framed them, seemed to hold them still. They let go.

Reed said, “I’m so happy I’m seeing you again.”

“Meow,” said the gremlin.

“C-can you comprehend any of the languages of the Wood?” Reed pointed to her mouth.

“…Meow.”

Bayce burst into laughter behind her. Reed bit her lip. “Um, what about nodding for yes and shaking your head no?” She demonstrated, and thus began a long session of tutoring the girl on gestures for “yes” and “no.”

“Holy crap,” Bayce murmured. “How’s she even been getting by here?”

Turning to face her with the gremlin girl by her side, Reed said, “Well, we can see by the state of the clothes someone probably gave her that she hasn’t exactly been getting stellar treatment.”

(In actuality, Taipha had been given perfectly clean clothes. She just mucked them all up two hours ago by traipsing through the woods—without guilt or pity.)

“Also, Bayce, let’s not whisper or keep any secrets from her, please.” Reed narrowed her eyes a bit. “Living things can sense distrust.”

“Oh, I know that much.” Bayce winked and made a clicking noise with her mouth. She didn’t produce saliva, so it sounded kinda like chopsticks.

Together they descended into Outfront proper, taking a long lift ride all the way back down. It was enjoyable this time, now that they knew where the gremlin girl had been. And she, for her part, seemed blissfully eager to go wherever they were going.