Jin tries to hold onto her dream, but finds it slipping from her mind like sand from a grasping hand. Annoyed, she opens her eyes and finds herself entirely disoriented. Where…? Oh. She’s in the spare room in Sage’s house, not her bedroom. She takes a moment to contemplate this.

“Fuck.”

It doesn’t feel intense enough.

“Fucking bullshit.”

Better. The smell of cooking is wafting through the house, which is enough of a motivation to get Jin into a sitting position at least. Her hip screams at her so she munches on another one of those cookie like biscuits Rosemary left for her on the nightstand. While waiting on the pain relief to kick in she picks up a small notebook and writing utensil also on the nightstand. The world hasn’t regressed so far as to use quill and ink again, fortunately. Graphite is still widespread enough that pencils are commonplace.

She opens the notebook and skims what little is written within.

Before she left the church last night she doubled back to ask if they had pencil and paper. The priest was fortunately willing to offer her the small journal she’s holding now. Basic spell formulas cover the first couple pages from work she did last night before falling asleep. Still having a lot of ground to cover, she starts writing in more of the basics, having to stop several times to wrack her memory or work through the theory again to figure out the structures she’s forgotten. She scowls while she works. Taking this long to get basic structures down is a bad sign for her ability to replicate more advanced magic. She’s not holding out a lot of hope for finding a library full of spell theory anytime soon, either.

Suddenly she stops.

Hey wait a second… if only time traveling mages are the ones still around today, why is she one of them? She was in… Suspended animation? A stasis? That’s what it sounded like, based on Sage’s description. Which means she was still physically present during this whole ‘cleansing’ thing that allegedly happened, not absent due to ‘time traveling’. Sure, maybe she technically counted as… not really there? At the time, but that explanation feels cheap.

Actually a better question, how the hell did Sage break the enchantment? All she did was physically move the hourglass, that really shouldn’t have been enough. Hell, the hourglass shouldn’t have been able to move at all if she was frozen stiff. Either its enchantment should have worked on both of them, or not at all.

Idly she touches her throat where her amulet is supposed to be.

A knock at the door and a call of, “Breakfast is ready!” snaps Jin back to reality and she closes the notebook. Questions later, food now. She tests her left leg and finds the pain manageable enough. Tucking the book under an arm she limps towards the door and opens it. The hall is already empty, so Jin hobbles down the stairs and towards food without delay.

Sage and her family are gathered in the living room. Rather than a dining table Jin is used to, everyone is one of the plush chairs Jin recognizes from last night. Plates of food are sat on a low table in the middle for people to serve themselves from.

“Jin! Morning!” Sage ducks underneath her mother’s arms as the woman in question walks out of the kitchen holding a plate full of what Jin really hopes is bacon. A whistling starts blaring from the kitchen and Rosemary hops up from her seat, “I’ll get it!”

The sounds of small pounding footsteps and screaming comes from behind Jin, and she narrowly dodges out of the way as Basil comes leaping down the stairs from behind her.

Casually Sage catches and flips him upside down, then starts carrying him over to the seating area.

Blinking, Jin takes another tentative step forwards. For having just woken up this is a lot of chaos very early in the morning…

Sage unceremoniously dumps Basil onto a loveseat, and takes the other cushion for herself. After eyeing Jin quizzically for a moment her face lights up, “Oh! Sit there, that’s the guest chair.” She points to the least worn looking chair in the semi-circle. It looks just as plush as the others, so Jin isn’t about to complain. She moves up and takes a seat, taking a better look around the room.

Oak sits by the fireplace and offers her a warm smile, before turning towards the fireplace again and poking at a fire within with a metal poker. His face has a grim cast to it… Was it always like that? Or is he different at feasts..?

Moss is sitting quietly looking everywhere but at her, which is a welcome change from when he stared her down in their first meeting.

Sage’s mother is organizing food plates on the table. Basil is… upside down and giggling maniacally as he slides off the couch. Sage grabs an ankle and yanks him back up, much to his glee.

Jin eyes the food, trying to keep herself from tapping her pencil or foot impatiently.

Rosemary comes back in with a tea kettle and a thick cloth circle, which she places on the table with the rest of the food. She and her mother start talking together and Jin realizes… She has literally no idea what they’re saying.

She thought it was just a thick accent but no, that sounds like a different language.

Actually.

…How long has it been since she was put in stasis, exactly? She still never answered that question. Seemingly long enough for language drift to change a language by a large degree… People speaking a different language isn't surprising—speaking proper English Jin is accustomed to is. Jin frowns. Of all the villagers, Priest Herrick was the most well spoken, wasn’t he?

“What language is that? I don’t recognize it.” Lilia looks up in surprise and looks… embarassed? “Ah, oh it’s ah, just tha southan dialect. The church is verah adamant about ah,” she pauses to look for the right word, but Oak cuts in, “The church teaches English. They’re strict about ‘language continuity’. Librarian Mirriam certainly is at least…” He gets a far off look in his eyes and rubs at his knuckles.

Jin nods. That was basically her theory anyway, but she glances over at Rosemary who, of all Sage’s siblings, definitely has the thickest accent. She doesn’t get a chance to ask about it, though.

“Right! Thankya Oak. Sage, wouldya like ta say tha blessin?”

Oh no. Jin looks longingly towards the plates of food.

Bacon, eggs, biscuits, jam… The smells fill her senses and her stomach quietly rumbles at the thought.

Sage clears her throat, “Actually, Momma, let’s change things up for just this morning and go ahead and dig in.”

Sage is a saint. A true saint. Jin is about to start reaching for a plate before catching herself. Is it still rude—nope that’s what Sage is doing too. Without further delay Jin grabs a plate too and starts filling it up.

Lilia looks mildly upset. “Ah, but she’s a cleric… ah…” she watches Jin fill her plate for a moment, then puts on a smile. “Well, one day won't hurt.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jin doesn’t pay her any mind. Sweet sweet food. There’s more fluffy looking biscuits than other food, so she loads up on more of those than anything else. Not wanting to take all the food, she stops after three, though.

She doesn’t wait for everyone else to get their food to start eating, and fortunately Sage takes the same cue. She pointedly ignores the looks she got from inhaling the first biscuit in nearly one bite.

It’s not that she’s even more hungry than usual this morning; food from the feast last night was plenty filling. It’s just that Jin usually tries to eat as fast as she can every morning before her stomach rebels. If she takes her time she’s never able to eat as much, which always ruins her day.

Mages took so long to grow in numbers because of their energy demands. At least, that’s what the anthropologists say. A peasant child born without magic requires a third as much food as their magical counterpart. It’s the same ratio for adult mages. Because of this, if the child even got enough food to reach maturity, they tended towards thin and sickly and were far less likely to pass on their genes because of it.

This is also why fat mages are a rarity. It’s… actually impressive whenever it happens, honestly. It takes a true dedication to gluttony to get those results.

She accidentally catches Oak giving her the fisheye when she has her second biscuit halfway inhaled and glares.

Then because you can’t mouth off to someone when your mouth is full of biscuit, she swallows and washes it down with the tea Rosemary brought out. It’s some kind of fruity tea that goes well with the jam.

Jin clears her throat. “Mag- Ah, Clerics need to eat a lot of food.”

There, explanation finished. Sage giggles to her right which Jin deigns to ignore.

“You shoulda seen her in the woods, Oak! She ate enough to feed three of me!” Jin looks up sharply and glares at Sage—the effects of which are greatly diminished by having her mouth now full of a mixture between eggs and bacon.

And it is bacon! Nothing can emulate the flavor. If nothing else, this world isn’t entirely bleak just by the simple nature of having bacon in it.

The family starts talking amongst themselves. Jin makes a sandwich with the biscuits and everything else on her plate. When that’s devoured, she sips at her tea and starts eyeing the last spoonfuls of eggs and the last biscuit in the basket.

Suddenly Sage grabs and tosses the biscuit at her, grinning. Jin, not expecting food to come flying at her, fumbles to catch it and barely avoids dropping it. She offers a weak smile back to Sage in thanks, spooning a little more jam onto her plate to use as extra flavor.

And this family keeps talking. Just about… daily life? Work they plan on doing? Lilia is talking about the garden around for the most part, Rosemary about someone whose name Jin doesn’t recognize, Oak about… well actually Oak isn’t talking about much, similarly with Moss, and Sage just never shuts up about anything. Basil vanished off through the front door at some point after eating, which dropped the noise levels of the room significantly.

“Anyway, that’s why I think leaving now, or um, this week at least, is probably the best idea. I hate the cold. Mm… but the cold is better than it being way too hot, I guess. Huh, hey Oak, the lands north of Traveler’s Rest are supposed to be really hot right? There’s a dessert? Um, no desert! Right? Haha, I wonder if people in the desert have good desserts.”

Huh? Was Sage talking about travel plans? Jin tries to tune back into the conversation since it will probably be directly relevant to her.

Oak stares into the fire for a moment and pokes a new log onto the top of the pile. He turns towards Sage. “Mm… As well as a ‘jungle’. They’re on opposite sides of a mountain range up there.”

Jin tilts her head. “The jungles of Altrax I’m well aware of, but a desert? There definitely weren’t any on this continent when I was attending the academy. How new is it?”

She gets perplexed looks from everyone but Sage, who just looks excited. “Oh! Cool! The desert has been around for… Um, I would say forever. What’s Altrax? Or who?”

Ah right, the rest of Sage’s family isn’t very aware of Jin’s situation before arriving in the village. She decides not to explain her previous academy life. “Altrax was a small, but absurdly powerful jungle dwelling nation. They were known for having an unusually high number of natural born mages, allegedly due to strong elven ancestry.”

Sage gets fisheyes. “Elven?! Like in the fairy tales?”

Jin nods along despite having no idea what kind of elves exist in Sage’s fairy tales. “Elves are a hominid species that died out in my ancient history. They were known for their high magic affinity, narrow frames, and pointed ears. There are many theories on what happened to them—historical records on the topic are contradictory at best—but many say they live on through their half human descendants to some degree. Claiming strong elven ancestry is a point of pride to some for… some reason, though it’s not exactly an easy claim to prove.”

Her audience looks captivated and a small note of pride settles into place. Curious, she asks, “What do you call the jungle now? The desert too, for that matter.”

Oak nods. “We still call it the jungle of Altrax.” Jungles, plural, Jin mentally corrects. “We just call the desert… Ah… the desert.” He grins at her. “We’re not creative people here in Rock Orchard.”

“Mm… well a desert is new to the continent anyway, so I suppose naming it doesn’t matter too much. Unless there’s multiple…?” She’s replied to with shaken heads. Jin nods decisively to cement her point.

Sage scrunches her face up in curiosity, and after a moment asks, “Were you a teacher of some kind?”

“Hm? No, I was a student. Why would you think that?”

“Well! You’re so, well spoken. Rather than just say “yeah there’s elves” you gave us a history lesson—that’s not bad! I’m not complaining, but it’s kinda funny, yeah? Most people don’t do that.”

Jin blinks, then speaks slowly, “I… suppose I tutored mages who got in on scholarship occasionally.” Ah, they don’t know any of the implications of that statement. She continues. “Students who got into my academy on scholarship, rather than paying their way in, or relying on family history, tend to know far less than mages who grew up around magic—mage families used to have a monopoly on magic education. They’re usually first generation mages, and had to take general intelligence tests for their scholarships, since it’s assumed most will know little of magic theory prior to their education. Since my grandmother never sent me money to live off of, I tutored several scholarship students since the academy offered decent pay for it. Why waste a teacher on remedial classes when you can get a student to do it for cheap, eh?”

Jin, realizing what she did, offers a small, embarrassed smile. “Aha… I see what you mean.”

Sage grins. “You’ve done it a lot.”

Jin clears her throat and takes a sip of tea to cover a faint sense of embarrassment. Why do people pay so much attention to her…

Lilia takes this moment to stand up and start gathering plates. “Well, ah, this was an… Inarestin’ convasation, but I think it’s time to get started with our day.” Rosemary smoothly stands to help her mother.

Huh. Jin wonders what she should do with her own day. She frowns. Normally her days would be dominated by going to classes or studying. If not that, then working on whatever project caught her fancy recently, or reading. She was in the middle of a cosmic horror novel recently where magic caused insanity and all mages inevitably wound up succumbing to their madness. Now..? Now she has access to none of that. Her hands tighten on the notebook in her lap.

Suddenly she notices Moss had walked over to her at some point. “Miss cleric?”

Everyone in the room stops to stare at Moss. Jin glances around, confused. “…Yes?”

He holds out a book to her, so she takes it, and opens it curiously. “What’s this?”

Moss shuffles in place and looks sideways, not answering. It… looks like a journal? There are entries from some ‘Amanda Clearwater.’ Jin flips through to see what kind of time frame the entries take place in. Only about a year’s worth of journaling is in it, if she’s correct about the dating structure.

“The arc-wolves.” Moss says the words, then grabs a stack of plates out of his open mouthed mother’s hands, and disappears into the kitchen.

Sage is, predictably, the first to break the silence. “Moss spoke to you! He never speaks to strangers!”

The family breaks out into gossip, but Jin doesn’t pay it attention. Instead she starts flipping through the journal again from the beginning looking for the first mention of these arc-wolves. He probably gave this to her for a reason, after all.

She finds the line.

We heard the howls of arc-wolves today, I think they found our trail. Lorris, the fool, claims to be unconcerned. He’s never seen one in person before…

Jin looks up and around, “I’ll be reading this in the guest room, if anyone needs me.”

With that she sticks a finger in the journal to mark her place, and gets up. Maybe this Amanda has a few answers for her to find.