"Hey Helen, people have been looking at my hair the last few days," I comment while Emily is working on braiding it in the morning. I rub at my eyes, still sleepy after getting such bad sleep. At least my terrible thoughts from last night have faded with time, allowing me to attempt to focus on more productive things than just hating myself. Though everything still feels sort of... bad. It's hard to describe, but it's sort of like, it's hard to be happy? I don't know what it means, I just try not to let it show for now.

As I sit, I tell myself that if they were going to call us to battle, it would be in the morning, so today must not be it. I still have time. It doesn't help my mood at all though. Working behind me, Emily seems pretty worn out too.

"Really?" Helen grins. She puffs out her chest proudly. "I guess I did a good job then!"

"Uhh, that's not exactly what I meant..." I sigh a bit. "I mean, does this hair style stick out too much? I don't think I've ever seen anyone with their hair done like this before..."

"Hmm..." she puts a finger to her cheek, then jolts suddenly. Did she realize something? "N-no, it should be fine... E-Emily, here. Let me help you with that, I'll show you some, uhh, changes to make..." She hastily moves over to our bed and begins working on my hair with Emily. She definitely did something weird with my hair before...

I stare ahead, deadpan. The two girls work pretty quickly to make whatever changes they're making to the hairstyle, so I just wait. We still have some time. Across from me, Jannette gets up, yawns a little, then begins to leave the room. Have I ever seen her change her clothes in our room before? She pauses briefly to look at my new-new hairstyle.

"Hmm." What does that mean?! She walks out without a word. I should just cut my stupid hair and be done with it...

I wait a bit longer for them to finish up the last bits before feeling my hair again. It pretty much feels the same, doesn't it? No, actually, there's a cloth wrapped around the twisty parts that hold the ponytail in place now. So what, does it just look like a regular ponytail? Maybe there's more to it, but I can't tell by just groping around blindly at the back of my head.

"Whatever," I grunt as I give up. As long as it looks more normal and doesn't attract so much attention, it's fine. We go to breakfast not long after. But... I'm worried about Emily.

"Hey Emily, are you alright?" I ask quietly while we eat. "You didn't sleep very well."

"I'm fine," she says immediately, but it's easy to see that's a bluff. I just frown and give her a look. She sighs. "Alright. The nightmares are definitely getting worse. I think I'm still fine for now though."

A swell of worry churns in my gut. Of course I'm doing something wrong. "Should I... slow down a little?" I ask in vague terms since there are lots of kids around us. At the rate I've been removing earth mana, I'll finish the day after tomorrow. I must be going too fast. But I have to remove it all before I leave. I don't want to take too long. Removing too much right at the end might be too much for her to take. But going too fast is no good either. I don't want my stupidity to harm Emily any more.

She looks conflicted momentarily, but then shakes her head. "No, I'll be fine. I'm tougher than I look!" she says with a grin and flexes her arm a little. It looks silly.

"Hehe, you look tough too," I giggle a little at her boasting, feeling my lips twitch up into a smile for the first time today. It feels like my heart is lifting a little. She just pokes me in the side while giggling herself. Then we both notice all the sidelong glances from the other kids around us and stop awkwardly, staring down into our bowls and feeling embarrassed. We quickly finish eating breakfast after that, then get going.

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Walking south through town, I breathe in the fresh, if somewhat stinky morning air, holding hands with Emily as we go. It helps clear my head. I think I'm feeling better now, like the dark clouds in my heart have receded.

When we reach the forest today, I have Maven scout around us carefully after yesterday's incident. Thankfully, no one is following us this time, so he heads over as we get further into the forest. He jumps up into Emily's arms and she pets him happily. We all go together and I'm glad for the returning sense of normalcy... for us anyway.

Once we find our spot, we send him back and get set up. As we sit up in the tree, I go over my possible useful discoveries. First and foremost, there's lightning mana. I clearly felt the way it heightened my intuition and allowed me to respond to incoming attacks on instinct, before my enemy even moved. I'll need a lot of that in combat, it will definitely help.

Next there's earth mana. It makes me stronger, which is always good, and helps with healing from injuries. And I'm sure I'll receive all sorts of injuries. Even if I do finish preparing well enough, I'm fighting terrifying death monsters. Earth mana is a must.

There are also the fire and absolute mana types. I haven't tested much with them yet though, so I don't know what they do. Given how absolute mana is different than the others, I don't expect it to have effects on my feelings and things like the others, but who knows, maybe it does?

Of course there's also light and dark mana, but those... also felt kind of different. I can scratch off dark mana right off since I still can't even feel it. But light mana, I don't remember it causing any changes, it felt more like it had effects on the mana around it. The way it pushed all the other mana away. I don't know if there's any way to use that to my advantage...

For now, I move on. I take the ignium from my basket, using one of my new nuvrite coins to create some fire mana. However, I have to take some time so the ignium doesn't heat up too much. If I just dumped a ton of mana into my coin, the mana field it created would surely be enough to heat it to a point where it would burn me or whatever I set it on. And I'm still trying not to set the trees on fire. While I take a little time to convert the mana, I try to keep a close eye on my feelings. Unfortunately, I don't really feel anything changing, since I'm not really feeling any particular emotions right now.

Let's see... Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, hunger... Wait, hunger isn't actually an emotion, is it? I shake my head. Well, worry apparently counts. What other emotions can I think of? Which ones will it affect? After thinking for a little while, I have a whole lot of fire mana. If it messes with my emotions, I should definitely be able to tell with this much of it.

How about I just try thinking of things. To start, there's happiness. I already know earth mana is tied to that one, but who's to say only one element effects any one feeling? So what makes me happy? That's easy, I just look over at Emily. I give her a smile. She tilts her head a bit, but smiles back. Yeah, just that makes me happy. But that's all. Nothing out of the usual. Well, besides the feeling being a bit dulled, which I already expected.

I go over them on my fingers. After happiness is sadness. Another simple one. I just think about myself and my endless failures. Yeah, same dull ache in my chest I feel all the time. At least it's not as bad as this morning. The way it's muted somewhat actually makes it a little easier than usual to not dwell on it. Next is anger, which is a bit harder since not much makes me angry. Luckily, yesterday's incident is still very fresh in my mind, with those feelings from when that boy hurt Emily.

I'm utterly unprepared for the burst of seething anger and hatred that burns through me the instant that thought comes forward. My mind screams, drowning out everything else as I clutch the branch in front of me with all my might. He hurt Emily! Where is he? I'll tear him apart! But I can't do that, because of my damned pathetic self! A monster that can't even kill like one! I feel all of that hatred turn toward myself, like I'm about to burn myself away into nothing.

A small, terrified voice of reason in the back of my mind reacts to the overpowering rage flowing from every pore of my body. Barely managing to stop myself from physically tearing into my own flesh, I grab the mollite bar with violently shaking hands and just dump all of the fire mana into it. I don't have the time or sanity to convert the mana back properly. After an agonizingly long period, probably no longer than a few moments, I've burned away almost all of the fire mana, and it feels like I can actually think straight.

"Aria! Aria!" I finally realize that Emily is shaking me and saying my name over and over. When I actually turn to meet her eyes, she lets out a sigh. It looks like she's on the verge of tears. "What happened? You just started..." but she can't seem to put my silent rage into words.

"Sorry Emily," I say, holding my head, "I wanted to see what fire mana does." She nods slowly. "It makes you angry. Like... really angry."

"Well, as long as you're alright now, it looks like you've got it under control, right?" she asks.

"Yeah, it's fine now," I assure her. "I had to burn it off with mollite though. Getting angry like that is pretty scary." That level of anger and hatred is really, really terrifying. I know I felt those ugly, harmful emotions yesterday, but they weren't anything so violent and dangerous like this pure, unrelenting rage.

"Yeah, anger is pretty scary, isn't it..." she laughs nervously. "But you burned it off with mollite?" She tilts her head a little. I... don't think I've explained the details about mollite and nuvrite to her yet, have I?

I clear my throat a little, glad to turn my thoughts to something else right now, and explain, "Remember when I told you that mollite has much stronger effects when I use my mana?" she thinks for a bit, but then nods. "Well, I can basically run my mana through mollite and nuvrite," I cover the bit she knows first before moving onto the harder to explain part. "It goes out into the metal, which uses up some of it, then comes back to me from the other end. It's harder to push my mana through mollite, and more of it is consumed in the process. So not as much of it can come back in a different form. Nuvrite doesn't use as much, so I can convert more."

"Oh, I get it," she nods a few times. "So you got rid of the mana by pushing it into the mollite, which used it up."

"Exactly," I give her a smile, glad that there is at least one person I can talk about all of this with. It makes me even happier that she actually seems to understand what I'm talking about, even though she can't feel mana herself. Still with a small smile on my face, I turn back to my task.

So what next? I still want to figure out what else fire mana does, but I can't risk losing my mind like that, who knows what I might do to myself? Before I work up the courage, I run the same test with light mana, finding that no, it doesn't mess with emotions like the other types. I would also give absolute a try, but there's no way to change it back, so... maybe later. Then I get back to the fire mana.

It'll be fine. I assure myself I just had too much to control, and generate a much smaller amount this time. I grumble internally that I need a better way to count mana. Some way of recognizing it in terms of specific units. The divine gear gives a number quantity, I should be able to do the same somehow. Feeling it in such vague ways as 'a little,' 'some,' 'a good amount,' and 'a lot' simply are not helpful when I want to determine just how much of an element will start having a serious impact on my ability to think clearly without my emotions completely running out of control like that.

But that will have to come later. The best I can even do at the moment is grabbing chunks at a time, but each chunk feels like it's made of a bunch of tiny parts. I can't manipulate it well enough yet to actually get to the tiny pieces, so there's no way I can count them or anything like that yet.

For now, I settle with 'some' fire mana. I carefully test it by thinking back on yesterday one more time while holding onto the mollite just in case. The anger is much stronger than I remember it being yesterday, but I don't feel like I'm going to explode into a violent frenzy like before. I'm still squarely in control, so this should be fine.

I push the anger from my mind with some effort, and turn my thoughts back to what I was doing before. Other feelings that might be affected. I don't suppose my general outlook on life, whether positive or negative will see much change. Let's see... I expect that when I go into battle, I'll die, because I'm not prepared.

I think that, but don't really feel any sense of positive or negative outside of what's normal. What else could it be...?

Wait, I'm completely thinking about this wrong. I blink a few times as I stare out into the treeline. I've been trying to figure out which emotions are heightened by mana. Ok, sure, that really is something I should figure out so they don't come out of nowhere later like lightning did. But more important to me currently, is finding what other effects they have. Ones that might actually help in battle.

Earth mana increases the strength of my muscles and healing speed. Lightning increases my intuition. What other effects beyond the emotional ones could there be? More importantly, how should I figure them out?

A tap on my shoulder brings me out of my thoughts to catch our first hobin of the day. It's actually a bit surprising, it's kind of early today. Maybe because it was raining? Unlike Maven's burrow, hobins without stockpiles of food might not have eaten in a couple days and would be really hungry now, if they weren't able to find any fruit with the ground so muddy yesterday. I guess we can expect a good haul today. I stand over Emily, thinking about it while she dresses the hobin and buries the guts. The ground this deep in the forest is still pretty muddy, I realize as she digs into it with her knife. The summer heat was rapidly drying up even that heavy rainfall while we were leaving the city. There were hardly any puddles left on the ground by the time we made it to the gate. But without the blazing sun overhead reaching the ground here, it's much cooler, and the ground stays muddy longer.

My wandering thoughts are cut short when Emily finishes up and waves for me to climb back up the tree. I still need to maneuver up the side to reach the lowest branches, which obviously puts her on edge, so she always insists I climb first in case she needs to catch me. Thankfully, she hasn't had to yet.

"Hmm..." she mumbles while scratching her cheek. I raise an eyebrow, she clearly has something to say, but has an awkward, embarrassed look. "With your oversized skirt and weird movements, I can completely see your underwear when you climb... You should keep in mind who's below you when you do that."

"Uh, ok?" I think for a few moments. "Wait, the way you say that, it sounds like I shouldn't let people see my underwear?"

Emily actually slaps her hand to her forehead in response. "I never specifically told you about that... Underwear is private and you shouldn't let others see it. Especially boys."

"Why boys?" That seems really random.

"Well... boys and girls are different. You'll learn more about that when you get older though." Ah, so another thing I don't really need to worry about now, with my very possible death imminently approaching...

I kick myself to get back on topic, then realize something and ask, "Oh, wait. But don't we all change in our room together? I've seen your underwear lots of times before."

"Well..." she flushes slightly. "We're roommates, so it's kind of expected that we'd end up seeing more of each other than we show other people... I guess..." she trails off, still looking embarrassed. Huh, so I guess it's one of those things we just have to put up with because we don't have another option. I'll probably understand it better the longer I keep living together with everyone at the orphanage.

Just... have to survive until then. For that, I need to keep studying. "Well, uh, thanks for letting me know. I'll try to be careful." I give her a nod and return to my task.

Now where was I? It takes a moment to switch back over into what I was thinking about earlier after the unexpected conversation. Right, non-emotional effects of mana. But how can I figure them out? Something as vague as intuition isn't much of a clue, but maybe earth mana can help me guess through some things.

Earth mana strengthened my muscles. So it had a physical effect on a specific part of my body. Let's go with that for now. What other parts of my body might be affected? My five senses to start: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Then there are things like the vital organs. I remember they taught us about them, how they were necessary for survival and damaging even one would likely kill us or our enemies. Those organs were the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, and... I can't remember the others very well. They weren't as obvious and important. I think they were the liver and kidneys. It takes me a few very long moments sifting through the memories to recall what they actually do.

Or maybe it's not about the organs and it's more of a... structural thing. That might be the case, since I've already identified muscles. So those would cover muscles, joints, bones, ligaments, and skin? And fat I guess? Not that I know how that could help.

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I've come up with a pretty long list of possible things in my body already. But how to test them? I just shrug a little. The only thing to do is go one at a time. I already have fire mana, so I'll test that first. But wait, I don't have anything to compare to. I should see how they work normally to start or I won't have any idea what's changing. I quickly work to convert the fire mana back so I can start completely clean and fresh. I'm so used to converting earth all the time, it feels like all the other types are simple by comparison. Once I'm finished, I stop momentarily to try and get a better idea of how much mana there is inside me.

It seems impossible, all just sort of floating randomly in the weird, formless cavity inside of me that also somehow lines up with my body. It's weird when I think about it. I don't know how it can be formless and also fill my body. Maybe that's the key difference between energy like mana and physical things like my body? Of course all my speculation amounts to nothing. There's no one to give me answers, so I'll just need to keep working at it until I can figure it all out myself.

The next step is to pull a little mana from my well to replace all that fire mana I burned earlier. I try to keep careful watch on the amount, comparing it before and after refilling from my well. I still can't get any definite numerical values for any of this, but at least I can get a solid comparison for once. Comparing how much I had before and after... If I consider my current state as 'full', then before pulling mana, I had... a little less than half full. Not quite forty percent, so about forty five percent. Which indicates that I burned up fire mana amounting to about fifty five percent of my maximum mana at any given time.

That gives me a place to start. If I can't have numbers, at least I can try to measure values in percentages of my max mana. In any case, with that out of the way, I consider exactly what I should test. I suppose the easiest to tell would be my senses. So first up is fire mana, testing with sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. To start, I go through without any fire mana. Looking at a leaf and trying to make out details, listening for movement in the forest, inhaling the scent of wood and mud, licking a piece of tree bark, and finally rubbing my hand over the wood of a tree. I pay as close attention as I can to the sensations of each one, then generate some fire mana. It's... somewhere between twenty and forty percent of my maximum. I need to get better at this...

Putting that out of my mind, I run my tests again. Of course, they're all completely subjective, so I just try to look out for larger changes. And I get one! While the first three tests don't give me any solid evidence that anything has changed, the taste test is immediately different. I lick a piece of tree bark again. It doesn't taste like tree bark now. It tastes like wood grains, and rainwater, and even the clean air that permeates the area where the tree grows. It feels like I can pick out every little bit of difference in the taste.

Fire mana definitely strengthens taste. Knowing that, I still make sure to run the final test, though it doesn't turn up any changes.

After fire, I do the same with lightning. Immediately, I pick up the smell of hobins. I can smell their blood wafting from all the way over where they're hanging, as well as the guts buried in the dirt. So lightning heightens smell. Which is really obvious now that I'm actually thinking about it. The food, the waste, I noticed a lot about smells back when I had a lot of lightning mana that day. Of course now that I'm actually looking for the changes, I pinpoint them immediately.

Earth mana turns out to heighten my sense of touch. Again, I hadn't noticed that before, despite generating earth mana on and off all the time. With earth mana, I can rub my hand over a surface like wood, and pick out every tiny detail, every little crevice and twist in the feel is clear as day with enough earth mana.

That covers the senses. It took quite a while testing each one with each element, having to convert it all back again afterward. By the time I'm finished, it's starting to get a bit late. We do catch four more hobins in the meantime, and it looks like we're going to be catching more today.

In the time I have left, I try to think through my results so far. I figured out the senses for fire, lightning and earth. I can only assume there are at least two more types of mana I'm not familiar with, which impact sight and hearing. If that pattern holds anyway. However, testing the function of vital organs or stuff like my bones and skin don't seem particularly feasible...

Since those are out, I take a step back once more. I've gone over emotions and other effects of mana, at least as well as I can at the moment without more well thought out experiments. I won't be getting to those here today.

So what else is there? I'm having trouble coming up with anything, not helped by the hobins falling for our bait one after another. We catch quite a lot of them. With our last catch of the day, I call Maven over once more so we can walk back together. Emily collects the fourteen hobins we've caught today, all tied up on a stick, and I get my basket. Maven comes out of the bushes.

A rustling sound is the only warning before a blur darts out, directly toward Maven. It hits him fast, throwing him to the ground. He lashes out immediately, raking his claws out repeatedly, but the larger animal is already on top of him. It's automatically apparent that this creature is one of the predators that hunt hobins. The fast one with claws.

It's snapping down at him, sharp fangs barely grazing past his throat as he shifts his head side to side while pinned. Maven is a very big, very strong hobin, strengthened with far more mana than a normal hobin would have, but it's not quite enough against the predator. I'm running, but everything is happening so fast, I know I won't get there in time to help.

No, I have to think differently. This is just another animal. And even though I'm not physically there, I have contact with that animal through Maven. I pull. Or rather, we pull. It's hard though. Maven doesn't even have a fraction of my mana. I have to put all of my will into it to forcibly pull the mana out of the predator. But it works after just a moment, and the beast collapses.

I can feel Maven's tiny heart racing. That's right, he's a part of me. This serves as a very good reminder. Once I reach him, I scoop him up in my arms. I look him up and down, checking his coat and skin for signs of cuts or other wounds.

Thankfully, he only has a few scratches from the beast's claws pinning him. His thick fur shielded him from the worst of it. I check the cuts carefully, but they aren't deep. Now that I know how important my mana could be for him protecting himself, I put quite a bit more inside. He can't seem to hold much, so I fill him with almost all he can hold. Probably since he's such a small animal, the amount is still... maybe about as much mana as Emily has. It's really hard to compare though, I don't know if my guess is very accurate.

Even so, it's way more mana than he had before. If something like that happens again, he shouldn't have any trouble pulling the mana out of the attacking predator.

Emily finally catches up. "Aria, what was that? You just ran off all of a sudden!"

"Oh, uh," I'm not sure how to explain. It strikes me as a little too similar to when we were attacked by that monster, I don't really want to describe it because it'll just bring up those memories again... But there's not much I can do, is there? "Some animal attacked Maven, but he knocked it out."

"Oh?" I guess by putting it that way, it doesn't really sound all that much like the attack before, even if the experience was really similar. I'm glad she didn't see it... "Well, let's see," she says, walking up. "Oh, I think this is a rechit. I've heard they can be pretty dangerous. I haven't seen one myself before..." she says, looking it up and down carefully.

"So, what do we do with it?" I ask.

"I suppose we can sell it just like the hobins?" Emily shrugs. "I figure it has to be worth something, right?" I just nod. If she thinks so, I'll go with that. "Well, I've never dressed one before, so we'll have to see how it goes," she scratches the back of her head with a slightly worried look.

Finally, she hands me the stick holding our other catches for the day, and kneels over the animal. It's much larger than a hobin, even Maven. While a full grown hobin can fit on my arm, this rechit comes up to my waist in height, and is probably almost as long as I am tall. Overall, larger than a hobin, smaller than the monster. They're also four legged, but much more lean than hobins, with powerful, muscular legs and sharp, straight claws much more suited to slashing at prey, no good for climbing. Unlike my clumsy attempts with hobin claws before, it looks like rechit claws are sharp enough to actually serve as a good knife.

Its entire body is covered with a short stubble of fur, nothing like the long, silky fur hobins have. The only exception is up near its head where the fur is very short, more like fuzz than stubble. I run my hand down its face. It's long, with a snout containing two rows of short, but very sharp teeth.

"Huh..." I mumble. I have one row of teeth, but this animal has two. That's an interesting difference, I never really thought of animals with more than one row of teeth before... I'm so glad it doesn't remind me of the monster. Everything just looks natural. I can look at its claws and teeth and imagine how it uses them, unlike the twisted and misshapen features of the monster. I exhale slowly, releasing any left over tension. Just an ordinary predator.

With the same smooth knife skills she displays every day, Emily slices its throat. Then she begins to cut it open.

"It looks pretty similar to hobins," Emily comments, "All the organs are bigger, but the placement is kind of similar..." As much as I try, her description makes me shudder. She keeps scraping and cutting for a bit with a focused expression. Then she finally sits back, wiping sweat from her forehead and sighing a big, relieved breath. "All done."

"Good job, thanks Emily," I say and we share a smile. After a few moments of rest, she turns back to the removed guts. She digs another muddy hole once and dumps the guts inside before covering it again to bury them.

"That should wrap it up for the day, right?" she asks with a tired smile.

"Yeah, let's head back," I nod. I give her my hand, helping her to her feet, and she ties the rechit up with the hobins. The stick bends quite a bit, but doesn't break. It makes me slightly nervous when I look at it, but Emily doesn't seem to mind. After his scary ordeal, Maven just sits on my basket and rests while we walk back, both petting him and praising him for his bravery.

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Eventually, Maven goes home and we continue on until we reach the gate. The guard there today, who I swear I recognize from seeing him around before, whistles and gives a thumbs up as we go past. I take a better look for a moment. Black hair, with a little stubble on his chin. I'll try to remember that.

When we make it to the market, the usual stand has a new face behind the counter with the bearded merchant we know. A much younger face. Looks like a boy, maybe ten years old. He also has very dark brown hair like the merchant. It seems like he's just standing behind and watching. Since I've seen people try it before, I can very clearly tell that he's forcing himself to keep a straight face.

Besides the boy, nothing else has changed. The merchant greets us, but his eyes are clearly trained on the rechit we're carrying. "Hello little ones. I was worried when a boy showed up the other day, but it looks like you're still getting along alright," he says while leaning down over the counter to look at us.

We both smile. "Yeah, we're fine," Emily nods. "We have..." she trails off for just a moment. "Twelve hobins to sell. Also, we caught a rechit. I guess we should sell half of it?" She looks at me a little, but I have no idea, so I just shrug. I saw a hobin split in half, but a rechit is so much bigger, that would be a lot of cutting, right?

"Half?" the merchant asks. "Why half?"

"We need to bring half back with us," Emily explains.

"Huh..." the man clearly doesn't understand, "what do you need half a rechit for...?" he mutters.

"What do we need it for?" I ask, his words making me realize we overlooked something. I direct my next question to him. "Hey, what parts of a rechit can be used?"

He blinks a couple times. "You don't know? Then why do you need- No, nevermind." He waves his hands in front of him a little. "The meat isn't anything great, but it's edible, and there's a lot of it. The hide gets made into cheap leather goods, and the claws and fangs are used for tools," he explains.

"How much is it worth?" Emily asks once he finishes explaining.

"I'd give you two coppers for all the meat, one for the hide, and one for the claws and fangs."

"So four coppers..." Emily mutters.

"Speaking of meat, what are we going to do with all of that?" I ask quietly. "Do you think we should sell it and just bring the money back like the extra hobins?"

"Oh, that's a good point." Emily says. "There's no way we can use all of that meat before it goes bad. I guess we should sell it after all." Having come to that conclusion, Emily looks up at the shopkeeper once more. "We'll sell the whole rechit."

"Ok," he nods. "That'll be twenty four coppers for the hobins and four for the rechit. Twenty eight total. Would you like that as two irons and eight coppers?" He asks.

"Uhh..." Emily looks sort of dumbfounded. Now that I've been earning and spending money, I realize just how much that is. Let's see...

Of the fourteen hobins, seven of them belong to the orphanage. We sold five of the seven, plus two coppers from the rechit. We owe twelve coppers to the orphanage, which we won't be able to cover with just eight pieces the way he split it. If we took one iron, that would be eighteen, covering the orphanage, then we could split the remaining sixteen coins evenly between us. But would Mister Fredricson even take iron coins...?

After I take a moment to consider and come up with an answer, I glance over, but Emily still looks totally lost. So I answer, "We'll just take it in copper." The man nods a little and places the money on the counter. We count it up, twenty eight coins in total.

"Thanks for your business," the man says pleasantly as we wave and leave. I glance at the boy behind him briefly. I wonder what he's there for?

As we walk away through the market, we stop briefly as Emily looks at all the coins. "Uhh... how do we split this exactly?" she asks. She's sweating a little and I can tell she's trying to figure it out, but... I have a feeling trying to split twenty eight three ways with one side receiving half, minus four, and the other two parties receiving one fourth... may be too much for her...

"We each get eight, the orphanage gets twelve," I tell her.

"O-ok..." she says quietly as we split the pile, wrapping each of the shares up separately. Then we get going, walking quickly on our way back. "Hey Aria... Can you teach me math sometime?" she eventually asks.

I just nod and say, "Sure!" Teaching Emily math would probably be really interesting. And we keep walking. We'll go home, drop our stuff, dinner, I washed my underwear yesterday so that's fine... Wait. Didn't we decide I'd buy more once we made more money? I have a lot more money now. Underwear costs seven hundred barr, and Emily said I should have enough for a week. That's five pairs if I need to wear one when I wash the others. Meaning three more, which will cost two hundred ten barr. I have ten coppers and five nuvrites, easily enough to cover the costs. Besides that, I need to start buying any supplies I might need for the battle. Anything that might help me. Part of me feels like I'm getting all of my different needs and priorities jumbled together. I mean, underwear alongside combat preparations? But it doesn't really matter. I need all of these things, and it always feels like I'm running out of time.

In any case, I mention that I need to buy stuff, and Emily nods. "We can go shopping tomorrow morning, since that's when things are least busy."

"Yeah, makes sense." We catch about half of our hobins on any given day within the last few bells. Hardly any are around in the morning since we arrive too late, after they've finished up their early dawn search. So we may as well use that time for the shopping we need to do. I start to put together a shopping list as we walk.

However... Carrying hobins through town makes me really worried. My attention keeps slipping back to our surroundings. All the people, their appearances increasingly poorer the further north we travel, eying our very, very valuable catch as we walk past.

It strikes me especially strongly after yesterday. Those kids tried to steal our hunting method. What if other people try to steal the hobins? I point this out to Emily, and she just laughs. "It took you that long to think of that? That's always been the most dangerous part of this." She glances around, then whispers, "Actually, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened yet..."

As if on cue, I spot a person standing in a side street up ahead. The way he's looking at us, it's not like everyone else. Somehow, it feels like talking about it made it happen. Well, at least I realized it was a possibility before it actually happened.

I pull on Emily's hand, redirecting us into an alleyway leading into the Northeast district. "Aria?" Emily asks as we leave the main street.

"Sorry, someone was going to steal them."

"Oh come on, you're overreacting," she giggles.

"Maybe," I shrug. I know, it's probably my imagination. I've been way too stressed out lately. "But just in case, let's go this way today."

"Sure, we have time," she shrugs. "But umm, what is 'this way' exactly?"

"We'll just head north in this district. There are a lot less people here than on the main roads, you know?"

"Sure, as long as you know the way." I nod and we start walking. It's not too hard, there are lots of streets and alleys that head north along the main road, cutting between the tightly packed, increasingly run down buildings. I know most of the area pretty well. We don't even need to move more than a few blocks in as we make our way through. It's definitely a bit more time consuming than just going straight up the main street, but the lack of staring eyes feels like it's taking a huge weight off of my shoulders.

Once we're all the way in the north end of town, I cut back over to North Main Street, going the single block over to the orphanage. "Wow, you got us here really fast," Emily comments, surprised. It's probably halfway to the eleventh bell, so I only added maybe a quarter of a bell to our travel time. It's really hard to judge though.

We head in, settling into our usual nighttime routine. We pay Mister Fredricson, salt one of the hobins, drop all of our stuff, Emily takes out my braids, we eat, and so on. It all passes pretty quickly and before I know it, we're in bed for the night.

Tonight, Emily tells me another bed time story. It's very different from the others, not being a rhyming story this time. It's about a man named Martin. He has a woman he wants to marry, but she sends him to get her a singing lizard. When he brings it back, the woman's father tells him to get a vixen pelt. He uses the singing lizard as a distraction to kill the vixen and get its pelt, but loses the singing lizard, which makes the woman angry when he returns, so she sends him to collect bees instead. He takes the vixen pelt and covers it in honey to attract bees, and when he returns again, both the woman and her father are happy because he got the bees, and the vixen pelt turned bright gold from the honey. The father gives his permission, and Martin marries the woman.

"Uhh..." I mutter. It takes a while to clarify what all those... things are. Singing lizards, vixens, and bees... Different animals, apparently. But... what was the point? The other stories all had some sort of lesson, what am I actually supposed to learn from this one? When I ask Emily about it, she shrugs a little and says that some of the stories are kind of weird like that. Well, I guess I did learn the names of a few more animals, so that counts for something...

After the story, we lie down, and I let my mind settle, thinking back briefly on the day. I'm glad I made so much money, I'll be able to afford a number of supplies tomorrow. I still need to work on my shopping list though... But even as I try to consider it, I'm getting very tired, and begin to drift off. I don't feel as terrible as last night, so I don't sleep as badly. Just my usual nightmares, but I'll survive.