"Are you guys sure about that?" I ask as we cross the threshold of the System Shop. "It could be a little risky with just three of you."

It's been two weeks since Lucas, Wyatt, and I left the Dungeon and then met the twins here at the shop. Not a whole lot of note has happened in that time, though we've kept ourselves busy.

While I haven't built a more long-term house for anyone yet, we've done a fair bit of work in preparation for it, both on my original property and my expanded one. Working on that has been the bulk of what we've done, with some hunting to take care of monsters and stuff as well as to gather more supplies.

All of that preparation is finished as of yesterday, so the plan was to start working on the first house today. Since I took two weeks to prepare for it, that also allowed Chance and me to look through guides on enchanting, alchemy, and construction, as well as to do some experiments and tests.

What I was told just now shifts a few things regarding the construction plan and was a pretty big surprise. Lucas, Wyatt, and Collin want to run the [Ezrelnim Island Grove] Dungeon again, but as a group of just the three of them. When Lucas and Wyatt went in with me, my presence affected the run as a whole and made it easier. Both they and Collin want to give it a try without someone whose presence deters monsters, and they also want to go for more Levels while they're at it.

They also want to go in today, after we do our morning visit to the System Shop.

I'm pretty sure I know why they want to go in, and it has nothing to do with my solo run into it a week ago nor the one a few days ago. The main focus of those runs were to grab more mana crystals, slime goo, and slime cores. They were both fast runs since I already knew the path to take and nothing attacked me until I reached my destination.

Quite the boring runs, those. Weren't really noteworthy at all other than that it earned me more materials.

"We're sure," Collin tells me. "It'll be risky but we'll use some healing potions inside to recover from the damage out here, and some aura potions to recover our Aura. We'll take it slow and cautious and make sure we're fully-rested before going to the next island."

"If you guys are sure," I say. "I'll give Lucas my ring. As the healer, he should be the one to have the potion stock."

My ring only has a cubic space that's five feet on each side right now, and that space is affected by the Tier of the wearer's [Dungeon Pioneer] Perk. It won't hold as much as it used to but as long as it's Lucas or Wyatt wearing it, they can at least bring out some extra loot.

"No," Collin shakes his head. "We already talked about it. The shop here has packs that should be suitable for taking in loot. We'll bring in our own potions and stuff. Stocked up like a normal group might, not one with your advantages."

"And we'll be taking in ones I made," Lucas adds.

Over the last two weeks, Lucas and I have done some experimenting with alchemy and figured out how to make some decent recovery potions. They're fairly basic to make and so didn't really take all that much work.

"Alright," I say. "Make sure you guys are safe in there."

"We will," the three of them say.

We handle our business here at the shop and stick around for a few minutes, just in case Fea arrives. He doesn't, so we make our way back to my property. The area looks a lot different now for various reasons, including our efforts, the continued growth of plants from the magical energy in the soil, and the erosion of materials from the old world.

While my lot mostly looks the same apart as it did after the first Dungeon run, there's no trace of the materials of the old world left apart from disturbances in the soil. True to the golem's estimates, it only took eleven days in total for it all to be destroyed by the ambient Mana.

That affected even the stuff underground, which caused some drops in the soil. I used [Earth Mastery] to fill in those holes so that we aren't tripping around anywhere important, including the path to and from the System Shop. I also did so on all of the former properties that we're no using, which are all now my property.

We needed the space.

In the spots where I added soil created using [Earth Mastery], grass and some other plants have grown and spread, completely erasing all traces of the filling. More grew and spread through the areas where structures used to be as well, though in the pits formed but not filled in.

I created a basic stone building for us to stay in where my house used to stand, then rebuilt the temporary storage shelter to where the house that Logan and Greta used to live was. The wood harvested from the Dungeon is on the other side of my yard space from there, and we moved the beast-processing station to beyond where the fence behind my lot once was. In general, we just expanded our range of living and storage.

It's given us plenty more space to use and it's not as if there are others around to contest it.

"Let me make some more potions before you three head out," I tell the guys. "Just a few extra, just in case. You guys need to finish assembling your packs and deciding what goes into them, anyway, and we all still need to eat breakfast."

The trio agrees to it so I set up a fire in the second fire pit. When we determined that the retaining wall blocks making up the first one were being affected by the ambient Mana, we removed them and I conjured two separate rings of stones with my earth magics. One of them is for making food, which Lucas gets to work on doing, and the other is for alchemy.

The main potion that I can make right now is a healing potion, so I work on preparing a double batch of those. Gathering ingredients and the dishes I need to for the project only takes me about ten minutes, and once finished with that, I begin the brewing process.

First, I measure out two cups of holy slime, then grind up enough holy maginiite to produce two teaspoons of powder. Those are stirred together until mixed evenly in a glass bowl, then I chop up three one-inch heartberries, which come from a strawberry plant which changed during the Mana Flood. They're bright red and shaped like hearts now, the stems connecting in the dip at their tops.

The chopped heartberries are mashed with a mortar and pestle, then scraped into a glass bowl. I conjure water to rinse the mortar and pestle, then quickly dry it before chopping up ten leaves of regenileaf, which came from a basil plant that changed during the Mana Flood. Now, its leaves are heart-shaped and connect to the steam at the dip in the top, their veins crimson in color.

With the leaves chopped, I grind them in the mortar and pestle. Those are set aside and I evenly split the slime into three bowls. The heartberry mash is mixed into one and the ground regenileaf is mixed into another. They won't dissolve into the slime but we learned that it helps to let the slime absorb them a little.

Once those are both evenly stirred, I conjure water using [Water Mastery], measuring out eight cups of it to pour into a cooking pot.

Before putting the water onto the fire I've prepared, I add the third portion of holy slime-maginiite mixture to it and stir a little. It doesn't dissolve into the water from that, but that's not an issue. I put the pot onto the fire and stir the water-goo mixture. As it heats up, the slime begins to dissolve into the water.

I continue stirring slowly until the goo mixture has fully dissolved into the water, then I scrape in the herb-goo mixture and slowly stir until fully dissolved. This is repeated with the berry-goo mixture, then I adjust the wood in the pit (using a touch of [Air Mastery] since the grate's in the way) to increase the heat.

Every few minutes until it reaches a rolling boil, I stir the mixture a little bit. I then leave it at a the rolling boil for five minutes without any stirring. After waiting out the time, I decrease the heat and wait some more. It takes some time but the potion just needs to sit on the fire for the final stages.

When it's ready, the liquid begins to glow crimson, which indicates it's ready. I pull the pot off of the flame and set it to the side. The liquid continues to glow for a few minutes and once it stops, I'm left with roughly eight cups of clear, crimson-tinted liquid in the pot. There's some degree of reduction in volume during the alchemy process, though a full batch still yields around four cups of potion and it's got the texture and consistency of milk so it's not unpleasant to drink. With the berries adding a pleasant flavor, it's actually tempting to just drink this in place of water or whatever.

That would be a waste of resources and healing potion and we've actually talked about possibly trying to find a way to make it not taste as good.

I give the liquid an inspection to make sure I succeeded.

[Crude Healing Potion] A crude healing potion, which provides a minor regeneration effect to the body of the one who consumes it. Dose: 0.25 ounces

It's no [Basic Healing Potion], but it's good enough. The effect of these is about half of the effect of the [Basic Healing Potion]s we receive from Quests and the System Shop so they'll go through it faster, but it seems like they'd prefer this over the others. I'm sure part of the reason for the run is to earn Lucas more [Holy Mage] Levels, too, so they may not even go through this double batch.

Them already having potions Lucas made at some point probably won't hurt, either, though I do suspect they'll try to minimize even the use of those. It's still better to have more potions than needed rather than not enough.

Thanks to the cooler air, the potion cools fairly quickly and I'm able to separate it into eight separate potion bottles before Lucas is done with breakfast.

"Thanks," Collin says as I bring over the potions. "Shame we can't make ones for Aura or Mana yet."

Slime goo isn't crucial for the potions but it's a key ingredient we don't have a substitute for. That makes it impossible to make the other potions, even if we can make what's just juice or tea for them with ingredients in my yard.

"Makes it less like a normal party, yeah," I say. "You guys are taking in those though, right?"

"We are," he confirms. "Also a batch of potions that Lucas made yesterday. Triple batch rather than the double you did, but better to go in prepared than not. We're also taking some of the potions that you guys got from the Dungeon's chests, if you're cool with that."

"I am," I tell him. "Lucas, Wyatt, and I split most of the rewards from the Dungeon between us, including those. Looks like breakfast is done, too."

Collin splits the bottles into the packs, putting two each in his and Wyatt's and the remaining four in Lucas's. We join the others at the table for breakfast after that, Lucas and Chance putting out the food as we reach it.

The table was built using some of the wood that I took from the Dungeon. Chance put it together after I used [Air Mastery] to cut the wood to the lengths he wanted, and it's made entirely out of wood as we didn't have screws or nails. While we could have bought metal from the System Shop and then used magic to smith them, none of us wanted to go through the effort of learning the required techniques for that. Not right now.

The top of the table is made up of five boards that are each six inches in width, an inch and half in thickness, and six feet in length. Those are held together by two boards underneath going along the width, with wooden plugs used to fasten them together. An A-frame was used for the legs, and we gave the table attached benches since it was easier than making five separate seats. Wooden plugs and pegs were used for attaching everything together and a special alchemy brew was infused into the wood to strengthen and waterproof it.

Collin and Chance sit on one side of the table while I take my seat on the other, with Wyatt to my right. Lucas sits to my left once everything is out on the table, then everyone begins serving themselves. This has become our usual seating arrangement when we're all at the table, with Lucas and Wyatt sitting a bit closer to me than the twins are to each other.

Our breakfast today consists of biscuits with sausage gravy as the main dish, and bacon, eggs, and a fruit mixture using fruits from my gardens for the sides. Since it's still cold out, we all drink hot chocolate to wash it all down.

"Everyone ready to go?" I ask after Wyatt and I wash and dry the dishes.

"Yeah," Collin answers. "Why did you want us to bring a wagon, though? Wouldn't it be risky to take it onto the bridges?"

"It's not for you guys," I inform him. "Going to get some more water slime while we're at the portal. It'll be useful for the house. Hence the jars on it.

"Ah."

"If everyone's ready," I say. "Let's get going."

We make our way to the sports park, though the trip is different from the one Lucas and I made a week ago. Without any of the old structures around anymore, the path is a little bit easier to walk thanks to being less obstructed. I did fill in the ground on my previous trips to the portal. At least, as much as was necessary to ensure stable footing.

"Collin," I say. "When you asked the golem, it said you can bring your familiars in and they won't count toward the capacity, right?"

In the last two weeks, Collin's tamed only one monster, a magihawk that's currently flying around overhead. Coyon is walking beside us, keeping an eye out for monsters lower down which might threaten us.

Bringing his familiars up in strength is probably another reason Collin wants to go into the Dungeon. They're the main way he gains Class Levels and they also help patrol around my property to help keep it safe for us.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Right," he says. "I can bring in one familiar per Level of [Taming] and one familiar per Dungeon Rank, starting at one at Rank 0. So I can start off bringing in two, though since I brought [Taming] up to Level 2, I can bring in three."

"Okay," I pull off my backpack and hoodie and hand them to Lucas. "What about a water slime? They can cast multiple spells at once and are decently strong. Might be too strong, but it'll also let you complete your Quest from a god. I'm pretty sure they have at least 500 Mana."

Collin thinks about that for a few moments, then nods.

"Know if you can hold it in one spot?" He asks. "I do need almost thirty seconds to cast the spell itself.There's not much room for the target to move around and stay within the spell circle. Even once the spell is cast, there's still some time needed between the completion and the taming."

"That shouldn't be too hard," I tell him as Lucas starts backing away. "Everyone should follow Lucas's lead and back up."

"Why?" Wyatt asks. "They can shoot multiple attacks at once, but that's not too dangerous."

"You're going to see," I tell him as I begin casting [Air Bullet]. "It's something they do once their core is damaged if they aren't killed. Back it up, one's on its way over."

Everyone starts backing up and Lucas makes them all back up rather far. It'll be easier for them to dodge the wild shots at that distance and with a fighter and two familiars there, whatever random beasts pop out at them should be taken care of fairly quickly.

The grass here is around two feet in height now so some monsters will have an easier time sneaking up on people, but slimes are bigger than that and even if they weren't, they flatten it as they travel. That makes it easy to see the one that's decided to come toward us.

I wait until it's in range, then I shoot off my [Air Bullet]. The near-invisible spell shoots forward at a high speed, piercing straight through the slime's membrane and slamming into the side of the monster's core. To only my slight surprise, the [Air Bullet] doesn't leave the slime.

Since I expected the creature to be somewhere in the equivalent of Status Level 1, I was sure that its membrane would be tough enough to eliminate some of the force from the attack and the core would eliminate more. What I wasn't expecting was for my attack to stop after hitting the core, the [Air Bullet] undoing and becoming just a pocket of air within the creature right there. I'd expected it to at least hit the membrane on the other side before stopping.

With me being a significantly amount of Magic stronger than I was a week ago, these things are too tough to be the same strength as before. They're growing stronger as well and that's a little concerning.

Fortunately, that's not a problem for me right now as my goal has been achieved, so I can worry about it some other day.

Having suffered damage to its core, the slime floats up into the air, becoming perfectly spherical as its membrane hardens. The creature starts spinning rapidly as it begins shooting off Level 7 [Water Bullet]s.

I push both hands together and begin casting another spell, this one with a twenty-inch spell circle of bluish-white light. The spell takes me thirteen and a half seconds to cast and once it does, a transparent barrier of bluish-white force forms in front of me in the form of a hexagon, twenty-and-a-quarter inches along each edge. It's big enough to shield my face and upper torso and that's what's important here.

The casting time resulted in me taking a few hits, but nothing too severe. It's part of why I took off my hoodie, though that was also because I knew I wouldn't be able to cover my face and full torso with it.

One of the slime's attacks strikes the barrier almost immediately after it's conjured and cracks the shield a little, but the barrier repairs over a couple of seconds with a small drain on my Mana.

"Collin!" I call to my brother. "Get behind me and push me forward until we're close enough!"

Collin comes up behind me and nudges me forward until we're about fifteen feet from the slime, then he steps back and begins casting his spell. I can't see what he's doing but I know what the spell circle looks like thanks to having seen him use it on the magihawk. The portion which forms first is nine inches in diameter and made of bluish-white light, floating in front of his hands.

Nearly thirty seconds pass before the spell circle is complete, then a seven-foot-wide version of it forms underneath the floating slimes. All through this, [Water Bullet]s shoot past us, into my lower body, into my barrier, into the ground, and just everywhere. These pants are apparently a bust now but that's fine. I wasn't wearing a shirt and took off the hoodie so at least that's safe.

Five seconds pass. Then ten. Then fifteen. Twenty. At twenty-two seconds, the spell circle on the ground underneath the slime flares up and the slime begins to glow bluish-green. Three seconds pass, then the spell circle vanishes.

"Stop!" Collin commands in a clear voice.

All spell circles cast by the water slime continue forming and shoot off their spells, but no new ones form. The slime's spinning starts to slow down, stopping after about ten seconds. Though it's stopped its attack and rotations, the slime simply floats in the air while still in its sphere form, the shell still formed.

I cancel my [Force Barrier] spell, grateful that Collin showed it to me so I could learn it. The slime really could have hurt me if I hadn't cast it, but that thing is expensive as fuck to cast and repair. I probably could have held it for onlyfifteen or twentymore seconds before running out of Mana.

"So… is it stuck in that form?" I ask while beckoning for Lucas to come over. "Since I damaged its core? It's not shifting back."

"I don't think so," Collin says as he steps around me. "I can get vague messages from them and he seems to be saying something about… water magic. Healing? Oh! He doesn't want to come out of that form until he can heal his core. Um… hold on."

As Collin tries to work through what his new familiar is saying, I pull a bottle of [Basic Mana Recovery Potion] out of my backpack and down enough of it to recover nearly to full. My brother still hasn't seemed to figure out what his slime needs to heal as it's rejecting his offer of a healing potion or mana potion, but I have an idea.

"Stay here," I tell Lucas, then walk toward the pond.

The water's edge is closer to the walking path now, only ten feet away from it. It seems that just like the plants, the ponds are still growing. I'm not sure how that's working since it needs to erode the edges away yet the pond isn't getting shallower as one would expect from more soil entering it. That said, the grove seems to be untouched so there's definitely some sort of hand behind this. The gods, maybe?

Once I near another slime, I send an [Air Bullet] straight at its core. With a more direct hit than the one I did to the slime Collin tamed, I was expecting to kill it. Instead, I apparently only damage it enough to send it into its defensive mode, so I switch to using [Air Blast]s. Four of those are required to break a big enough hole in its shell for me to accurately shoot through, resulting in me taking a few more hits to my body.

That hurts like hell, another sign that these things have gotten stronger since I faced one last week. I really doubt I took on the only weak one from the group and these are doing as much damage to me as that one did.

However, since I'm stronger in terms of magic now as well, I don't need as many hits to take them down. I do, however, realize that while only the insides of the monster were spinning last time, the outer shells are now as well. The outer shells are now as well. That's why I need a bigger hole this time – to ensure I can get an [Air Bullet] inside as the shell spins around.

Once I have a big enough hole for that, I shoot its core twice more with [Air Bullet]s, killing the beast.

Ignoring its oozing remains, I take on and kill a second and then a third slime. With all three of them dead, I retrieve their cores and break them open using conjured compressed air, then pull out the quarter-inch water maginiite inside of them.

"-I'm sorry," Collin says to his new familiar as I return to the group. "This isn't the best. Um… can you show me what you mean? Like, make water outside to communicate? Wait, no, you don't know how to spell. Maybe you can try imitating it with-"

"Collin," I say.

"He's saying something about healing and water magic," Collin says. "But I have no idea what it means."

"Maybe he wants these?" I offer him my new loot.

"Did you just… ask me if he wants to commit cannibalism?"

"Water maginiite is water maginiite regardless of its source," I say. "I wouldn't count it as cannibalism. It's not as if he'd be eating their goo or core. Think about it – he's wanting water magic for healing and these are crystals imbued with the essence of it. Maybe that's what he's wanting? I could be wrong but it's the only thing I can think of."

Collin gives me a suspicious look, then accepts the crystals and offers them to his slime.

"What about these?" He asks.

A small hole appears in the slime's shell, as clear an indicator as any. Collin pushes one of the crystals into the hole, then the second crystal, then the third. Once all three are inside, the slime seals the hole back up with more hardened slime. We can barely see the crystals through the shell but it looks like they're being rapidly dissolved.

"Looks like that's it," Collin says. "Um… Carter?"

"Yeah?"

"I think he's saying he needs more to heal his core," Collin tells me. "And I think he's saying he can't move from this spot while in that form. And that he can't leave it until his core has fully healed."

"How many more?"

"Six or seven."

I decide to go for ten more, with Lucas and Chance collecting the goo and cores from the ones I take down so that it's not wasted. The plan was already to gather some, anyway, so this just saves us time.

Once Slushy (that's the name Collin gives his slime) is fed all of the water crystals I gathered, it takes about half an hour for him to heal up. He unhardens his shell, restoring it to just a membrane. That seems to send him back down to the ground and one he lands with a squelch, Slushy makes himself a pair of arms and performs an "I'm strong" movement with them, fists clenched and everything.

"That's cute," I say.

"Very," Collin agrees. "Now that Slushy's healed up, we should be going. For a Party-"

"Join mine," I send him an invite.

"Why?" He asks.

"You guys should be able to handle it on your own," I say. "But if you get stuck for some reason and can't continue, I can enter if I'm in the same Party as you."

"How would we let you know, though?" Wyatt asks. "We can't leave until the boss is beaten, right?"

"Time," Collin realizes. "If we aren't out in four days, come in after us. We'll hunker down if we need rescuing but hopefully, we'll handle it."

"I'm sure you will," I say. "It's just better to be safe than sorry when considering that the only Status Level 1 person between the three of you is the healer."

Granted, Lucas does know [Air Bullet], but he's not a fighter.

"Also," I add. "I'll be able to see your Aura and Mana if you're in the same Party as me. If there's an extended period where you guys aren't taking any damage to your Aura or where it's minimal, and the same goes for your Mana, then I'll take that as a sign that you're stuck."

Hopefully, things don't come to that and they can handle it despite being an undersized team.

"Fair enough," Collin accepts the invite. "Alright! See you guys after we get out!"

Lucas, Wyatt, and Collin make their way over to the Dungeon Gate, Collin's familiars following after them. Of them, only Slushy does anything before entering, and that's to make himself an arm and wave to use before rolling through the portal.

Once the group has entered the Dungeon, I look at Chance.

"Do you think Fea is going to wait until we're back at the house to join us or come back down if we wait long enough?"

"Fea?" Chance asks.

"I'm not sure what he's doing," I point to the sky. "But he's been flying in circles for about ten minutes now."

Chance looks up and spots Fea flying around up there. At least, I'm fairly certain it's Fea since it's a magihawk with a leather harness. Neither of us can figure out what he's doing, so we start walking back home and it's not until we arrive that Fea decides to land, resting on a stand Chance made for him a week ago.

"Hey, Fea," I give the magihawk a light scratch on the head. "Why were you flying around like that?"

Fea just tilts his head to the side a little, not giving an answer in any form that I can understand. He does let me pull out the letters so I do, putting to the side the ones for those who left and handing Chance his before opening mine from Grandma.

Carter,

Fea has been acting weird since returning from visiting you two nights ago. Don't mind him if he does something weird. It's not the distance he has to fly, either. He's perfectly okay with that and can manage it just fine. I'm not sure what's going on.

Our two days of rest have ended, so we're going to be heading off again. The kids really needed that, but so did the adults. The magic-blooded ones especially. More and more conflicts are arising between the normies, especially with our numbers growing again now that we're in an area with somewhat lower levels of ambient Mana.

Our scouts found almost a hundred people while we were resting yesterday, most of whom decided to join us. Our numbers have grown to over five hundred.lIf all goes well, we'll arrive in a good spot for setting up a new home in the next two weeks or so. If our numbers continue growing, however, travel will continue to take longer.

How are things going there? You said you're planning on building a proper house today? Best of luck with that. I'd prefer to simply conjure one every time we stop for the night, but that would cause problems with the normies. Starting to consider doing it, anyway. I'm the one leading this thing, I deserve something nice.

Regarding your question: yes, Fea is able to carry a small amount of weight. As long as it doesn't exceed five pounds and can fit into the tube, he should be fine.

I know you are probably burning your parents' letters to you, but do you know why the twins aren't responding? The twins aren't happy with them over what happened but they didn't cut off contact like you did and haven't mentioned anything to me.

Lots of love,

Grandma

Her letters and ones from others (mainly Dakota and Tessa) have revealed an ongoing problem with normies, especially as the group gets further away from where the people from another world immigrated to. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but there's a mental difference between most of us who are descended of those from another world and those who are mostly descended of those from this one.

Those who are "magic-blooded", as seems to be the current term for those with more magical lineages, seem to have an easier time adjusting to things and accepting rules and such. Normies, on the other hand, do not.

"Fea?" I look at the magihawk. "Grandma says that the people who conceived me are writing letters to the twins and me, but you don't have any of those when you arrive."

"What?" Chance asks. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," I tell him. "I'd just burn any for me but give you two yours. Grandma wanted to know why you were weren't responding. Fea? Are you dropping letters? Do I need to let Grandma know that the tube isn't fully secure?"

That's a possibility, but it seems odd that the letters from Grandma and Lucas's parents consistently arrive fine. Now I'm wondering if I've missed out on letters from Dakota, Tessa, and others I was friendly with.

Fea puffs up his chest at my question, then turns his head around and shows that he can open up the tube for letters. He pecks his beak into it for a moment, then pulls his head back and shakes it before casting a spell… with a reddish-orange spell circle. Flames blaze out in front of him for a few seconds before fading away. The magihawk puffs his chest out again and looks pretty proud of himself.

"Did… he just say what I think he just said?" Chance asks.

"I think Fea just said that he's removing our parents' letters and is burning them with fire magic," I say. "So if that's what you think he said… probably."

Smart bird. He's apparently even able to tell whose letters are whose and is either only pulling out the ones from our parents or is pulling them all out, then putting the rest back in after finding our parents' and separating them from the rest.

I start writing a response to Grandma.

Grandma,

Yes, we're getting started on the house today. It'll be just me and Chance working on it since Lucas, Wyatt, and Collin decided to try and run the Dungeon on their own. My presence makes it too easy and they want some more Levels.

All of our prep work has finished, so the actual construction should go fine. Though I might have to think of a punishment for those skipping out on the actual construction work.

I still say be selfish and ditch those jerks. It's been a little more than two weeks now, they should have fighters and not need to depend on the magic-blooded. Especially since while you're still in dangerous areas, you're not in an area like here.

Could you let Lucas's parents know that he won't be able to respond until he returns? Thanks. I'm keeping his letters (and the other ones currently undeliverable) safe.

Uh… you'll have to ask Fea. There haven't been ANY letters from them to us when he arrives. We could ask, but none of us understand bird.

Lots of love,

Carter

"What did you tell her?" Chance asks as he looks up from the letter he's writing. "She asked me, too, and I haven't gotten to that part of my response."

"To ask Fea because we haven't gotten any," I say. "And none of us speak bird."

"Oooh, that's a good one," Chance starts writing.

Once my brother finishes his response to Grandma, I put both letters into Fea's case, then the magihawk flies off. I watch until he's gone, then look at Chance.

"That's one smart bird," I say.

"One very smart bird," he agrees.