“Have you ever flown before?” Eliza asked.

“No, never. Why?" Zoe asked.

“Well, I was thinking we’d fly back to Flester if you’re not opposed to the idea.” Eliza smiled at her.

“Is it… safe?” Zoe asked.

“Of course! I just killed you like ten times over and you ask if flying back to town is safe.” Eliza laughed.

Zoe laughed with her. “That’s different, I’ve gotten resistances before. Flying’s totally new to me.”

“Yes, yes, it’s totally safe. You okay with flying?" Eliza asked.

“Sure, lets go fly back to town then.” Zoe said.

Eliza muttered another incantation and a platform of earth rose up from the ground in front of them. Eliza hopped on and held out her hand to help Zoe up.

Zoe grabbed it and pulled herself onto the rocky platform. Eliza muttered some more words and the platform lifted off the ground. It kept rising until they were almost a hundred feet off the ground. Zoe never had problems with heights before, but something about the somewhat unstable, small platform of rock that shot through the air made her feel a deep respect for it.

“Hold on,” Eliza said and held out her arm. Zoe grabbed onto it and squeezed like her life depended on it.

The platform rocketed forwards towards the city Zoe could just see off in the distance. Ten minutes later the platform descended just outside the eastern gate of Flester. Zoe’s hair was a mess and she staggered her way off the platform.

Eliza laughed. “It’s a lot more fun when you’re the one controlling it. Anyway, it was really nice meeting you Zoe. Don’t forget to send me a message when you end up picking your class!”

“Yeah, right. You too. Sure.” Zoe said as she tried staggered to and fro in front of the gate, trying to get her senses about her again.

Eliza laughed some more. “See you around, Zoe.” Then she took off down the street.

Zoe leaned against the gate for a few minutes as she let herself calm down. That was not at all how she expected flying to be. She thought there would be a nice comfortable windshield, some kind of locking mechanism to keep her attached to the platform.

But there was none of that. She was just standing on a small stone platform, holding on to Eliza as the wind buffeted her face. Eliza giving her wind resistance earlier wasn’t even necessary if this was how she’d end up being taken home, Zoe thought.

She shook her head and brought up her resistances to check the progress she made.

Resistances:

- Mental (7)

- Poison (14)

­- Pain (5)

- Heat (1)

- Fire (1)

- Cold (5)

­- Disintegration (2)

- Time (3)

- Space (1)

- Water (1)

- Earth (1)

- Gravity (1)

- Ice (1)

- Wind (1)

- Lightning (1)

Time had gotten all the way to level three which surprised Zoe a little. Although it made sense if it was the only thing that Eliza didn’t tone down, too.

She made her way back in to town while feeling a little excited. There was only one skill left and a couple easy feats to get before she could finally pick a class. She summoned a small ball of ice to her hand and let it float around her. If this was what just a simple skill could do, she couldn’t wait to see what a whole class could do for her.

Zoe made her way back to Joe’s inn and grabbed her big bag of belongings. She chatted with Joe for a minute, talking about the experience that she just had. Joe laughed when she told him about the flight back, and then Zoe headed outside again.

She had just over forty three silver left. Over the past few months of living in Flester, she found that while she could get by on one silver every five days she usually ended up spending one silver every three to four days on trying new restaurants or buying food for friends every so often.

Ten silver every month, she realized. With her goal of classing up next winter, she needed close to sixteen months of funds remaining.

Her first step, she decided, would be to head back to the library and see if she could find some information about when the fiscal year began. She had a suspicion that for Flester, it began on the first day of summer. Which would be fantastic for her since it would make tracking her income for the next year much easier.

She made her way to Kaira park and walked into the nearest tree and onto one of the floating platforms. She thought about the Flester’s tax system and started walking forward. The platform lead her on a winding path through the bookshelves and roots into another tree and then mounted on a bookshelf near the bottom of whichever tree she ended up in.

With her failure of Spring’s Master still fresh in the back of her mind, she browsed through the books as quick as she could, looking for something definitive. She could just go ask the people at the city hall but she enjoyed the serenity of the library. Or she could have just asked Joe, she realized. That would have been much easier, but maybe he had a point when he talked about a reason for getting out making the process more pleasant.

The second book she checked had the information she wanted, and just as she suspected the fiscal year did begin on the first day of summer. Which meant that for this year, she had a clean slate. If she focused on charging mana orbs non stop for Ren and got twenty five filled up for him, then she could have five gold saved up in no time at all.

She made her way out of the library and back to her favourite bench to start charging her orb. She got a replacement the last time she sold an orb to Ren but hadn’t bothered to fill it at all since. She paid off her school and had enough money to last for several months. The meditation training was nice, but she was somewhat worried that she would approach the first tax bracket at the time.

The rest of summer flew by as she filled orb after orb and sold them to Ren. She had expected to be still charging orbs into autumn, but a week before the end of summer she was already filling the last mana orb for her budget. Just over four gold coins clattered around in her bag, and she smiled.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Even the first orb she filled this summer only took just under two days. But as she continued training her meditation it only sped up. By the end, she could almost do forty thousand mana in a single day. She knew her meditation had levelled up a lot while she was at the school, but it never felt like it was that significant because of how little time she was even able to spend charging the orbs.

But when she could just sit down and spend days on end dumping all of the mana she had into an orb? It felt like printing money.

Emma came by a few times to visit Zoe in the park. Her job was going great and she was already shopping around for a house. Lynn showed up a few times, though not as often as she did in the winter. They chatted on occasion, but Lynn mostly kept to herself and watched the birds.

Hector hadn’t made it through the attack on Flester, apparently. Lynn said that she was okay, that he was old and ready to go anyway. But Zoe could feel the loneliness and sadness that overwhelmed her even without Vampyric Empathy.

She wasn’t sure what she could do for Lynn. Or if she should even do anything. Zoe liked Lynn for the most part, and they got along well enough when they chatted. But did that mean Zoe could invade her life and try to make everything better? That didn’t feel right.

So Zoe chatted with her whenever she saw some cool looking birds and otherwise let her live her life. It was the first time she’d seen the impact of the attack so clearly. For most of the town it was such a distant thing by now. Everybody lived their lives and even laughed about the terrible timing.

And for others, it seemed their lives had been upturned. She didn’t know how to feel about that, about how suddenly people’s entire lives could just be ripped apart by a random attack. If she wanted to be magical, then it made sense that other things would also be magical.

She just hadn’t realized what that meant exactly yet.

Zoe spent the last week of summer wandering around town with Emma and an agent she hired, looking at houses for sale. Most of the ones they looked at had small buildings paired with rather large yards. Emma made it clear to the agent that she wanted to be able to spend as much time outdoors as possible and it seemed there were many places that were perfect for that.

On the second last day of summer, Emma found the house she wanted. It was a three story tall, somewhat thin cylindrical tower made of some black stone set in the centre of a large yard. Dark wooden fences surrounded the yard with a white gate on the entrance.

A gray stone pathway lead up to the front door. Inside, the ground floor was a comfortable lobby. A couple white leather chairs and a rack for hanging coats or hats. A thin staircase spiraled along the wall of the tower, both upwards and downwards.

In the basement was a small bedroom with a comfortable looking bed with white sheets. Upstairs on the first floor was the bathroom. A toilet in the corner with a white marble sink, and a large tub in the centre of the floor made of marble with dark wooden detailing.

And finally on the top floor was the kitchen. Not where Zoe would have put the kitchen, or the bathroom for that matter. But Emma seemed to love it. The entire wall at the top was windowed, providing a view of the yard that surrounded the tower and even some of the other buildings that she would call her neighbours.

“I love it!” Emma said.

“This one is listed for one hundred twenty gold and they note that they are not willing to negotiate.” The agent told her.

“If I put fifty gold down, what would my loan payments look like?” Emma asked.

“One gold per month with a seven year amortization period.” The agent said.

“Okay, lets do that, then.” Emma summoned a gold square and handed it to the agent.

“Pleasure doing business, miss.” The agent took Emma’s coins and handed her a red crystal then bowed and left.

“I have my own house now!” Emma jumped around her kitchen.

“I would have thought there would be more paperwork to do when you decide on a house.” Zoe said.

Emma shook her head. “The paperwork came before we even started looking. It’s real simple. I own a house Zoe! Eeeee!” She squealed.

“Now you just need to go get your cat, huh?” Zoe asked.

“Oh! Yeah! I’m gonna go do that right now. You wanna come?" Emma asked.

“Sure,” Zoe said.

Emma lead her back downstairs and locked the door behind her as they left, giggling the whole time. Then she walked down the street towards a large single storied building about fifteen minutes away. Zoe had walked past it a few times, but never knew what it was.

“Adopt, don’t shop!” Emma said as they walked in to what Zoe now recognized as an animal shelter.

There were five people walking around in the main foyer carrying bags of dirt or food from one place to another and two people sitting behind a large counter.

Emma walked up to the counter. “Hi, I wanna adopt a cat please.” She smiled.

The woman behind the counter looked up and handed Emma a piece of paper along with a quill. “I just need you to fill out this form and then we can let you take a look at the cats we have now.”

Emma looked over the form, it asked questions about her income and whether she had the space to support a cat and a bunch of other questions to make sure she would be a responsible owner. The woman looked over it when Emma handed it back and then stood up and lead Emma and Zoe into a locked room near the back of the building.

“If you decide to adopt one, just let one of the workers know and we’ll get you sorted out.” The woman said and then walked back to the counter.

Inside were dozens of cats. Some were walking around on the floor while others were resting in locked kennels that lined the walls. A couple of workers walked around with food and water, filling up all the dishes in the kennels.

Emma walked around looking at the cats, petting most of the ones she passed. And then she stopped and stared at one of the cats in a kennel.

His name was Oliver, and he was a sad looking cat laying in the back of the cage mewing. He had gray fur with white booties and dull green eyes that reminded Zoe of a mossy stone left in the sun. Emma pointed at the name-plate. “See! I told you Oliver was a good name for a cat!”

Zoe rolled her eyes.

“This is the one. This is my cat. Aren’t you little ollie bollie.” She wiggled her finger through the cage. Oliver nuzzled up to her finger and meowed.

“Excuse me?” Emma called out to one of the workers. “I wanna adopt this kitty.” She pointed at Oliver.

“Sure thing. I’ll bring him out then, you can go head up to the counter and get started with them.” The worker pulled off the name plate and handed it to Emma.

She practically skipped back down the hallway to the counter and handed the nameplate to the woman who helped them. “I’m adopting this one!”

The woman smiled and helped her through the process. There was a bunch more paperwork to sign and a laundry list of things to remember. The worker brought out Oliver shortly after and he walked back and forth sniffing everything.

Zoe started to feel a little uncomfortable with how long she was spending inside so she gave Emma a hug and said goodbye to Oliver then left to go find something to do outside instead. She still needed to figure out what her last skill would be before next winter.