Jump-touch sat with crossed legs, the fish platter in front of her on the hearthstone, and the embered remains of the fire casting heat against her side.

The fish was strange, cooked in a way she wasn't used to, but the tangy red sauce beneath it was tasty, and she'd also grabbed a dish of green vegetables as she left.

She'd even been pointed to a room on the way where she could toilet and wash, and she felt much happier with a clean face and hands.

"You don't want any?" she asked again.

"I ate while we were sitting vigil for you." An-jel shook her head. "You were in with the Stone so long that we were a bit afraid you might not return."

Jump-touch dipped one of the vegetables in the sauce. "It didn't feel like that long while I was there, but it was nice. It taught me-" she waved a hand, "and gave me a job to do."

An-jel studied her for a while as she ate, maybe she did want some of the vegetables, after all?

"It also gave you something you can give me, that'll show me your class and skills?" She finally asked, and something twinged in the back of her mind as she chewed on the vegetable. Lightly cooked, and possibly the best thing she'd eaten here so far.

"Mm. I don't have to show you all of it, though? The Stone said there was a way to not have to do that."

An-jel looked at her for a long moment, and then shook her head, something in her seeming to deflate. "No, if it gave you a book, which it does to most people, or an animal skin parchment or a wooden tablet, then you can tear out or snap off the bits you don't care for me to see. It won't damage the object. It's a part of you, and it will persist now beyond your death."

Jump-touch chewed on another chunk of vegetable, making a show of rummaging through her pack.

She pretended to pull out the book, waiting for the hit that never came, as she took it out of her Heart. Interesting. Was it only putting stuff in that was tiring? She hadn't taken a hit when retrieving the coin, either.

She waved the little blue book at An-jel and the woman nodded, politely averting her gaze to the half-eaten fish platter instead.

Some careful tearing later- and then some less careful tearing once she had determined that it really didn't harm the book- and she had a cut-down list of what she could do in front of her.

[Jump-touch] || <>

[Level: 1]

[Cultural Background: Kobold]

[Class: Cultural Scholar]

[Skill: Pocket Zone]

An-jel spent a long time looking at the list.

"You tore the rarity off of the class."

"I didn't think it was important," she hedged.

"You were listening on the way back, I should have known. It never leaves... Never-mind. You think I'll be angry because you took something unusual?"

It hadn't occurred to her that the woman might be angry. There must be a reason they didn't want her to take anything unusual, but that was just… Worry for her safety or something, right?

She frowned, trying to work it through. Anger wasn't an emotion she had much experience with. Disappointment when she'd done something harmful or silly, sure. Like the time she'd convinced Feather-paw to try out his wings for the first time, and they'd both ended up stranded three days from home. One of the Guardians had found them both eventually, cold and shivering at the bottom of the ravine, but only after taking time away from her duties to search.

Honey-sweet, her name had been, and Jump-touch had only met them once or twice again in the years since. She was one of the village's smallest Guardians, barely bigger than a hunting cat, but she was their best scout and tracker.

That incident had earned them both the disappointed look from Rat-tail, who had then appointed himself their carer.

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Or when she'd been very young and she'd gotten fed up with her hair, and she'd taken half of it off with an axe. It had taken almost two years to grow back to its previous length. That had earned her the look too.

But as far as she could remember, nobody had ever been angry with her. It wasn't... It wasn't productive. There were conflicts, sure. Somebody had taken something somebody else wanted, a house, a ring. People were more friendly with some than with others. But anger?

You talked about it, worked out how to exist together, and then carried on, there was no shouting or screaming, no throwing things-

A lance of pain through her forehead.

Nobody would have been disappointed in her for taking a job which helped the village, even if it was dangerous, she was an adult now.

"I took the thing that was best for the city," she said finally, "the one I thought was the most useful. It didn't give me very many options."

"Oh? You want to help the city? Why?" There was an edge there, but Jump-touch was too tired and too full of fish to work out what it meant.

"I mean," she paused confused, "that's why I'm here right? Rat-tail-" she refused to translate his name into this stupid human language, "-told me I have to stay here for a year, and do the job the Stone gave me. To be useful and to learn about... People. When the year is up, then I can go home, and I can use what I learnt here to help the village."

She nodded. The fire had died down to dark coals, but she could still feel the warmth of it against her arm, and it was starting to lull her to sleep.

An-jel looked down at her, and then around the room as if searching for something, her hand twitching towards the side table next to her armchair.

Jump-touch took another bite of the fish. There was one piece of green vegetable left, and she was saving it for last.

"Okay. Okay, I get it. You also tore the description off the [Pocket Zone]?"

"The Stone told me it was a normal," she emphasised the word, to stress how normal it was, "variant, which I could store small objects in, and I got it because my people like to collect stuff. Now I can collect lots of small things and still travel about easily, to learn about different, uh, cultures."

She eyed up the last half of the fish. "It makes me tired to send things there, but bringing them out again is okay."

"Are there limits to how much you can store, how much you can take in and out per day?"

She shrugged, "I think it's like a small room's worth?" she wasn't sure why she was lying about this, apart from that the Stone had hinted she should. "I don't think there's an amount of times either, except it makes me tired?"

An-jel leant back in the armchair, eyes looking into the middle distance.

"Okay," she said almost to herself, "we can work with that. An uncommon diplomatic class and a rare and highly useful skill. It can work. You'll get a lot of jobs down at the adventurers guild, even if you're small and not suited for fighting. People would take you along on their runs just so they don't have to carry supplies."

She cast her gaze down on Jump-touch, seeing almost through her. "You being small might be good, actually. Much less of a target."

"What's an adventurers guild?"

An-jel blinked, coming out of her reverie. "Oh. They fight monsters in return for loot, objects, stats and levels. Without them the levels of magic would rise in the area, the forest would be swarmed with monsters, and the Dungeon Beneath would start sending up spires into the world again, as it did in the Before."

Gibberish.

Most of that was Gibberish. Her skill informed her that a dungeon was a place where you kept… People who had tried to take too many trade goods without giving anything in return, until they presumably apologised and gave them back. It was also, it informed her, a place where monsters came from. Why that was the case, it didn't elaborate.

The rest of it flew past her, and An-jel kept talking before she could ask her for more clarity. Spires, the Before, and even Monsters were all meaningless to her.

"After killing monsters you'll gain experience, and when you next visit the Stone, it'll tell you how much experience you've earnt and assign you new levels. New levels mean you improve your stats and your skills or your class. The-" a word she couldn't translate in the limited time available, something like the village leader maybe, "-has decreed that it's only a silver per visit to the Stone, which even a day labourer can earn in a month or so, and improving the classes and skills you already have only costs a small fee on top of that. We're lucky to live here where it's so cheap, it means that almost nobody in the city is without a Class."

That was a lot to take in. She hadn't seen any silver coins changing hands today, they had all been brass and copper, so it was presumably a larger denomination of coin, so you didn't have to haul around so many.

"We'll test your skill out tomorrow," An-jel said, and then she jumped as the paper in her hands began to crumble. Jump-touch started to stand, but she was waved back down with a dismissive gesture, as An-jel sighed and tossed the glittering ashes towards the fire. They were gone before they hit the ground.

"We'll test it out tomorrow, and then we'll go down to the Chapter House and get you scanned. We'll see if you're going to bankrupt me, and then we'll see about getting you some work at the guild."

The warmth of the fire and the food after a long day was making her sleepy, but that all sounded okay. Go to a place, do a thing, and then start her job.

"I think being a mediator will be fun," she yawned, "and I like talking to people."

The stones beneath her were still warm, and she had eaten her last piece of vegetable, enjoying the crunch of it between her teeth. "Can I sleep on your hearth?"