We're close enough to the exit that I can make it back to the city, she decided. I can find a new team at the Guild. They'll understand, right?

She would empty out her Heart in a nice, neutral place, and everyone would be able to sort it out without having to interact with each other. No more fights, no escalation into-

Ahead of her, Eim, on his feet now, offered Yaris a hand, and she sighed quietly as he helped her stand.

"Sorry," she said, not making eye contact, but accepting the help.

He shrugged, running his hands up and down his arms. Where they passed, the grazed skin turned shiny and pink for a moment, and then faded into normality.

The black eye he'd been sporting all day was starting to fade too, and Yaris glanced at his face, wincing. "I didn't know you could heal yourself."

"I try not to," he moved to help Shrike up, and seemed about to say something, before changing his mind, " it doesn' matter."

Yaris let go a long breath, eyes closed, before opening them again and looking to Jump-touch.

Her expression was flat, and something in her expression had changed from earlier.

She looked tired.

Then she shook her head, turned around and strode away.

Jump-touch didn't understand. Was that it?

Was she going to come back? Was she leaving for good? A moment ago, Jump-touch would have thought yes, but why the look? Why had she attacked Eim in the first place? Why had she accepted his help to stand?

None of it made any sense.

Jump-touch watched the others instead, as she tried to work out what was going on. She watched as Eim laid a hand on Shrike, before shaking his head and flapping it around like he'd hit his elbow in the wrong place. It sucked when that happened.

"I'm out," he grumbled. "Insane-" he glanced at Ollie, and then over at Jump-touch, "never mind. My knocking her out took whatever magic I had left for today, I'm done. Spark out. My mana reserves, if I were one of the lucky few who could put numbers to such a thing, would be right now reading zero."

Shrike shook his head, staggering to his feet, and slowly, as a group, they pulled themselves back together.

My hands are shaking, Jump-touch noted as they started to walk again, but she couldn't say why. She hadn't been in the fight, and the last dregs of the panic attack were well and truly cold now.

Ahead of them, Yaris was gone, no longer even a figure in the distance.

As they reached the ruins an hour or so later, Ollie let out a loud sigh. "Well at least we're making good time, with all this running. I guess it's time to go spear some more slimes. I saw a quest on the board for a copper-per, I reckon we can cadge that outta Erik."

They leant a glance to Eim, "think you can talk Harmony into two-per?"

Eim laughed quietly, "she's my sister, if I tried, she'd probably knock it down to a half."

Ollie winced dramatically, "oof, I'll tell her you said that."

Eim rolled his eyes, heading towards the first apple tree and hopping up to grab a silver fruit from the branches. "You should, we can work together, and by the end of it, she might give us three-per."

Shrike spoke up, "Yaris has your weapons, though."

Jump-touch checked. "There's a spare spear in my H- [Pocket Zone], but no hammer."

"That works," Eim nodded to her. "I can use my knife. They're not exactly dangerous. We can sync up our rings when we meet up with Yaris again tomorrow."

He paused. "If we meet up with her again tomorrow, anyway. Should we have gone after her, chased her down?"

"Just give her space," Ollie said, accepting a spear from Jump-touch, "she's always been like this."

"I thought it was going well," Shrike sighed, sinking to the ground against one of the trees, and she realised with a start that they were planning to camp here, somehow all wordlessly inferring it except her.

She felt like somebody had taken her normal self and replaced it with a doll, still shaken by the fight earlier, and the thought that she might be prevented from going home.

No. That won't happen.

It won't ever happen.

She shuddered the thought away. "Can I help?"

She hoped that speaking would somehow unseal her voice, that it would stop them feeling like they were somebody else's words. The Stone, parroting words through her mouth.

Shrike waved her over with his cane. "Come sit, you've got the shortest legs of any of us. Once those two are done with the slimes, then we're probably going to collect some apples to take back, now that we know you might be able to preserve them."

"Don't apples normally last a while?"

Those brought up from the Valley usually stayed good until almost the next March, if they weren't all eaten by then.

He shook his head. "They start to rot within hours of being removed from the tree, but maybe your low-air room will help with that. They'd fetch us a good bit of pocket-money back in the city if so."

"But won't they just rot once they get there, then?"

Shrike laughed, "you're not the only person in the world with magic. There's people with proper preservation skills who'd take them off our hands. That's how they make their living."

She thought about that, "if it's that good, then why don't they come and get them themselves?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"The apples aren't worth that much," he tapped his cane against the ground, sending up a small cloud of dust. "It won't be a large harvest, so we might get a half-silver at best for the lot. But as for coming to get them themselves, why would they? They can sell them for more than they pay us. They'll make five, maybe even ten silvers, if they know someone who really wants them."

She opened her mouth, and he waved his cane in the air.

"We're paying them, in a way. Yes we could make more money if we sold them ourselves, but if we don't know anyone who wants them. While we're selling them, we could be back in the dungeon, levelling up or finding something else."

It made a confusing sort of sense, if she thought about it hard enough.

Should I be in the city, taking apples from people, trading them to others for coins? Who- What are the coins for, would they just be mine?

The thought made her head spin. Back home, coins belonged to the village. If you needed food, or clothing, or shelter, you took it, you didn't need to pay for things.

But it was different here, she was learning.

The two of them talked for a little more, and then afterwards, she processed it by walking around the orchard. Human magic made everything so strange. It made some people more useful than others, and it locked you into a job forever. There was no getting out of it. If you picked [Fruit Preserver] as your class, you were ever after a [Fruit Preserver], you could never again choose to be a [Carpenter] or a [Scholar].

Unless...

She wandered back. "Shrike, can you get rid of a class?"

He looked over from where he'd been trying to rattle a tree branch with his cane.

"No? But sometimes, rarely, you can pick a new one at level five, and then ask the Stone to stop levelling your first. It means you start again at zero though, with a significant penalty depending on how many times you've done it. Some people do go for it though, if their first Class didn't suit them, or if they're offered a second which synergies well. But most of the time you're better off just taking new Skills and upgrading what you have."

"If it offers you any," Eim and Ollie were back, their arms full of apples. "Still no sign of Yaris?"

They both shook their heads, and Ollie sighed. "She's probably back in the city by now then, clearing her stuff out of our room."

They paused, scrunching up their face, "we ought to push through and try and get back tonight."

"I don't think I can," Shrike winced, and Eim nodded.

"There's nothing I can to do help with that today, either. My magic's out, and I won't get anything back until I've slept."

"Then you'll have to go in the Room." Ollie was being what could only be described as brusk. "We'll ditch the bird, it's only worth a couple of silver anyway, but if we don't go after her now, then she'll leave, and nobody will see her again for a month. Then, when she finally drags her arse back to town, she'll try and find herself a new team. We need to catch her before she packs and heads out into the woods."

"That seems drastic," Shrike blinked. "You say this like it's happened before."

Ollie had already dumped their apples onto the ground, and was now heading towards the ruined entrance.

"All the fucking time," they grumbled, standing in the ruined arch and looking forward. "I had to talk her out of it twice with our last team, and we never even made it out of the city."

"Would it be so bad, if she left?" Eim gave Ollie a look, and they turned around and glared at him, one hand on the stone.

It was the first time Jump-touch had seen them angry. Even during the fights, they had always seemed so calm.

"She was doing fine until you two started-" They took a deep breath. "No. No, I'm better than that. It would be bad, Eim. It would suck."

"How do you know that's what she'll do?" Jump-touch asked, slowly picking up the apples one at a time, inspecting each one. They all looked eerily similar to each other.

"She's done this with two parties now, and she used to do it all the time when we were kids. She got herself expelled from two different Schoolhouses for fighting. We all thought she was going to end up with a Berserker or Brawler class when she finally Chose."

Jump-touch summoned a bag from her Heart, carefully loading the apples into it.

Eim watched silently as she transferred them all at once. The jolt was bad this time, but she didn't fall over or pass out, she was fine.

"We'll get you to bring one out in a couple of hours, see how it's faring," he said at last. "Shrike, me and Jump will go on ahead, you stay back with Ollie. My skill is useless on you at the moment anyway."

Shrike gave Eim a long look, before nodding. "Alright. We'll see you some time tomorrow, then. Jump, if you can give us some camping gear," he glanced at Ollie, "we might stay overnight?"

She did, and a few minutes later the two of them were heading away, leaving the others behind.

"Will they both be okay?" she asked as they walked.

He still seemed upset. He had his hands in his pockets and he was hunching his shoulders more than usual. Those were upset-human gestures.

He didn't answer right away, and in her Heart, the apples gleamed.

She found a part of herself focusing on them. Each one was like a sparkling jewel. All so similar to each other, but each special.

"Shrike's a level three," he didn't look at her as he spoke, "and even if the Stone has never given him any more skills, that just means his ice shot is stronger. Ollie pretends to be an idiot, but can fight as well as Yaris if pushed. They'll both be fine."

An intrusive thought struck her, should I ask if they're a boy or a girl, or is it too late now?

Her human-lessons were not helping. Was everyone just avoiding using pronouns when talking about Ollie?

It's so weird!

As they travelled, the landscape slowly shifted and changed around them, the influence of the copper becoming stronger as they neared the exit.

Eim was quiet and sullen, head down as they walked, and she rearranged her Heart as they travelled, for lack of anything better to do. Unpacking the bags, rearranging the shelves, and messing with the air.

A few hours later they stopped at the bottom of the stairwell. Eim gave her a look, and she summoned an apple to her hand.

"It looks fine," she rotated it, admiring its perfect shininess, before taking a bite. "It takes like…" she thought about it, "it tastes like metal?"

It wasn't a good taste. It tasted like polish and blood, and it took everything she had to resist spitting the bite out.

Eim shrugged, "that's what I thought too. Maybe they taste better after they're cooked, or they're good for your health or something? But hey, if you can keep them preserved then that's great! That means we can always pick up some on our way back this way, assuming we don't need the space for Shrike."

"Yeah, I'm useful!" she grinned as they started climbing the stairs.

I'm useful.

"You are," he agreed, having to take his hands out of his pockets on the steep stone stairs. "Sorry I was pissy at first, I thought…" he sighed, "I don't know what I thought, really. I thought Harmony was pushing you on us because of our history."

"History?"

"It doesn't matter. Your skill is great."

She hesitated, one hand on the banister. Ahead of her, Eim paused too, looking back.

"I want to make my Class better as well," she said. "Not just my skill. I want it all to be better."

She emphasised as best she could. She would be a [Cultural Scholar]. She wanted to write books, she wanted to talk to people, she wanted to help people, and she didn't want to be an apple-bag for the rest of her life.

If that meant she was too useful; if that meant somebody tried to trap her here, then fine. She would deal with that when it happened, and not worry about it for a moment before.

Eim looked down at her for a moment, before nodding, an expression on his face she couldn't identify. "Alright. Levelling up your Class will boost your skill anyway. Do you know what it requires to gain experience?"

She tore half the description out of her book and handed it to him. "This class will allow you to comprehend languages more easily. It will also help you understand different people and cultures.

Eim thought about it as they climbed.

"Languages, then. Interesting. That's more Shrike's side of thing than mine, although you'd be better off with mechanics, with him. But that might mean you should try and learn Resper properly, rather than only using your Boon. We can teach you a bit of the King's Tongue too. Our payout from this will give enough money that we might be able to get you into a library, you can look at a real dictionary there."

She queried library, and received 'A building where books are kept', which sounded ideal.

Then she thought about that.

There were enough books in the city that they had a whole building dedicated to storing them? It seemed unfathomable, having come from a place where the number of books in the entire settlement could be counted on two paws.

Jump-touch thought back to the small-man's office with its overstuffed shelves. More than that? A whole building full?

She was looking forward to seeing that.f