The butcher's shop belied its name. It wasn't a butcher's shop, it was a butcher's compound, a fortress of meat. A castle of offal. A meeting place for those who specialised in meat.

The complex contained more food than Jump-touch had ever seen in one place. Even after two of the Guardians had teamed up, brought down something almost the size of Sweep-claw, and then dragged back to the village, it hadn't been like this.

There were six humans, that she had counted, whose job it was to cut up the animals. Animals were constantly being dropped off by hunters, adventurers and farmers. Those were left with another two, who oversaw a team of she-didn't-know-how-many.

On top of that, there were the traders. Those who were talking to individuals, packing the meat up in paper, or selling whole slaughtered animals via what seemed to be a complicated system of roaring, pointing and chanting.

There were so many people here that her head swam with it.

"-expertly cleaned and carved, by somebody with Hunter as a secondary class-" Eim was saying, but she'd zoned him out, staring around with wide eyes.

Up on the main stage, a human man had just sold a cow for a number of coins she had no way of processing, and now they were moving onto a brace of ducks, 'prepared however you wanted them', once you'd won.

How many ways were there to prepare a duck, she wondered. Did you get to keep the feathers? Whose job was it to bury the heads, when they were done?

A nudge in her side, a word from Eim, and a moment later she was summoning the bird, to the probably-impressed look of the human he'd been dealing with.

"Oh, a peck-peck, and in very nice condition," she said as it materialised onto the floor.

She walked around it, touching the feathers and inspecting where it'd been cleaned.

I need a better knife, Jump-touch thought, maybe I should have brought the Gift Knife with me.

"I'll give you-"

Jump-touch zoned out again as Eim and the woman started to discuss trade.

I should be paying attention to this.

She'd always been under the impression that coins reduced the need to haggle, but if the way the two of them were going was any indication, absolutely not!

She tried to focus. A Peck Peck was worth some amount of copper and some amount of silver but they were going to round it up, or down she wasn't sure. They weren't a rare find, apparently, but it was rare to get them in such good condition.

Somebody was going to eat it, that was good. The group didn't get to keep the feathers, that was sad.

Humans make everything so complicated.

****

"Are we going to sell the apples here too?" she asked, as they walked out of the abattoir a few minutes later. It had taken her skill a while to come up with the word, and she was attempting to commit it to memory.

"No, for that I know a guy back at the guild, but I wanted to get the bird out of the way first."

"The Peck-Peck."

"That's what she called it, I didn't know they had a proper name. Everyone in the guild just calls them 'murder birds'."

It made sense, it was a murder bird.

"We got extra money for it though, because we killed it cleanly, so that's pretty cool. I'm gonna have to start writing down what we've earned."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Jump-touch thought about that. She didn't have much use for coins, but... "Will there be enough to trade for a new knife? Mine isn't very good."

She summoned her knife and showed it to him, and Eim squinted down at it. "Yeah that won't do. I'm sure we can pick up one from the guild, skinning knives are cheap, and they don't have to be rated for combat."

Oh. Should I be fighting?

She wasn't a [Warrior] but… Neither were Ollie or Eim, he was a healer! Even Shrike was just a 'guy who knows how to do magic'. He couldn't even walk, shouldn't she be protecting him?

"Eim?"

"Hmm?" He had been working something out on his fingers.

"Should I be learning to fight?"

He grimaced, running one hand through his hair, "maybe eventually, if you grow a bit bigger. But you're so small right now that I think having you in a fight would be more of a liability, not less. Right now if you hunch down and stay out of the way, then you're also not getting in the way of anyone who knows what they're doing."

That made sense, but… "If I always hide, I'll never learn, right?"

"It's gonna be harder for you," he sighed, "because you don't have a combat class. Me, Yaris, Shrike, our classes are optimised for combat. Ollie's isn't, but I assume that once we hit level five we'll have to find somebody new anyway, and apprentice classes do give you added speed and dexterity, which both help."

He ruffled her hair, laughing as she tried to get away, "your class is a [Scholar] class. It's all in the mind, so you won't get much physical stuff at all. And with all your stats at zero, oof. Yaris has three brawn. Three! And I only have a plus-one in Mind, but that makes my ability to process in battle much better."

Okay, well, Mind was a scholar stat, right? "So, I could get some points in mind, and then I could fight?"

"It's not quite how it works. It'll be optimised differently for you. Memory and speed at putting things together over a long period of time, rather than being able to see faster."

She didn't want to fight, but she'd had to be protected twice now. She could see the blue slime running for her every time she closed her eyes, and hear the screech of the Peck Peck in her ears. Each time she had to be protected, she was taking somebody out of the fight, somebody who could have been making a difference there.

Eim shrugged. "We can get you some training at the guild, and maybe we'll find some Opal gear, or a Spell Card for you. Your class should make you pretty decent at casting magic without exhausting yourself, you just have to gain access to it somehow."

Magic. That was what she'd come to the city for in the first place, wasn't it? Human magic.

How would it feel, to be able to shoot cold from her hands?

Her Heart was already starting to feel like a part of her, the magic of it fading, but if she could cast cold like Shrike, or if she could dry hair like- Oh!

"Eim!" she trotted around in front of him, and he blinked at her.

"Yes?"

"I want to get my hair fixed"

He tilted his head, "what's wrong with it?"

She clutched it into two clumps. "It's supposed to be in braids! It's always been in braids, but the human who brought me to the guild made me take it out so she could wash it even though it didn't need washing. I don't even have a comb! I want it in braids again."

He hummed, looking into the middle distance, "wasn't there a comb in the travel stuff somewhere?"

"Yeah but those are your combs, you can't use somebody else's comb. That's weird."

He scrunched his face up, in confusion she thought, if she was reading it right.

"I don't see why, but okay?"

They both paused in the middle of the street, and he looked around, the confused squint still on his face.

"I don't- Hmm. Come on, let's go back to the guild, maybe there's somebody there who'll know where to go to get your hair, uh, braided. But I wouldn't count on it."

She wavered, "why not?"

Am I going to have to cut it all off?

Eim didn't answer right away, walking down the street ahead of her as she jogged to catch up.

"It's not done," he said finally. "Long, complicated and traditional reasons."

Well, those were stupid reasons.

He glanced at her, and she didn't know how to read the expression on his face at all, it wasn't one she'd seen before.

"You really did come from somewhere odd, didn't you?"

What do I say to that?

Nothing, seemed to be the answer, as he looked away and kept walking.

"Your home didn't have a Stone, and you didn't keep to even the most basic traditions. If you told me now…"

He trailed off, before shaking his head. "It doesn't matter either way. You're a part of our party now, as long as we can keep it together. As long as Yaris can keep herself in check, and Shrike doesn't kill himself through overwork, and as long as we can find an eventual replacement for Ollie, it'll work."

He sighed.

"Braids huh. Yaris ties her hair back, sort of like that? That's not so bad."

"No," she shook her head, "little ones, lots of them."

She bit her lip. How many days would it take her to go home? To go back, to get her gift-knife, to get her hair redone and then walk back, to start her year away again.

Rat-tail would give her that look, the one he gave when he was upset at her, the look he wore when he was upset at himself for what he perceived to be failing to explain something properly, even though what he might have failed to explain was "even though Feather-paw can glide, you holding onto him and you both attempting to fly across a ravine isn't a good idea."

She didn't want him to have to make that face.

She wasn't exiled. Not even a little bit, but she couldn't go home just because her hair was annoying her.

Family.

They'd tried to define the word for her back in the dungeon, but she knew what it meant. The Village was her family, and eventually, she would go home.