It was amazing.

It was beautiful!

She would have to show Rat-tail when she got home! She would show him how each strand glimmered in the light, how each braid was perfect. And if she couldn't show him now, then she would find somebody who could paint to take a picture of how good it looked and she would save it and show it to him a hundred times.

Jump-touch spun around with happiness as the two of them traversed the shore, her hair-!

The woman had the fingers of- of-, she didn't even have a word for it, it was magic! She was a person who did magic, true magic.

"Look, it's so good!" she laughed, spinning around again.

Eim smiled at her, but he seemed distracted, she didn't care. It was perfect!

They had talked for a while, her and the human. They had drunk another cup of tea, and then the woman had done magic to her hair; weaving it into thinner, tighter braids than she'd ever had before, but rapidly, and with none of the pain she normally associated with the process. Each braid was different, too a coloured ribbon woven through each one, some tied off at the end in little bows, some woven in so well even she couldn't see the ends.

The human had promised they wouldn't unravel, and that when she needed new ones in a few weeks, she was welcome to come back and have them done again.

Could Kobolds get classes? Could Rat-tail learn this magic? It would be worth it. Feather-paw couldn't, obviously, but Rat-tail had hands, not paws.

Jump-touch span around again, enjoying how her hair flew in the wind, and then settled back to where it was supposed to be, no longer in a huge cloud in her eyes. It was so freeing.

The mass of hair had already been starting to tangle, several days in the underground doing it no favours. The woman had first had to use a different skill- one she said was for unravelling tangled bits of yarn- to smooth it out, and now her head felt tingly and good and she was so happy.

It wasn't all so bad here after all, if there were people like this.

"I hope you gave her lots of coins!" She grinned at Eim, showing her teeth and not even caring, humans didn't care, why should she! "It's amazing, and she said I could come back!"

The words flowed easily, bubbling out of her like laughter, and Eim blinked at her, getting caught up in the mood.

"You're gonna catch some looks for sure," he laughed, "but Stone help me, what do we care. It's not like we plan to spend much time on the surface anyway. We should go back and get mine done."

He reached over and nudged her in the shoulder, and she laughed, skipping away.

"Yeah, do it! She could weave black and silver threads through it and make it shine!"

He stuck his hands in his pockets, still smiling, tilting his head this way and that so his hair flopped over his eyes.

"Trust Ollie to know the second weirdest person in the city," he mused through a curtain of red, "and yes I paid her. Don't worry about that."

"Out of the bird money?"

"Out of your share of the bird money. So when you get less than the rest of us at the end of the month, that's why."

She shrugged, skipping ahead. She didn't care how much she got, it didn't matter. If he told her it had taken every coin she'd earn forever more, then she'd still think it was worth it.

The relief of not having her hair in her eyes all the time was palpable, and how beautiful the woven-in ribbons were just the glaze on top.

She skipped ahead, passing a glass window and stopping to grin at her warped reflection.

No two braids matched, and that was perfect. Each one sported a different coloured ribbon, and a couple even two, as they'd run out of colours and had to improvise.

She would have to pick a favourite one eventually, but for now, they were all her favourites!

The woman had found a mirror, and Jump Touch had spent quite a long time looking at herself in silence. She had never seen her face so clearly before, was this how others saw her?

Then the excitement had caught up with her, and now it might never leave; she looked so good! That was her own face, so different from everyone else in this stupid city, surrounded by colours and light.

"I can make them glow a little," the woman had laughed, "but I think it would get annoying fast. Maybe next time, eh?"

She had agreed, but next time she would absolutely get ones that glowed, it was going to be amazing!

"There are people who weave language into threads, using beads and colours and knots" the woman had told her as her nimble fingers worked through the hair, "but I can't tell you any more than that. I saw it once, when I was younger.

She could have words woven into her hair?

The idea of it had stunned her.

She had regretted, for a moment, not taking [Polyglot], but what was done was done.

"What will you do when you need to wash them?" Eim asked, directing her off the shore and back up onto the cobbled streets.

"I just wash the head-bit, it's fine. She said she'd re-do when when I needed it anyway!"

"Did she, huh. You're gonna run out of money if you need to get it done often enough."

"I don't care!" she grinned, walking backwards in front of him, "look how good they look!"

Eim shook his head, still smiling, and they carried on back to the guild.

"You're gonna get some looks," he said, "but-" he paused, looking her over, "I guess you were going to get those anyway."

****

The guild hall was bustling, with two humans behind the food counter handing out dishes, and people everywhere lounging about, eating and talking.

The noise would have been overwhelming on any other day, but today was a good day, and she could ignore it, as she skipped over to what she was beginning to think of as their corner.

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Somebody had moved their chair and lounger off to one side slightly, out of the way of the board access, but it was still close enough.

"Look, look!" she spun around as she reached the others, Yaris, Ollie and Shrike looking up from their conversation, "Eim got my hair fixed!"

There was a beat of silence, and then a "wow!" from Ollie, "that looks great!"

They looked at Yaris, their eyes big, "can I get mine done like that? I bet it'd look great!"

"No you absolutely cannot." Yaris shot them down in one sentence, "what on…" She sighed, "never mind, Jump, it looks great! Very uh, colourful!"

"I know right!" she knew there was something else in Yaris's voice, but she didn't care. She had been living with her stupid hair for days now, and the relief at having it all tidied away was almost a physical thing, "it looks so good!"

"I think it's nice," Eim settled onto the lounger beside Shrike, laying one hand absentmindedly on the boy's bad knee, "I wasn't sure at first, but I've come around to it."

Yaris gave him a look, but didn't say anything in return.

"I wish I had hair," Shrike sighed running his hands over his head, "I miss it. I had lovely hair as a kid."

"Why don't you?" Jump-touch asked.

He shrugged, "it fell out one day. The healer said it just happens to some people." He pointed at his face, "look, no eyebrows either. She said I'm lucky it didn't take my eyelashes too, that would be a pain."

"Huh," Jump-touch laid a hand on her face, making sure that she had eyebrows. She hadn't noticed his missing ones before, just thinking it was a weird quirk.

"The other kids at school said he was cursed by the Stone," Ollie leant back on their chair, fanning themselves with a scrap of paper, "then again, they said the same thing about me, so what do they know."

Shrike shook his head, "the healer did all the tests on me and they came back negative of anything curable, she said it's just a thing. But hey, at least I'll never have to learn to shave."

"My skill reports something," Eim said, "but it's not anything I can fix, so it's only a murmur. I could enquire deeper, but," he shrugged, "what would be the point."

"Lucky you, not having to shave" Ollie said, dropping the paper above their face and watching it float down, snatching it out the air just as it started to drift away, "you think I can get a curse that forces me to put my hair in ribbons?"

Yaris leant over and thumped them in the leg, and they laughed. On the lounger, Shrike looked at Eim, and the boy took his hand off the other's knee, his face flushing pink for some reason.

Jump-touch ignored it, thumping down on the lounger beside them, her head spinning from all the running around, "is there lunch?"

Ollie saluted and stood, heading over to the counter, and Eim moved over to their chair.

"There is," Yaris said, watching him, "but first, Harmony said there was somebody who came asking after you, and who was pretty upset when you weren't here?"

Jump-touch squinted, "it might've been An-jel?" She could never remember the woman's name, "she did say she was going to come back in the evening, but we were already gone by then."

She shrugged, unwilling to be put down by the memory of that dreadful day, "I'll tell her I'm fine when she comes back?"

Yaris leant back against the wall, "Harmony said she was pretty upset when we didn't come back the next night. Is she the woman who paid for your class?"

Jump-touch nodded, "yeah, she was nice most of the time. She let me sleep on her floor and she took me to see the stone. Her friend was nice too, but I don't know where he went."

She thought about it for a moment, "I think he was one of the Stone guards? He had a lovely coat."

Yaris shrugged, "it's possible, they employ a lot of people. If you say she was nice, then we won't worry about it, but I guess we should wait and see if she comes back this evening, unless you know where she lives?"

Jump-touch squinted, "not really? There was a lot of houses with plants outside?"

"That's every street in the city," shouted Ollie from the nearby food counter.

"You don't know the street name?" Yaris asked.

"Streets have their own names?"

Yaris stared at her, "of course they do, otherwise how would you tell people where you lived? Each house is numbered, too, so you can say 'I live at Sixteen Stone Street' and since there's only one Stone Street, and only one number sixteen…"

"Oh."

Humans were so weird about numbers.

"I guess we only had one street, back in the Village, so it didn't need a name. If you wanted to find somebody's house, you just went there."

"One day," Ollie was returning now with a plate of food in their hands, "you should take us there. I bet it's super interesting."

"It's just going to be a tiny nowhere town," Eim said, leaning back on his chair and staring at the ceiling.

"Sure, but I didn't know that tiny nowhere towns even still existed. I thought all of humanity lived in the walled cities now."

"What about bandits?" Jump-touch asked, taking the food with a grateful nod, "they live in the woods, right?"

Yaris pushed off the wall, leaning over to inspect the food, "not always, and most of the time not by choice. They tend to be people who don't want to take a job from the Stone, or people who the only jobs they were offered were bad. Either cursed or not suitable. There was a guy in our school," she nodded at Ollie, "who got given a [Shepherd] class as his best option. The guy had never seen a sheep in his life. He spent all his time reading books. He said his next best options were [Warrior] and [Lumberjack]. He took the [Shepherd] class because he figured at least he might get a chance to read while overseeing sheep."

"My dad says the Stone knows things about you that you don't even know about yourself, maybe he would have enjoyed all those jobs?" from Eim

At the same time, Jump-touch said, "couldn't he just ask it to give him better options?"

Yaris had that strange tone in her voice again as she looked at Jump, "is that how it worked for you?"

Oh. This is the jealousy thing she warned me about.

"I uh, dunno," she said, finding herself having to hedge all of a sudden in a very uncomfortable, non-kobold way, "what do you guys see, when you touch it?"

"Lists and numbers," said Shrike.

"Yep, that," said Eim, nodding. His face was no longer flushed pink, but there were still touches of it on his cheeks.

Yaris looked around, then when she saw there was nobody nearby, said quietly, "when I opened my eyes, I was standing in a garden. All the classes I could choose were laid out around me like statues. Eventually I touched the statue for [Warrior], and then I was back outside again."

The other four stared at her.

"Wow," said Shrike, "what did they look like?"

"They were all me, but how the classes might change me, if I took them. The… It doesn't matter, but [Warrior] was the best choice I had."

She paused, "the stone the statues were made of related to the rarity of the skill. [Warrior] was made of pure opal, and it was beautiful. It made me think that being a commoner wasn't so bad, if it could look like that."

There was a beat of silence, before;"man," Ollie sat down with a thump next to Jump-touch on the edge of the lounger, making her scoot over, "I just got a boring old list. Why couldn't I have a statue garden? I would have liked that."

Yaris bit her lip, eyes shrouded, "I think the Stone knew I was going to end up with [Warrior] and that I was never going to get anything better, so it made it interesting for me. Just once. I wasn't offered anything above Uncommon either way."

The others grimaced.

Shrike sighed, "I've heard it speaks to people sometimes, a disembodied voice in their ears, and that sometimes if you talk back it'll listen, but it's rare."

Jump-touch took a bite of the food, chewing on it and thinking.

Eventually, she summoned her book onto her lap under the plate, and with one hand tore out the line [Cultural Scholar] [Unique Variant].

She passed it to Shrike, who looked at it and then raised his non-existent eyebrows.

He passed it to Eim, who blinked and passed it to Yaris, who frowned at it and gave it to Ollie.

"Interesting." Shrike said, as the paper ended up back at Jump-touch, "you should tear that up. Does the guild know?"

She nodded, mouth full of food, "I showed it to E-rik at the desk."

"And the woman you met, she paid for it?"

Jump-touch nodded again.

"Hmm." Shrike thought about that, tapping his cane against the side of the chair.

"She said she'd pay for it before she knew what I'd taken, she thought it was uh, uncommon? She said scholar classes normally are. She said I have to pay her back for it."

"Might be a better option than the ten percent the government charges," Shrike mused, "three variants and a Key in one party, that might be a world first."

"Being keyed isn't anything special," Ollie waved a hand, "it just means I knew how to sew, and the Stone recognised that."

"It means you have a passion for it, though."

Ollie gave him a flat look.

"Doesn't it?" he seemed surprised, sitting up in his seat.

"It's fine," Ollie looked away, "I like sewing, I'm just… Not entirely sure it's what I want to dedicate my life to?"

"Shouldn't you have thought about that before you took a keyed apprentice class?" Eim asked.

Across from them, Yaris got up, walking away from the group.

Ollie watched her go.

"Yeah," they said after a moment, sounding distracted, "but I couldn't pass it up, you know. My mother would have been apoplectic."

Apoplectic. That was an interesting word, Jump-touch thought, as there were nods all around. Commiseration maybe, if she was learning to read humans? She would have to remember that one. Apoplectic. It was fun to say. Commiseration.

She took another bite of her food. Today was a good day.