"So, the big building is the main workshop where everything gets done. The shack off to the side is the main house," Jek says pointedly. "You can't see it from here, but it's on the far side of the barn. Don't be fooled by the way it looks. It's quite nice once you get inside."

"That's great, but no one told me what I'd be doing or how much I'd be paid," Leila sighs, rubbing at her forehead. "I wanted work, steady work. I wanted to be productive and be paid fairly. I wanted to be financially secure. And I get sent into a death forest to feed pigs. For six copper!"

"That's a tale," he says noncommittally. "I don't know much about pay. I have a place to stay, food to eat, work to keep me occupied, and I have what I need..."

"Who else works here?" Leila sighs, compiling a list of things she'd need to look into when she gets to wherever she's supposed to settle in.

Jek starts fidgeting and Leila wonders what's weird now. She keeps spying a glowing eye through the tangle and assumes he's peeking over his shoulder at her, but he's not saying anything. She sighs, looking around as they move along the front of the barn to get to a smaller door at the front. The door is sill massive to Leila but she supposes that a her sized door would be too small for Jek.

"Are there any rules for getting to the the house? Like to get here you have to go through the back door of the Red Top," Leila asks, figuring that Jek might be more comfortable talking about work than about people.

"I don't leave the farm except to go to the woods, and I don't think those paths are safe for someone like you," he mumbles.

"What do you mean, someone like me..." Leila asks, eyes narrowed and wondering if she can last long enough to punch him in the face before being put down. He'd probably eat her fist if she tried.

"You're small, female, and don't heal almost instantly," he snorts, looking back at her like this is the only obvious conclusion. "I'm pretty sure you couldn't toss me even a yard and I could probably get you over a couple of pens. So there's that."

They both snort in amusement and he finally relaxes, grinning back at her. At least Leila knows that he's not gonna bullshit her.

"So we're the only two here? What will I be doing? I don't have any experience with animals or anything," she admits and he stops fidgeting with a sigh.

"Probably going into town to get the scraps," Jek shrugs and Leila swears she can hear him humming to himself even though he's talking. "Maybe pick up spare clothes. Make deliveries? I was surprised when the pig trough was filled. I don't think any of the girls have managed to actually empty any of the barrels before staying in town or getting spirited away..."

"Do what now?" Leila asks, flabbergasted. It's walk along a straight path, turn once, then go back. How hard is it?

"There's... people, in the woods. They can be very persuasive..." Jek says tactfully and Leila finds herself offended. No one tried to spirit her away, what kind of bullshit is that? There's nothing wrong with her, dammit! "You do know you're not supposed to want to be kidnapped and raped, eaten, and or enslaved?"

"Well, I don't want bad things to happen to me," Leila stammers, face burning as she realizes she must have been grumbling out loud. "I'm grateful to be safe and whole and unmolested, but it's just that no one has any reason to reject me. I'm a perfectly fine woman and they should be so lucky!"

"I'll bet," Jek snickers and Leila recoils.

Is there something wrong with her? She's not the prettiest, but she doesn't have to be. She's not the nicest but she treats people like people, shouldn't that count for something? She's not the smartest, or the fastest, or the cleverest, but there are people working with a lot less that have gotten farther and left a mess to clean up, so why is no one giving her a chance?

"So this is your room, feel free to liven it up as you see fit," Jek says, knuckles scraping lightly against the ground as he waves long black talons towards a closed door in a hallway off of a set of stairs.

"Oh, thank you?"

Leila looks around in confusion. She wasn't paying attention at all. She has no idea where she is or how she got there, other than following behind the lumbering creature that even now is practically folded in half to move down the corridor. And she has no clue how to get out of wherever this is. She sighs, reaching for the doorknob when the little square on the necklace in her bundle of clothing flashes like a camera bulb then shifts to resemble a yellow, plastic square. Leila shrugs, and fumbles to get the magical keycard necklace over her head before going in. She wills the door locked and the doorknob disappears while the whole door turns yellow. Well. Shit.

The room is barely larger than the largest walk-in closet she's ever had in an apartment and almost empty. There's a bed. And that's it. She tosses her bags on the bed before remembering that one of the bags has food in it and that the smell she'd been smelling was the meat going cold and the greases congealing. She groans then goes to sit on the bed before remember that she still doesn't know where the washing facilities are. She'd probably asked and been answered and just filed it away while she was zoned out. She whines, sitting on the edge of "her" bed, digging out her crystal and opening her lunch bag before sliding to the dingy floor. Now's as good a time as any to figure out what the hell this magic stuff is.

After tapping through the tablet and gnawing on her foodstuffs she's finally gotten to her status screen. She's got mixed feelings about what she finds. On one hand she can read runes, kinda, and has magic. Kinda. On the other hand she now knows what's wrong with her, but it's not something that can be changed with a haircut or a positive attitude.

Right Place, Wrong Time

This trait is a testament of the holder's strong luck.

Within 24hrs of meeting with great fortune or great misfortune

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

an unfortunate or fortunate event multitude(s) stronger will occur.

"What the frick and frack?" Leila punches and kicks. "I find a job so everyone else gets invited to a lavish, established guild?" Leila pauses. "Wait. Isn't it supposed to be opposite? Fortune and misfortune. Misfortune and fortune?" Then she rolls her eyes. "It wasn't a real job..." Then she tenses. "But I've got a real job now! Oh, no..." Then she relaxes. "But it's in a forest of death, innit?"

She tenses then relaxes. No point in getting worked up. Finishing her meal she idly wonders how she's supposed to clean the bag and herself. As she relaxes and her mind wanders she finds the symbols are easier to understand. There's a journal option. Should she start a diary? Chronicle her adventures in a new world? She clicks on the journal to start a new entry and gets a map chronicling her progress over a world covered in the fog of war and a recap of the days events. Including points of interest. She bounces back and forth between the entries in the journal and the map, bookmarking waypoints and highlighting and pinning entries. Ashley was right. It is kinda intuitive.

She finds the calendar function and sees that the clock and a list of events are all laid out. And it would be a really, really, bad idea to go outside much less near any water right now. The sun has set, the moon is affecting tides in a manner that empowers water kin, and there's a warning, for her, not to go near the well. Well, there's no helping it. She'll just have to go in the morning. After... A quick check says any time after six in the morning but before eight in the morning and maybe after noon. Leila's impressed. This div stuff is handy. And she doesn't have to worry about wanting to spice things up because she's well aware that she'll most likely forget the calendar exists on and off.

"So what are my stats..." she mumbles.

She'd gotten a brief glimpse but then gotten distracted by her dominant trait. She's slightly above common strength but not yet uncommon. Same for speed and endurance. Her intelligence and wisdom are skewed, bouncing back and forth from high to low based on how strong her luck multiplier is.

"What is this nonsense?" she grumbles.

When has her luck ever gotten her anything she hasn't worked for? It sure has shot her in the foot countless times. This does explain her derps. Or at least it's a good excuse. She shrugs and keeps reading. She's got gains in magical item use and reputation with Red Top and comfort workers in general. She's affiliated with Hermit Farms which is an uncommon ranked not guild or corporation, but she'll take it. She has resistances to charms but her charisma is also linked to her bloody luck stat. And her luck is nowhere on her stat sheet. Just references to it. No... Her luck is a curse. The stat itself is RNG based and changes. Moon, sun, wind, weather, frickin' mood.

Leila tosses the tablet on her bed in disgust. If nothing else she's at least got some better luck mitigation in the form of prediction software. An Oh, Shit! app. She goes over what she's learned and what it means for her, stripping and trying to put on the clothing that she'd been given. The skirt is drawstring. The collar of the shirt is drawstring. There's underskirts. That are drawstring. So. Much. Tying. She doesn't have to worry about popping buttons, but what if a tie breaks?

She huffs, removing the new clothes but not redressing in the rags. She doesn't normally sleep nude, nevermind in places she's never gotten a chance to clean and check for pests and what not, but she's also never been sent to another world. That she knows of, at least. New day, new phone, new her. Now to figure out who dis world. She sets alarms to wake up in time to clean up and go to the bathroom, notices how late it is, and decides to treat herself on her no-cation with a nice lie in afterwards. Hoping there aren't rats or giant roaches she climbs into the surprisingly soft sheets and passes out almost immediately.

The sound of windchimes knock her out of dreams of success and happiness and nearly onto the floor before there's an earthquake. Leila flails, scrabbling out of the unfamiliar sheets and bouncing off of the opposite wall in an aborted sprint. Wow. Just climbing out of bed put her on the other side of the room. Oh! Work! She turns off the crystal then goes to the door and knocks back on it.

"That you, Jek?" she tries to say and ends up yawning immediately.

"Are you okay?!" He bellows and the sound is muted.

This place is small but very well constructed if the half-troll couldn't get in. At least she knows the locks work.

"Hold on. Let me unlock the door," she yawnsplains.

"You're okay," he looks surprised and Leila remembers she was supposed to get dressed and then open the door.

And then sees that he's completely unaffected. She sags, willing to admit that maybe she's not the prettiest or the thinnest and she was on the prettier side of average. But she was just average. And in a world of filters and surgery or magic, that's nothing interesting at all. Her greatest asset isn't adaptability or being able to disregard another person's feelings, although her greatest weakness does appear to be her empathy. She understands how other people feel. She just can't change it. She can do her best to explain and she's good at simplifying things, but that's good for the customers, not the company's bottom line. Then what can she do?

She gets dressed in her rags, she's going to be spending a day doing farm work, she doesn't want to ruin her old new clothes, locks the door behind her and follows a heartwarmingly concerned Jek into a different section of the house. It's not just sprawling. There are winding tunnels, not just hallways, that seem to link different chambers together. Stairs, ladders, ramps. The building feels like an oversized playhouse. Fortunately for her she doesn't have to keep it straight. After taking a shower and making her way back outside to get her list of chores her tablet dies, the crystal becoming heavier and sharp.

"Fack!"

Leila sets it down on the ground, afraid to drop it even though it's cutting into her hand. She whips out her jar of healing ointment, smears her hand, then wonders what she can use as a bandage before Jek comes to the rescue with a couple of stained, but clean, strips of fabric. Thanking him she tries to decide whether to figure out how to use one of the super cool mana charges, a chunk of crystal or gemstone that glows with stored arcane power, or if there's a docking station or something she can use.

"My tablet died," she says, hissing in pain and flailing her injured hand. "Do you know how to recharge it?"

Jek looks at her in disbelief and she wonders if he thinks she insulted him.

"I don't really know much about arcane focuses," he says slowly. "Besides they're rare and expensive and take tons of delicate enchantments to manufacture."

He reaches out tentatively, and, with help and permission, balances the tablet on one long finger, gently keeping it in place with slight pressure from his thumb. He takes a long, slow breath, eyes half-lidded, and the tablet looks less like a chunk of thick glass shard and more like the arcane device Leila remembers. He breathes, coming back to himself and gently hands it over.

"Just meditating with it nearby seems to work," he shrugs. "Once you're in the right mental state it'll start taking in ambient magical energy."

"Oh, thanks!" Leila chirps happily.

This does explain why it lasted so long. She's very good at tuning out when she's on a task, but that stops her from being able to multi-task or switch gears. It also explains why her magical item manipulation skill was going up constantly. Her zoning out was allowing her to repair and recharge her enchanted equipment. Sweet!

She immediately drops trou, switching out her pants for the skirt because the skirt has pockets. What kind of world did she leave where her women's clothing didn't have pockets for the sake of fashion, but this fashionable, although well-worn skirt, has pockets for the sake of practicality? She shrugs, tucking the tablet in the pocket and her pants into her burlap sack before backpacking again.

"Alright," she beams, completely unphased by her public nudity. No one's looking and no one's interested so why bother caring? "Let's get to work!"