“Do you have a character sheet?” I asked Mabel, handing her both bowls.

“A what?” she confirmed my suspicions. No one else had a character sheet. I was on my own on this one.

“Sometimes I just ask stupid, off-the-wall questions.” I shrugged, putting my elbows on the bar and scanning the room. Mabel looked at the walls like something might jump down from them. “Just ignore me.” To that she nodded and tucked into the chili, her eyes rolling in delight.

“I’ll take a bowl of that,” Beryle called out to me from his usual table, waving a copper in the air.

“I’ve got stew or chili tonight,” I offered, hoping the terms would translate. “Stew comes with a good bread and chili has a side of cornbread.” I had to try the terms sooner or later.

“I’ll try the chili,” he shot back, and I hid my surprise by turning back to the kitchen to fetch his order.

On my way back out, I snagged a couple of vegetables and put them into my pocket. After serving Beryle and giving Mabel his coin, I put the vegetables on the bar beside Mabel. Mabel was as entranced with her bowls as Beryle was with his. I loved seeing my food make people happy. I cast a buff on each of them as they ate. I needed to get that spell up and they didn’t complain. I knew the spell had landed as I could vaguely see the mana coalesce on their shoulders, but they seemed to barely notice.

Basic Buff +1

Exp +10 (300/1200)

“I think we’re getting low on a few vegetables,” I told Mabel, pointing at them. “Do I handle ordering or do you?”

“Beryle’s the spokesman for the farms around here, but if you need something special like spices or what, ya’ll have to order through Chester,” Mabel said between bites.

“Hey Beryle,” I called to him. “You got some more of these?”

“Carrots?” he asked, like I was a little dim. The little ginger-shaped things that tasted a lot like carrots were actually called carrots?

“Yeah, and these?” I held up the potato-like things.

“Potatoes?”

Exp +10 (potion sale)

What? I almost didn’t note what Beryle was saying next. The only thing I’d sold was the chili. I unfocused my eyes and let them run over Beryle and then Mabel. I’d known that my cooking had gained a few stat boosts but to call them potions was a stretch. Did they even know? I couldn’t see a difference in them, but could they feel it? Terra inched silently into the tavern.

“I can get ya another bushel or two of each by end of the week,” Beryle told me. “Now that I know they aint being wasted in a tasteless batch of glue, I’ll get you some good stuff.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to him. The stuff seemed to be named for how they tasted. How was that working anyway? Some of my idioms seemed to baffle them, but others worked okay. The stuff was all named what I’d expected it to be named.

Terra poked her head around the corner of the bar and gave the tavern floor a disdainful sniff. Mabel watched her, but didn’t say anything at first, so I figured it was okay. If this place didn’t have building codes, they probably didn’t have health codes against pets in the workplace either. Terra’s attention was caught by some kind of bug in the straw, and she lunged toward it.

“Got yourself a rat catcher, eh?” Beryle smiled at Terra’s antics as they escalated into some interesting skip slides across a small section of the floor. It was like a live cat video. I wondered if Terra would make a good bard.

“I’m happy as a familiar, thank you,” Terra replied just to me.

“It’s her familiar,” Mabel told Beryle too casually for comfort.

“Oh, ho!” Beryle replied, sniffing the air and raising his eyebrows. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Her name’s Terra,” I explained, not knowing what to make of the attention, or of being outed so casually after Mabel had made a big deal of it before.

“I thought these old bones felt a little better.” Beryle stretched his shoulders. “Got us a witch for a cook? That’ll turn business on its ear.”

“I’d rather folks didn’t know right off,” I admitted, thinking it wasn’t wise to advertise my magic with Beau looking for me.

“I don’t think ya can hide the likes of that, dear,” Mabel told me. “Chester’s already ordering potion recipes. You can’t be keeping secrets in a place like this.”

“Siff’s the closest place to go for a healer, so this is big news in these parts,” Beryle agreed. “This bit of gossip’s already beat out speculation on Daisy’s wedding being so fast, and that was the biggest news around here since Henney had an egg with two yolks.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Marlo came swishing into the room, her high-pitched holler causing Terra to flit back behind the bar and then between my ankles. When she noticed that the room was basically empty, she relaxed. “I guess I’m not late.”

“And that would have been the biggest shock of the week if Karma hadn’t showed up.” Mabel exchanged a knowing eye roll with Beryle, who chuckled.

“So, I’m just the fodder of yer jokes now, am I?” Marlo complained, pulling an apron off a hook near the door and putting it on.

“Now? Just now?” Mabel tossed back. “Don’t know when ya haven’t been.”

“You know I’m only late because Ma’s pregnant again,” Marlo whined, and it was eye-watering how the pitch of her voice got even higher with it. I was trying to imagine a pregnant woman old enough to be Marlo’s mother. Marlo wasn’t that young.

“Ma’s Marlo’s prized pig,” Mabel explained with a chuckle at what must have been an odd look on my face. I gave a gusty sigh of relief and that made Beryle snort out a laugh.

“Oooooo!” Marlo squealed, her voice threatening to make my ears bleed. “A kitty!”

Terra had been poking her head out from behind my skirts when Marlo rounded the bar, but now scrunched herself under me in misery.

“If she keeps that up, I’m going to spend the night in our room,” Terra sulked at me.

“Here, kitty kitty,” Marlo tried to coax.

“Marlo,” I said, more to stop her from talking than because I had thought of what to say. “She doesn’t really like high-pitched sounds.” I was proud of myself for coming up with something that I considered the least insulting of what had been going through my mind.

“What do you mean?” Marlo tilted her head at me, and I was frozen like a doe caught in the headlights.

“Your voice,” I told her, at a loss of how to remain polite and still answer the question. “It’s a little high-pitched. Cats have very sensitive ears.”

I looked to Mabel and Beryle for help, but they had both buried their heads in their bowls of delicious food that I had slaved half the day to provide for them. The ingrates. Well, I’d stepped into this social faux pas in the making and I was obviously on my own.

“I’m here,” Terra spoke into my mind. “And I’ll help if I could just get my ears to stop ringing.”

“You don’t like my voice?” Marlo tried to say quietly, but volume wasn’t the problem.

“It’s not that,” I hedged, praying for a miracle. Again, I’m not a cleric, so a deity did not descend and magically make Marlo’s voice bearable. This is why I’d never watched Betty Boop, even as a child. I tried casting heal on Terra and myself. It didn’t work. Our ears hadn’t actually been damaged, just severely annoyed. “I just wonder if you’ve ever had singing lessons?”

At that both Beryle and Mabel snapped wide eyes to me. Hey, I’d taught a two-year-old how to modulate her pitch this way. Don’t look at me that way. It had worked. It was only very briefly as the pair of non-helpers then ducked back into food to escape the conversation.

“Singing?” Marlo’s hurt look bloomed into one of pure confusion. Both shoulders of both of my non-helpers hunched over in anticipation of disaster.

“Sure.” I grappled into my mind for where I was going with this. “It’s just like talking, only you hold onto the note.”

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head of pretty blond curls, and quivering….well, the attributes she had that ensured that most men would forgive her for that voice, at least for a night.

“Okay, so, let’s just say a word together like food,” I suggested, warming up to an old musical I’d loved all my life. “Food.”

“Food,” she replied, but her pitch was, of course, much higher than mine.

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“Lower,” I instructed, and got my first ray of hope as she gave me a note that didn’t hurt my ears. “Lower,” and she playfully gave a manly bellow of the word, proving it was possible she could use her throat instead of her nose. I hereby beg forgiveness of anyone who comes from Jersey. I’m not saying that a nasal tone of voice is always bad, but I will go out on a limb and say that combining that nasal tone with a pitch that could break glass is generally… a complete pain to the ears.

“That’s fabulous!” I praised her.

“But I sound like Beryle,” she protested, sliding back up to her normal pitch. “No man wants to marry a woman who sounds like a man! Ma said so.”

“Ma the pig?” I asked, momentarily confused with the verbiage.

“No, silly.” She giggled. “Ma!”

Charm +1

“Ah come on.” I tried to joke my way out of the quicksand that was this conversation. “You’ve heard a woman bard before, right?”

Marlo nodded.

“She didn’t sound like a man, did she? And I’ll bet she could charm a whole room of men, right?”

Charm +1

Marlo looked thoughtful.

“And the first thing a bard learns is how to control their pitch,” I cajoled. “Which one sounds prettier?” I sang the first line of a country song I’d liked as a kid.

“Wow,” Marlo said. “You could be a bard if you sing like that.”

Did I blanch? Keep it together, kid, I told myself sternly. “Unlike you, I’m not pretty enough to be a bard,” I tried to be charming, but I probably didn’t get the sarcasm out of my tone enough to actually be charming.

Charm -1

Okay, maybe I didn’t know what charm was, in this world or my own. Marlo gave me a thoughtful look again, but at least she didn’t look offended. “But which was is more pleasing to the ear,” I refocused. “That way or this one?” I sang the same line only through my nose.

Marlo cocked her head to the side again and I could almost see the light bulb over her head.

“It’s really simple, actually,” I rushed on. “You have a choice. You can sing with your nose or your throat.” I gave her a few samples of each. “Throat or nose? Which one sounds more…?”

“But all that’s singing,” she protested. “I’m no bard.”

“That’s just it. Singing is the same as talking.” I pushed to keep the analogy alive, knowing I could be interrupted by patrons at any moment. “Which one sounds more pleasing?” And I spoke the line instead of singing it at the two different pitches.

“But I don’t know how to do that,” she argued, and I felt like I was losing the whole thing. Who was I to be teaching a girl how to sing or even talk differently? Was there anything really wrong with how she talked? No. But it did hurt my ears.

“I’m just saying that the normal pitch of your voice when you use your nose like that scares my cat, Terra.” I grabbed at the excuse, hoping it excused my very selfish reasons for wanting to “help” Marlo. “If you want her to come to you, you’ll need to use your throat voice instead of your nose voice.”

I was a terrible person. Marlo was probably a perfectly lovely person, and I was being stupidly judgmental because her natural voice annoyed me. I wrestled with my conscience.

Marlo looked down at Terra and back up at me. “Really?” and I could tell that she was trying to use a lower pitch.

Terra peeked out from under my skirt and gave a tiny meow toward Marlo. “I got this,” Terra said in my head.

“Awww.” And Marlo’s pitch hiked back up higher than Roger Taylor in a rock opera.

Terra ducked back behind me.

“I’m sorry, Terra,” Marlo tried again, her voice beautiful at the lower pitch.

Terra rewarded Marlo with another peek. Marlo cooed at Terra a bit and slowly Terra emerged for a bit of petting. When Marlo spoke low and calmly, Terra would inch toward Marlo and when Marlo’s pitch got too excited, Terra would duck back behind me.

“You’re adorable,” Marlo marveled at my little master manipulator, who had, with no words at all, taught what my insulting verbiage had muddled up. “You should stick to the counters once the customers come in, though. That way you won’t get stepped on.”

I cast a surreptitious glance at both Beryle and Mabel, but they seemed not to care. As I looked at them, they were so entranced with the train wreck of our conversation that it took a moment for them to pretend they were eating instead of watching us. Terra gave a gravity defying hop onto the bar in response. Again, no one protested about cat butt on their counters, so I wasn’t going to protest. It wasn’t like I wanted Terra underfoot anyway. I didn’t kid myself that the situation could have rivalled a sit com, but since they didn’t have television at their fingertips, we were likely entertaining enough for the dinner show.

At least it was entertainment enough until the tavern door burst open with more customers. I quickly scanned the faces for Beau, or the instruments of a bard. Seeing none, I relaxed a bit. I ducked back into the kitchen, but returned with my dinner to watch the tavern and see if I could get away with casting buffs.

As I watched and listened to another couple of groups filter in, I realized that the conversation between Beryle, Mabel and I had likely been contrived. Beryle hadn’t even been surprised at the reveal of my familiar, and it really was juicy gossip if an egg having two yolks was the hottest thing for a week around here. They’d likely put it out there so that they wouldn’t inadvertently reveal that they had been talking about it before I’d come into the main room.

Chester and Lily made an early appearance. I waved them over to my table. I was happy to see that Lily still seemed to be in good spirits. I’d been worried that my spell would wear off, like my buff did. I supposed it was more like my heal spell than the buff. I still hadn’t gotten the nerve to cast my buff on the random adventurers that had come in so far. If any of them had access to magic or character sheets, they might not be happy with someone casting at them without permission.

“I made the order we talked about,” Chester told me as he helped Lily sit down next to me.

“Great,” I enthused, glad to have something to talk about that wasn’t in my own head. Terra joined us, sitting on the table at the place setting for the fourth seat. I cast clean on the table, just in case, searching for something to say.

“It felt good to get some cleaning done today,” Lily told me, while Chester flagged Marlo down. Ah, the art of small talk, something most people could do without a nervous sweat. I just nodded, happy when Marlo interrupted.

“Chili or stew?” Marlo asked in a tone that didn’t hurt. Terra rewarded Marlo with a sweet look. Marlo rewarded Terra with a bit of stew meat. I barely resisted rolling my eyes. My cat was better at small talk than I was, and she couldn’t speak out loud. Most of the time I wished I didn’t have to speak at all.

Chester and Lily ordered one each of chili and stew, a few ales, and decided to split a serving of cobbler. It hurt. Chester was attentive the way my husband was most of the time. I didn’t want to think about it, but it ached. I reached out to pet Terra, but my mana was already overcharged, so I couldn’t even comfort myself with that.

“Would you mind if I cast a buff or two on you two?” I asked in a way I should have realized was just a little too abrupt.

“We won’t turn that down.” Lily smiled at me. I cast quickly before they changed their minds.

“Who would?” Chester put in.

“I don’t want to presume.” I shrugged, uncomfortable, but then I rushed on. “I mean, I want to work up my spells and, you know, so I can get better, but I’m afraid of being… I don’t know…” I trailed off, sweeping the room with my hand. “What if someone notices or gets offended or something?”

“The world you live in.” Lily shook her head in bewilderment. “You are so cautiously kind. Where did you live before that someone would object to being made better?”

My mind had a swirl, trying to wrap around that concept. Had I become too cautious? I liked caution. If I offered to help someone, they had better want that help or the next thing I knew, I was the fodder of nastier gossip than this town boasted. In my world, they still burned witches. Maybe not literally, but if you weren’t the correct religion for the person you were talking with, you could find yourself in a lot of trouble.

I cast Lift Spirits on Chester just to see if it would stick.

“That tickles.” He smiled at me, rakishly.

I cast it again on Lily, and she beamed a nice smile. I wondered if I should cast it on myself. On the one hand, I shouldn’t be casting stuff that I didn’t understand on other people, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to somehow forget my family because the memory of them caused me pain. I took a breath and cast it on myself, trying to remain clinically aware of what changes it made.

Lift Spirits +1

Exp +10 (320/1200)

“It does tickle,” I admitted to Chester. It didn’t make me forget the pain, it just let the pain be a background noise instead of a tension between my shoulder blades. It was almost like having a glass of wine after dinner.

I let myself pet Terra and cast Lift Spirits on everyone else in the bar as mana allowed. No one even gave me a look for it. Chester and Lily kept up a polite conversation around me, allowing me to relax into the evening. They liked the chili better than the stew, but only because it was a novel treat. Lily didn’t like the cornbread at all, but Chester was happy to trade his sourdough bread for hers. The cobbler was a hit, and they ordered an extra serving because they couldn’t share evenly, and Chester didn’t want to fight over the last piece.

Lift Spirits +3

Exp +100 (potion sales)

Exp +30 (460/1200)

Terra’s unabashed adoration cheered me up more than Lift Spirits.

“Have either of you ever heard of a character sheet?” I asked Chester, having waited for a pause in their flirting.

Both of them shook their heads. I scanned the room, but no one suddenly tensed up or turned their heads toward us, so I relaxed a little more. I cast my buff at a few folks I figured couldn’t be magic users.

Basic Buff +2

Exp +40 (potion sales)

Exp +20 (520/1200)

The food sales were tallying up to a sweet chunk of experience. If this kept up, I’d level in my sleep.

“There aren’t a lot of magical folks around,” Chester told me, keeping his voice down. Sammi had mentioned that anyone could do it, but it was still rare. That seemed odd to me.

“The bar is magical,” I pointed out, matching Chester’s quiet tone.

“Sure,” Chester admitted. “But it’s an installment of the Merchant’s Guild. They like to make sure they get paid, so they install the bar that does all the accounting and relays orders to a central location.”

Maybe that was why a person like Mabel could run a tavern like this. She had said she didn’t do math, but she seemed to be fully in charge of the running of the tavern. I’d watched coins disappear into that bar over and over.

“The money all goes in, and at the end of the night, it spits out everyone’s cut and magics an order summary to the main guild,” Chester explained. “I only know because mine works the same way.”

“We’d thought about running an independent outpost,” Lily said, happily licking an edge of red goo from her spoon. “But the Merchant’s Guild only takes a small cut of basic sales. We’re only out of potions because the guild is backordered, and the main cities get them first.”

“Sounds like a powerful guild,” I prodded, wanting more information and finding that Chester and Lily were very easy to ask what might seem like weird questions to Mabel.

“They are,” Chester asserted. “If I’d opened independently, I’d have made slightly more profit, but I probably wouldn’t have any stock of magic stuff.”

“Maybe,” Lily put in. “I think there’s some bad blood between the Magic Guild and the Merchant’s Guild.”

“Probably just a negotiation tactic,” Chester brushed it aside. “They’ll be back in stock soon. Thing is, if we do potions locally, all the profit is ours because we’re ordering it independent of the guilds.”

This was politics. I understood politics. It wasn’t like this world wouldn’t have any. There were people and where there were people trying to live with each other people, there would be laws. And where there were laws, there were power plays about who would determine and uphold the laws. And where there were power plays, there were politics. I didn’t want to have any more to do with it here than I had at home. Still, I had to know enough to not get tangled up in it.

“Will it make them mad if they find out you’re going around the system they set up?” I asked. I started casting on people, cautiously at first, but then a little more boldly when no one noticed at all.

“Nah.” Chester waved the air. “They don’t care about my little shop. I’m a tiny outpost in a kingdom of a hundred tiny outposts. In any case, they wouldn’t care anyway. I’m just required to display their merchandise, not be exclusive about it. Otherwise, how would I sell what I make at the forge?”

“Chester only opened the store to be able to have enough other stuff that folks would come in and buy what he makes,” Lily continued, patting Chester’s shoulder. “Smart when there’s not enough horses around to support the smithy on its own.”

“Smart,” I agreed, casting another round of buffs all over the place.