Beau was going to walk through the tavern’s front door the night before he wanted to fight. He was going to sing and charm my people here so that they were more his than mine. You have to understand. I wasn’t the type of person who liked watching reruns or rereading books. I found myself totally out of patience for redoing these first days. I knew when he was coming and that I could defeat him.

I went through the conversations almost woodenly. These people weren’t even going to remember most of this part anyway. The moment I accepted another Nemesis Quest, they were all going to believe that I’d always been the witch in the back cottage. I ate breakfast, cooked dinner, got all my favorite old recipes, cast my mana’s worth of spells over and over again, and I thought a LOT. Half of me wanted to make sure I relearned all the things I’d learned before, but another part of me just wanted to cut to the chase.

When you think back on your life to what you’d do differently, you don’t think about all the little things that might change if you don’t do everything the same. I’d lost my buff because I hadn’t been a wreck with Sammi that first night. I figured out how to get it back, but what had I done to the relationship by trying to take short cuts? And while Mabel, Marlo, Lily, Chester, and even Beryle wouldn’t remember most of the next few days, there were enough things that carried over for my mind to be nagging at me.

I knew I needed eggs and milk, so I healed Lily and learned Lift Spirits. I got Chester’s promise to order the lizard-chickens and the dachshund-goats, but I’d had to barter with most of the coins I’d made from singing to get it. It was like people didn’t want to help me like they had the first time. I had this chip on my shoulder, an edge to my personality that I hadn’t had the first time, and it was destroying the history of who I’d been and the connections I’d made. I was starting to think I’d made a big mistake.

This time, when I went into the forest to fight that stupid bunny, it was with a full understanding of the map in my tabs, and a bitterness that vented out. I didn’t kill a bunny and return for friends. I took the dagger out of my inventory and killed a dozen bunnies.

I hadn’t ordered the book of herbs. Chester wasn’t interested in funding a potion-making enterprise with a bitter adventuring type. Maybe he felt I was more likely to die in a nearby dungeon before fulfilling my promises. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the herbs by heart at this point, but I was starting to get worried at how many changes I was creating just with the attitude change. The more confident I was, the more it felt like people were more likely to try to knock me down than they were to try to help me. Even when I entertained the tavern at night, it was like a pall had settled on the place.

It was an insidious circle of how my attitude soured the world around me and the frustration I felt at the worsening situation created more bitterness. My grief turned the world against me. Didn’t they know that I was trying to get my daughter back? Why couldn’t I get them to understand? Were they heartless? And was I stupid to be attributing any emotions to what I knew to be constructs of an engine that I despised?

“This isn’t working,” I told Terra on the third morning as we were puttering around in the kitchen. I had no doubt that I would beat Beau tonight. I’d decided to confront him on the first night instead of waiting for him to be ready for me. My character sheet was full of stats and spell levels I hadn’t been able to achieve until after I’d destroyed the Assassin’s Guild in Siff.

“It does feel different,” Terra admitted, sniffing at a pan of two-headed deer meat that I’d left sizzling with onions and celery.

“Most people hate me,” I pounded the pie dough like it was a poisonous bunny.

“Hate’s a strong word,” Terra used her paw to pick up a small piece of hot meat.

“How can I be so much stronger and still feel like I’m losing somehow?” I was careful not to mention the time loop directly. I knew that Fizzbarren sometimes watched the dialogue. I didn’t know what he could do to stop me, but he had so much power at this point that I didn’t want to take any chances.

“How does something smell so good and take so much to eat?” She held the chunk on one claw and daintily gave it a sniff.

“It’s just a really tough cut of meat until it stews all day,” I answered her, letting the information stew in my own head. Grief was a tough thing to swallow. It had to simmer for a while to be something that could be chewed. Some meat took longer to get tender enough. Two-headed deer meat was some of the toughest meat I’d ever experienced, but even it got tender over a low heat for a long time or a pressure cooker.

If your mind was open to answers, the world had a way of giving them to you. The problem now was what to do about it. I began to think I’d gone into this time loop with too little information. I didn’t know the rules. Or did I?

Terra flicked the piece of meat off her claw and back into the bubbling concoction. No one cared about the sanitation of cat claws in this place. It didn’t matter anyway considering how many times I’d cast clean on Terra and the kitchen as a whole. Clean would end up turning into a dozen different spells for me, including one that had given me the Author class change as an option.

An Author class has the ability to digest books. Once books are digested, the Author can use that genre. It was like hitting tags. You could only choose to label your story with that tag if you’d learned it. I’m getting a little ahead of the story here, but now that you knew about… oh, that’s a wibbly wobbly bit of logic loop, isn’t it? The point was, I did know about the time loop. I’d read many books of the genre to get the ability to cast the spell at all. All I had to do was wrack my brain for the common denominators.

I rolled out the pie dough and laid it in the bottom of one of my four pie tins. I filled the pastry with a load of grape-sized apples. I laid the second crust on top and crimped the edges before settling the top onto the pie pan. With that iron top, the pan was more like a Dutch oven in that it allowed me to place coals on top and turn it into a mini oven.

Again, my mind spun with answers. As long as I kept my thoughts like the filling of my pie, with both crusts and the Dutch oven around them, Fizzbarren’s engine wouldn’t lift them out and place them on a page. The other advantage of having a cooking profession was that the engine would likely consider this cooking time as too boring to be written. The engine would skip over the domestic stuff unless I did something stupid to gain its attention.

So, I baked and thought about time loops. I didn’t dare get more powerful yet. It might make Fizzbarren suspicious. As much as I wanted my Fireball spell or my Author class, I needed to take things slowly. It might help win little battles, but it would lose me the war with Fizzbarren. I knew I could win most of these little battles without my old stats and spells. I just had to figure out how to win the few battles I’d lost.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Terra gave me a supportive head bump, and I took a moment to pet her and surge my mana up. It was just that I didn’t want to continue on this time loop. I felt like I’d screwed it up already. Sammi wasn’t on my side the way they’d been last time, and that was a big factor in the final days. I might have gotten my eggs and milk, but I’d lost the goodwill of Chester and Lily, and it felt… bad. This wasn’t the person I wanted to be. It wasn’t a question of whether they were NPCs or how many lines of coding they had. It wasn’t about them at all. It was about me and who I was.

Could I be my old optimistic lunatic and still save Kat? I dumped a cup of ale over the simmering meat and vegetables and let it bloom in a cloud of steam. The smell of ale and meat filled the room. The deer meat had a flavor between beef and lamb. I’d found some mint in the forest. Now that I knew what I was looking for, flora was easy to gather around letting my temper out on the fauna. I put a pot on the stove and let some mint leaves and sugar bubble up. It was the base of a mint and mushroom sauce. Don’t get all squicked out on me. It’s delicious and this particular orange-ish mushroom was more of a thickener than for flavor. Think of it as a gelatin substitute.

Time loops had general rules. Most of them weren’t limited to one loop. Starting over was either controlled by a time when the loop would repeat, an event that spurred the loop, or death. If you died, you’d go back to the last save. The death theory was a rather drastic one. I wanted to start over, but did I want to risk that death wouldn’t be final? I wasn’t that desperate yet. If Kat died again, I would probably try that one, but it couldn’t be worth that risk now.

I tasted the stew and realized I’d added too much of the salt. I reached for the potato-like tubers and chopped another couple handfuls of them to soak up the extra salty taste. If there was a way to fix this restart, I’d need to add something. There was no good reason to throw out a whole stew when all you had to do was add a bit of something to fix the mistake.

What could I add to this incarnation of myself to regain my footing? I’d been angry and arrogant from it. I needed to be seen as pathetic and… I stopped myself. That was the bitterness talking. You didn’t add more salty stuff. You added the foil. What was the foil to arrogance?

I threw the rolling pin across the room and watched it splinter against the pantry door with a satisfying thunder of splinters. My strength had increased enough that I was barely able to repair the stupid thing.

“What’s going on in here?” Mabel poked her head into the kitchen. She had taken to only grunting through for breakfast and leaving me alone for the rest of the time.

“Just pounding some meat,” I answered her, the repaired rolling pin still rocking back and forth on the floor near the pantry.

“I thought someone had come in and attacked you,” Mabel put her meaty hands on her hips. “I don’t tolerate any brawling in my tavern, even if it is in the kitchen.”

I gave her a skeptical frown and a huff. I picked up the rolling pin to hide the fury of her betrayal that shone in my eyes.

“And no one messes with my people,” Mabel continued, pointing a porky finger at me before turning to leave.

I had half a mind to throw the rolling pin at her big smug face. I happened to know that she was going to not only let Beau defeat me, but she was going to help! Wait, I told myself sternly, making myself put the rolling pin down on the counter. I took a dozen deep breaths and used meditation to shove my anger into a huge trash can in my mind. I was like Daffy Duck trying to shove the genie back in the bottle. If I wasn’t careful, it was going to come spewing out at me in ruinous retaliation.

I checked my kitchen to make sure I had tonight covered. The meat pie filling was simmering. I’d put a crust over it when I transferred it into the pie pans. The deer stew would need a full night to become tender, but it was set for the next day’s meal. The fruit pies would come out and the meat pies with their crusts would replace them. I had the bunny poison in my inventory with the rest of the results of my hunting expeditions. The spell for Mild Poison was something that I had tested on some wildlife, so it was ready early too.

I made myself think about the fight with Beau. Now that my mind was calmer from taking care of the kitchen, I could think more clearly. If I was honest, I could admit that Mabel had only turned on me that night because I’d started the brawl. I’d been the one to start flinging spells at what she’d probably seen as a bard who was under her protection. To her, Beau had probably been staff and qualified as one of her people. In a dispute between two of her own people, she’d sided with the one who’d been attacked out of the blue by her idiot cook.

Well, dang it, I thought to myself as I headed out the back door. If I’d been the bad guy in Beau’s story before, I was even more of an evil ex-girlfriend this time around. I brought up my map and headed to Chester’s shop. I needed to fix some things.

“Hey Chester,” I called out from the back door.

“Karma?” Lily’s voice met me instead.

“Lily,” I said, poking my head around the doorway of the back room. “I’m sorry to bug you, but I was hoping to maybe get some supplies?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Lily answered with a tight smile. Guilt met me and shook my hand. Lily was a friend and I loved her in my own way. She was real and she was stuck in a story in Fizzbarren’s selfish machine.

“How are you feeling?” I tried to ask in a kind tone. I’d cast Lift Spirits on her, but I’d brushed off their thanks. It had to have left some resentment in there.

“Fine, thank you,” Lily remained professional. It wasn’t working. “What can I help you with?”

I was tempted to try casting Lift Spirits again, but it didn’t seem like it would help an attitude that I’d fully earned with my disregard of her feelings before. Lily had been on the verge of hope and I’d kicked her like a dog crawling out from under the porch and hoping that its master was in a good enough mood not to kick it today. My shoulders slumped.

“I could use a backpack,” I told her, bringing a few silvers out of my inventory. Being a stand-in for a bard paid well.

“There are six on the wall back there,” Lily pointed, her chin stubborn, but her eyes softening at my gentle tone. That was the Lily I loved. She was stubborn and loyal.

“Thank you,” I said, stalling until she looked me in the eyes. “I’m grateful for all the help you and Chester have given me. I don’t deserve it.”

Was it manipulative? Yes. But I meant it. I regretted my shortness with her and Chester.

“The backpacks are four silver each,” Lily blinked her eyes too fast.

“Would you be interested in buying a few rabbit pelts?” I asked, only having three and a half silver to spare. “I’m a little short.”

“I can buy pelts,” she bristled again like I was trying to barter her down. I wasn’t. I was ready to pay full price and then some. Chester had offered Kat and I the packs at cost before, but if it cost me two silver to earn a bit of forgiveness, I was in the market and ready to pay.

“How are these?” I pulled out a stack of five medium quality pelts. I knew their worth. “I can give you all these and two silver for a backpack.”

“Well.” Lily ran her hands over the pelts. I knew she should accept. The pelts were worth more than the backpacks all by themselves.

“I’ll even throw in another Lift Spirits,” I tried to joke only to see her stiffen. I had a lot of salt to counter. I’d need more sugar than that. “Not that I’d ever charge you or Chester for that. Bad joke. Sorry.”

“I can give you a backpack in return for two pelts,” Lily told me, separating them into stacks on the counter.

“Thank you, Lily.” I laid my hand over hers on the pelts and was rewarded with a smile when she didn’t jerk it away from me. “I’m sorry I was so short with you and Chester when I cast Lift Spirits the other day. I wasn’t myself.”

“I can understand that.” Lily gave a self-depreciative smile. “Happens often enough to me. I’m sorry I’ve snapped at you. You did do Chester and I a favor.”

My heart swelled a bit as I cast Lift Spirits on Lily and then on myself. I figured I could use it too. It didn’t take away grief, but it made my shoulders feel less heavy.

“Keep the extra pelts,” I told Lily, taking a single backpack from the shelf. “Friend to friend. They’ll make a nice blanket for your bed.”

“They would,” Lily admitted.

“When you stroke the fur, maybe it’ll make you remember me more fondly,” I paused at the door to say before leaving her with the thought.