Aiko brought in the nuts and vegetables she had been pouring her Mana into for the last couple of days. She had to have help to get the vegetables in because they were so much larger than she was. It’s not that she couldn’t manipulate the vegetables but she found that her fine control over the Chaos grasp spell was lacking.

At first, she meant to bring the harvest in herself but she ended up bumping the sides of the entrance with the large vegetable that she was trying to manipulate. She spent several minutes trying to get the vegetable that she had been floating up to that point to rotate and slide lengthwise into the excavation between the two astonished guards.

It refused to go in the way that she wanted it to and instead hit the side several times before spinning out of her grasp and rolling down the side of the hill.

The two guards including Brimit were both hiding their mouths and trying to keep from bursting out in laughter at her antics. At first, she glared at them but soon enough she thought over it and decided that it truly was just that funny, and suddenly all three of them burst out laughing. At that point, she decided to ask For help and got an acquaintance to come move the vegetable that she had been manipulating with the spell into the hole.

For the past couple of days, she had been working with a youth by the name of Skemmel who had been tasked with moving large branches and rocks to clear the way for further expansion of the warrants. When she had first run into Skemmel he was trying to direct several of the youth in moving a large branch that had fallen into the path that one of the tunnels was supposed to expand. The group of youths were having a very hard time moving the large branch when all of a sudden it jumped into the air several hand spans high before rushing towards the woods.

Aiko had nearly wet herself whenever the overzealous youth ran up to her and started peppering her with questions. At one point she considered using the chaos grasp spell to move him aside so that she could avoid him but she kept herself from doing that barely. Skemmel asked her numerous times how she had done that and she just looked at her status screen at the description of the spell and pondered how to answer that.

Chaos grasp. The caster of this spell can spend a few points of Mana to lift, hold, move, and otherwise manipulate objects at a distance. Objects of equal or lesser weight than the caster may be moved for two Mana and each additional body weight costs an additional Mana point to a maximum of twenty times the caster’s body weight.

Eventually, she just remembered what Brimit had said and told him that she had the power and left it at that despite his incessant pestering.

In this particular situation, Skemmel was fairly competent at arranging the efforts of the youth group that he was in charge of. The lot of them managed to get the vegetables and nuts that she had gathered into her room in short order and in thanks, she left a couple of the large vegetables outside for them.

Aiko had arranged for one of the council members to go around with her while she was doing her various trades. She looked about at the many things that were on offer but decided that there was very little that she was truly interested in. The major exception to that being the vegetables and fruit seeds that she found.

There were apparently a number of different fruit seeds that were available in this Village.

Some of the seeds weren’t going to be of much help to her owing to the fact that they came from fruit trees and not bushes but a lot of them were from small ground plants that died off and grew back every year.

In total Aiko found seven varieties of seeds that would grow from ground plants and three varieties of berry bushes that she got seeds for. There were also 12 varieties of vegetables that the rabbit people had been gathering and she bartered seeds from all of those.

Unfortunately, there were not a lot of other goods that the rabbit people had that she wanted. She found that they had a few implements of pottery that were rather well made and very much to her liking.

One of these things was jars that the rabbit people were using for an art that they called canning and fermentation. Apparently, they would go about picking vegetables and fruit and would put them into a jar with a bit of salt and water, and eventually, the things in the jar would change n in texture flavor, and smell.

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Aiko also couldn’t help being drawn to several of the smaller items that were called toys for children. She had hoped that she was a bit more mature than that but it turned out that, no, when given the chance she really did want some of the small knickknacks.

She was on her way back to her room when she happened to glance over to the side and see a small boy sitting in the edge of one of the offshoot routes headed back into the gloom. At first, he didn’t really stand out to her and she almost passed by without thinking about him but something caught her attention. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was but something told her to look back.

Aiko stopped to glance at the boy and though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that had gotten her attention. now that she was paying attention she noticed a few things that she wished she hadn’t. Aside from being a bit unkempt and not wearing any clothing.

That was something that she had grown accustomed to the fact that a lot of these rabbit people did not do.

This boy also had a certain worn and dirty look about him. He was sitting there with his head down and almost appeared like he had been crying. The few things that she could tell about him were that he hadn’t taken a bath recently and it looked as though one of his ears was broken since it was lying flat backward about halfway up.

She began walking over to the boy but the council member seemed to get in her way and tried to shield her from him or vice versa. Aiko wasn’t very happy about this and quickly darted around the older man earning a cry of protest in the process. When she got closer to the boy a foul stench assaulted her nose and she almost backpedaled but kept herself on course and kneeled beside him.

The vacant look in his eyes didn’t seem to shift much but then he seemed to take in her strange appearance as compared to all the other people around her and truly looked at her for the first time.

After looking at her for what seemed like an age but couldn’t have been more than the briefest of moments the boy spoke in a rough whisper. “What are you and what are you going to do to me? Are you some form of snake here to take me to My death?”

Aiko was so taken a bag by his words that she nearly fell over from shock. That was only made worse a moment later whenever the councilman reached down and grabbed her shoulder giving her an utter fright. “I would ask that you leave that one alone. He is an ill omen who was cursed by the gods.”

“While everyone else received a system from the gods he did not. We tried to banish him but despite the beatings, he wouldn’t leave.”

When Aiko looked up at the man with horror written across her face the old man recoiled as if he had been slapped. It was apparent from his demeanor that he couldn’t understand why she was looking at him that way until she spoke. “That’s horrible! How could you treat one of your own that way? I can understand you not being worried about somebody that wasn’t from your warren and not wanting to endanger somebody who was from your warren but this boy is not like that.”

The old man’s face clouded over with anger before he visibly forced himself to calm down. Aiko only very recently having acquired the ability to even read the expression on his face and only because so many of his expressions seemed to be rather exaggerated when dealing with her.

Nonetheless, the old man replied to her. “Young lady I would appreciate it if you not presume to tell us how to run the affairs of our own Warren. This one is cursed and not part of our Warren because of it. Now come along and leave him be.”

Aiko looked back at the boy staring dejectedly at her feet and then scowled back at the old man but got up anyway. However, in an act of defiance, she pulled her arm from one of the straps of her backpack and rummaged out one of the large dried berries that she had acquired earlier before handing it over to the boy.

The look on his face as she shoved the food into his hands was as though he regarded her as a god of mercy. She then turned to the council member who seemed outraged and stormed past him while he spluttered and tried to form a coherent derision to throw at her while he tried to catch up with her.

Aiko finally made her way back to her assigned home and found several of the youths there arguing with a few of the other rabbit people. When the councilman asked “What’s going on here?” they all looked startled but most of the older rabbit men people either looked abashed or angry while the youths all looked indignant.

There was a lot of shouting and incoherent name-calling as insults were flung back and forth until the councilmen yelled to put a stop to it. He looked at a couple of the oldest in the group and questioned them first. “Okay transit and semis why don’t you two tell me what’s going on here?”

The older rabbit man and rabbit woman got a condescending smirk on their face when they were called on before the youths and Aiko was immediately wary of their replies. Both of them had roughly the same answer. They both claimed that they were only there to collect the goods that they had bartered for earlier in the day.

All of that seemed reasonable to Aiko but then she thought better of it and just as the Councilman was about to start saying something else she looked at one of the youths that she recognized from the group she had been working with and asked. “If that’s true why are you trying to stop them?”