My mood is definitely up. Pretty girls have always done that to me.

In the next week, we have two more band practices, and Gemma is up to three songs. We added Take it Easy by the Eagles, but it took two practices to get it right, rather than one for each of the other two songs. It's not that much harder. We have a total of three songs in our repertoire, but three is better than zero.

Near the end of the week, the leader-not-leader of the village, Flynn, suggests that we improve our hunting, working together with specific folks. WIth a bit of grumbling, folks acknowledge it’s a good idea. We’re all eventually going to head towards part two, so we should probably get better.

That is one of the things that annoys me about almost everyone in this town. Nearly no one seems to take practicing seriously. Gemma trains pretty hard. So does Jace. Gwynnyth too. And Alan lifts like a madman. But that’s four of twenty. And even those four, they do what they’re doing some, but they’re not really working at getting better. Maybe they don’t know how to practice. Maybe it’s a musician thing.

For a couple weeks, we triple up in teams, and I’m working with Dan and Yulia. It’s a weird combo. Dan is bait, Yulia is offense, and strangely, I’m defense. Dan has to learn to fight, and like a lot of folks, he ends up carrying both a spear and a sword. He’s super good at pissing things off by being somewhere, poking them, and then not being there. Teleportation is great for angering animals. If a critter gets too close to someone, I zoom in, and either redirect the creature, or I move the person. Dan’s heavier than I am, but I can move him a few steps before most critters can turn, or even notice. Yulia is light, if somewhat distracting when I have to move her. I also have to watch for danger, and manage stunning sound-walls.

We start with an auroch, some sort of prehistoric bull. Dan happens to be wearing a red shirt. The bullfight doesn’t last long. I guess a teleporting matador isn’t quite fair, is it? After the auroch, we manage similar tactics against an elephant-sized rhinoceros, and then against what I can only assume is some sort of dinosaur. Dan called it an allosaur, and says we were super-lucky there was only one of them. We’re hunting basically every day, and not running out of critters somehow. I’m somewhat surprised by how many monsters we find.

Each day after the hunt, we agree it’s over, and Dan teleports home. The first time, Yulia had to ask if I wanted to go swimming again. After that, it was just what we did after. At the end of the week, after a particular difficult fight against a golden eagle with a twenty-foot wingspan, we went again. After a dive into the pool when racing to hop in, Yulia pops up out of the water topless. She covers up, embarassed, after I point out her bra floating nearby. It had apparently slipped off in the dive. I reassure her that I hadn’t been upset.

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Another day, at the pool, Yulia swims, and I pull out the monkeybone guitar, a couple cymbals and my toms. After a smidge of tuning, I run the whole band for a bunch of Beatles songs. When I get to Julia, I change the lyrics to say Yulia.

The second week, Flynn drops us down to two person teams, and Dan gets paired up with Chaim, as the disappearing duo. Yulia and I hunt faster, and take longer breaks at the pool. One day, she gets scared by something and jumps up real close. It turns out to have been a branch falling in the pool. We have a good laugh, but she doesn’t let go of the hug. Which turns into a kiss. And then more. She’d been doing without for a year also, and was eager to rectify the situation.

Flynn stops assigning partners because of complaints from Rick and Mary, but Yulia and I keep hunting as a pair. And then swimming and other adult activities. She likes my large hands and feet. I love the fact that I can grab her with my tail, and pull her towards me.

There’s not much time to spend together apart from our afternoons of hunting and horizontal-ing. I have drumming, weapons practice, and running to worry about. Yulia has her own sword practice, and then meditation and xiphomancy to work on. So we barely see each other apart from our h-centric activities.

Gemma and Cad keep coming by in the afternoons a couple days a week to play music. Over the course of a month, Gemma is up to eight songs. Cad can sing all of them. My favorite is Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. The guitar chords are pretty easy, but the drum track is fun. The weirdest thing though is that Gemma keeps getting sore fingers from the guitar. I don't remember playing with anyone who still had sore fingers after six weeks of guitar practice.

It would be a lot nicer if there were better musicians in town. When I said I wanted a band, I didn't really mean that I wanted to train a band. And I'm still doing all of the leading. I bring songs, I write the lyrics down, and show Gemma the chords. Real musicians would be good.

Regardless, Yulia is a treat. She apparently grew up in Yakutsk, Russia, before immigrating to the States when she was twelve. From her song preferences, she's at least a few years older than me, but still won't tell me her age. But age is just a number, right? And I spend some quality alone-time with a stunningly pretty girl every day.

A month in, Rick comes by and asks whether I’m going on my walkabout soon. I say that I’m not quite ready to go, and he says he’s glad I’m staying. Then he heads back towards his hut wearing his classic smirk.