"So now I need a class." He looked down. "Some clothes, too."

The clothing drawers held only dresses and the like. Wait, he did sign up for male, didn't he? His heart paused for a moment as he checked. Ah. No, he wasn't a girl now. This wasn't his room; he'd been stashed in Tazo's. A second bedroom looked like his official parents' place, with few possessions but trinkets he didn't recognize. And a sheathed sword hanging on the wall.

He climbed down a ladder and discovered a workshop. Most of the cabin's lower floor was full of wooden tubs that smelled rank. All over the walls were nunchucks or something. Vonn blinked. The handles were milky yellow-white, connected by thin rope and hanging on pegs. He picked one up and felt its waxy texture. Oh, this was a double candle! Or two candles, if he cut the rope in the middle.

"So where do these rules come in?" he asked himself. "Identify. Analyze. Scan."

He was about to give up when a window appeared, informing him: [Tallow Candle, good quality.]

Yet when he looked at a wooden stool and a knife, nothing happened. "I know the family trade," he said.

The final room on the ground floor was a boy's messy haven. No bed, only a blanket pile, hidden amid junk. Nearly everything he examined came with commentary.

A scroll covered in doodles. [Sketch, low quality.]

[Iron scraps.]

[Screws, low quality.]

[Wooden Gear, good quality.]

[Stove, low quality, nonstandard, destroyed.]

This last item was a collection of iron pipes looped strangely in one corner and piercing the wooden wall. It had been bashed out of position and showed bright bits where it'd been chipped by impact. The wall showed scorch marks and crude repair, too.

Vonn stepped back from it. He'd studied his famous namesake, so he recognized the intended design. "A Franklin stove. One that... that..."

The item description glimmered and rewrote itself. [Franklin stove, low quality, destroyed. Produces lethal exhaust.]

For the first time, Vonn's fur stood on end. He finally became aware of his own tail. It had frizzed out like a cat's. The bizarre thing had been hanging there, stalking him unnoticed, but now it twitched and ached as though he'd been sleeping on an arm or leg and it complained with a pins-and-needles feeling.

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Turning away from it, he found a wooden box of clothes. He owned two white lace-up shirts that came down to his thighs, a pair of leather pants with a loop that went over his tail, two much-abused pairs of socks, underwear, a belt, and a worn pair of glossy boots coated in tallow or something and smelling of muck. He got dressed, which involved getting his muzzle caught on the shirt and struggling to figure out the tail loop.

A gasp behind him made his ears flick backward, and he belatedly turned to see what caused it. Two more of the foxfolk had walked into the candle shop and spotted him alive and rummaging.

The woman squashed him in a hug as powerful as Tazo's had been. He blushed deeply as first she, then the man with her fawned over him. Tazo was leaning in the doorway, looking nonchalant.

"Let's not dwell on that damned thing," said the father of Vonn. "We'll get you started with sensible, honest work."

Vonn had been looking back at the stove. He was having trouble meeting the eyes of his unwitting adoptive parents.

Tazo said, "He warned me he's still loopy. Had visions or something. Even his profile was garbled nonsense."

Vonn nodded. "Yeah. I'm sorry. In advance, I mean. But I'll try to get better."

His new mother and father displayed the names Yarri and Dukan, when he focused on them. The one was a matronly fox with a black shawl that she now threw on the floor; the other was silver-streaked and bore an impressive scar under his left jaw where the fur had never fully regrown.

When the little celebration ended, Vonn cleared his throat. "So, I'm supposed to pick a class today?"

Vonn's father nodded. "Craftsman is obviously your best first choice. You can bring any of the candles you made; those on the rack over there are yours."

His mother said, "Everyone should take a level in Mage or the like. Why not your first?"

"He hasn't got any offerings for that."

"I could teach him. It doesn't absolutely have to be today."

"The boy's been spending too much time with the damn clockwork to take magic lessons, and now he needs to get to the temple. No time for more studying. Let Mage be his second level."

Tazo said, "Mom, Dad. It's his decision."

Vonn nodded. "I need time to think. Maybe I could take a walk?"

Tazo grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the door. "I'll bring him back safe and sound by sunset."

#

Vonn got pulled outside the candle shop, and into a world of fog and vines. The shop stood on a broad wooden platform overlooking a swampy river. Sunlight wandered down through shifting gaps in the forest canopy. Boats drifted downstream and one glittered as it zigagged against the current, toward a columned building of white stone. Thatch huts and cabins lined both banks.

A bird dropped through the branches and looked like it was going to crash. But its wings spread wide and flickered, slowing its fall enough to reveal the backpack it wore. "Aves!" said Vonn, as the creature -- the person -- veered off upstream with lazy flaps.

"Probably more orders for the miners, like they don't know how to do their jobs."

So they could fly after all. Vonn was a little jealous. He took his eyes off the sight, though, and turned to Tazo. "My choices are Mage or Craftsman?"

Tazo stamped the dock beneath her. "Don't let them dictate that. After what you've been through I can't blame you if you don't want to follow through with becoming an Engineer, but don't give it up because you felt obligated."