I carried Anna to her chair. She was worn out from the play, worn out… and probably a little sore. She had red marks all up and down her neck from where I had nibbled and kissed her a little too vigorously.

I wanted nothing more than to just sit down with her on my lap and just forget myself for another hour of the day.

It was a day of firsts, so I decided to make a snack for her before I went and did my chores. wandering inside I took the dry kernels I had gotten from Gunther, and a little oil, and a little salt, and put them in a heated pot and let them pop into tiny white fluffy bits.

They were bigger than the ones I remembered, but then again, so were the kernel and all that would do was make it better.

It was a simple snack, just a little oil and some salt, but it was tasty. I got Anna’s empty cup and one of my own and filled them up before serving the fluffy treat in a bowl for Anna.

I made sure to also grab a cloth, but I needn’t have bothered.

“Here we are, one snack.” I called out to her as I exited, “Have you ever seen this?”

Anna was relaxed in the wood chair, all droopy, but she perked up a little when I came out.

I looked her over, but in the ten or some minutes I had been gone, she had lost all of her energy.

I walked over and put the stuff down, leaning in to ask, “Do you want me to bring you to bed?”

She shook her head, “No… I’m just running out of energy, is all. I made a deal to borrow some from one of the animals earlier, and it ran out. I’m sleepy, but I’m ok. Are you going to… Oh, a snack? Thanks… What is it, though.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, borrowing energy from an animal sounded kind of crazy, but it made some sense.

I found it a bit touching that she used up all of her energy to understand me.

“Maize,” I told her, “Try it. It’s just got a bit of salt and oil,” I told her, passing the bowl over to her, where she moved it onto her lap.

“Maize? How did you?... Well, never mind that. Salt and oil? That sounds like it would hit the spot. Thank you.”

“No, thank you. You went and used up all your energy on me. Just relax, and call on me if you need something. I’m more than happy to help. Okay?”

She mumbled a, “Mhm,” that made me want to scoop her up, but I let that pass and got to work.

I tilled and tended to plants and did a bit of watering. The grass had been behaving, so I didn’t need to cut it down to size. I harvested more potatoes and some of the stuff I planted on the side of the hill.

The Pantry was full to the brim with them, I might have to rethink using some because, at this point, it was starting to look like a full pantry before winter.

We could probably sit back and not need to get any food if we were okay with just potatoes for the rest of the year.

Maybe I should see if anyone could use these? Would Anna know? Maybe… But I would probably need to wait until after we get back… They’ll keep just fine, so I should use the tomatoes first… Wait if we can grow potatoes, we can grow tomatoes. I should plant one in the garden, just for fresh tomatoes.

I decided to set one to the side, I would put one of the chillies to the side, too, even if they wouldn’t grow as well, I might as well check and see if it grows well enough to be worth it.

I stepped outside after piling the potatoes and saw Anna getting to the bottom of the bowl, whipping up salt with the oil in the bottom.

She was a bit livelier now and less droopy, so I got her cup and filled it with some water. I also spent five minutes pulling what I assumed was heat mana out of it, plucking it out to cool the water down before bringing it outside to her.

I had not failed miserably, per se, but I had done a less-than-stellar job.

She took a sip and stared out at the grove. She looked peaceful and a little happy, and I was glad to see it. She had totally ignored the towel I had placed next to her, she hadn’t needed it. She simply flicked the oil off of her fingers, using some kind of magic to separate it from her before letting the motion carry it off into the grass.

I looked at the oil, but it was a bit too complex for me to figure out. It might be a plant or animal, but whatever, it had other stuff in it that made it appear like a separate thing altogether.

Not wanting to knock over the bowl on her lap, I instead pulled the nearby chair over and sat down next to her, leaning in to lay my head on her shoulder.

She reached up and played with my ears, the tickling feeling sending shivers down my spine. I unintentionally leaned in a little before I got a grip and stopped.

“I don’t know which one’s weirder, that you figured out my butt, or it took you so long to play with my ears so much,” I murmured.

“Well, in my defense,” Anna told me, “They look very sensitive, and even if I did, would you have been comfortable with it like you are now? And it wasn't your butt, it was the base of your spine.”

“Probably not, no. It’s way too easy a spot for someone to go for, both of them.” I told her.

“Ominous,” she told me, “You make it sound like a bad thing. I think it’s cute.”

That put me off-kilter, off balance, and I opened my mouth without thinking.

“Cute? That’s not- What do you- What are you talking about?” I asked her, raising my head from ear scratch range. My ears perked, my instincts echoing that something was afoot.

I looked at her and found her smiling at my confusion, and it took me a few too many seconds to catch why. It had been a trap. An underhanded trick.

Anna, the cunning monster she was, always able to catch me unexpecting, said, “What? You are cute. Don’t worry, you can be cute and beautiful at the same time.”

I groaned but replied somewhat painfully, “You can…”

Anna just chuckled, she could have pushed it, rubbed it in, but she didn’t. She was the picture of magnanimity, well, magnanimity with a smirk.

I reached out and tickled her.

“Hey! Don’t- Stop that,” she wined, “I yield, yield!”

I stopped tickling, assured of my victory. Anna nocked my hands away from her, and I pretended that the light whaps stung a little to further appease her wrath.

We lulled into silence, not an awkward one, but one where neither of us felt like we needed to fill the silence. Instead, after a bit, she leaned into me, and I leaned into her, our hands moving to hold one another, we spent some time just enjoying each other’s presence.

We drank, we moved our fingers a little, but that was all.

We sat like that for what felt like an hour before Anna asked, “So… Are you going to tell me why you kept your instinct down?”

I thought about it for a moment, about it earlier and about yesterday. I thought about the feeling of blood in my mouth and how my instincts refused to let me die.

“It’s just been a lot… I guess. And it’s not something I really thought about… It’s been quiet for a long time, and it was one of those things you didn’t talk about to begin with, not normally. It’s been so… I don’t know, active? I guess. It’s been influencing me more than before, and yesterday, it scared me, and today it was also strong. I… I just didn’t want to scare you, I guess. Could you imagine if I woke you up like that? If I just started nipping you?”

Stolen story; please report.

She let out a tiny tinkle of a laugh, her eyes closing up slightly to reveal tiny crow’s feet. I looked at her, watching the change in her face as she tinkled to herself.

I don’t get it. Did I say something funny? Did I mess up a word and make it sound funny? Gods, I wish I had asked Skipseo how he dealt with Kindly. Maybe he would have it in his journal or something, but I’m not going to get that. Even if it would help me a lot… No. No grave robing Saphine, that’s his book… I mean… would it really be all that bad…

I didn’t have enough time to finish contemplating grave robbery before Anna stopped laughing and started talking.

“You- y- Pff. Sorry, sorry. But if you woke me up by kissing me, I wouldn’t mind it, with or without teeth.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Saphine, I’m a spinster, getting together with anyone, even less with someone I would want to get together with. Being woken up with kisses was the last thing I was expecting in my life, but it’s something I could get used to. I can understand the idea of freaking me out, of scaring me, but you really don’t need to worry about that. Its when you’re gone that I get scared for you,” she said, looking at me with more than a little mirth.

I took in her genuine face and her tone and gave her my most genuine response in turn.

“You’re not even old, you're like six years older than me. And are you sure your head is on the right way? It’s not just the kissing… It’s the whole thing.”

She snorted out a laugh at me, “I am old, not old old, but older. If you don’t think I am, I dare you to go looking for women my age who are unmarried. Short of widows, you probably won’t. You’re getting up there in age, too, by the way, young lady. And what do you mean by having my head on the right way?” she asked right after chiding me with a foe mom voice.

She left no room for me to follow after either, instead taking a note out of Straus's book and putting on a pantomime with a voice to match.

“Ohhh, No… I’ve woken up being held by a beautiful woman with whom I have a possible romantic relationship and am attracted to… Oh, no… now she’s kissing me… Oh no, she wants to be playful… Whatever will I do?”

Something about that couched the idea of just how much I was overselling it. It gave a spin on my perspective from the other side that simple words didn’t. It also made me stifle a smirk. I found myself letting off a little of the tension I never realized I held inside of me.

“Ok… Okay… I get it… You’re an old woman, and I’m the one with my head on backwards,” I told her, raising my hands in surrender.

I could have brought up the biting, but she had been ok about that.

“Damn straight. I’m going to have to watch you around older women, and trees preserve me if you ever meet my mother without me,” she said.

“Why? Is she hot?” I asked, “Because that’s important. If your mom is old and good-looking, that means you’re probably going to be old and good-looking too.”

That caught her off guard and made her blush again.

“I- I don’t know… Maybe? She was well regarded as a beauty, as far as I remember hearing anyways,” Anna mumbled.

“Then that just means I’m on the winning side if I stick with you,” I told her.

I couldn’t tell if Anna was about to explode or stammer or what, but she was certainly going to do something. She was confused, and possibly happy, and possibly embarrassed all at once. She stayed like that for a shot few moments before she had a sudden look of remembrance.

“I have to ask you some stuff… Magic Stuff… For becoming a Journeyman,” she blurted, trying to divert the conversation into something that hopefully wouldn’t make her feel embarrassed.

I raised my eyebrow, “Aren’t I already a Journeyman? I have the class and everything.”

She nodded, but gave me a pointed look, “Yes, you have the class. But you got the class after gaining a truly ungodly amount of levels overnight… Literally. The fact is Saphy… You're leveling and picking up spells far faster than normal. One part of it is that you're not a teen. I’ve been learning to do this since before I had levels… Mostly background, which is what you’re ‘supposed to do.’ All the testing is, are a handful of questions to prove you have the background information needed to continue to succeed. I won’t teach you a new spell until after you can answer all five.”

I thought that through, and while the process seemed annoying, I could see the reason for it.

“Levels aren’t everything, and they can’t ensure that I don’t make a mistake… You wouldn’t trust a [Swordsman] to not cut off his own foot without testing him first, even if he was level twenty. Is that it?” I asked her, sounding it out as I thought it through.

“Yep. That’s the best Idea I can guess at. Responsibility stuff… I’m almost sure you’re going to end up pondering them for like three seconds and then pull the answers out of your backside… but you never know. Maybe one of these days, I’ll see you use that head of yours for longer than six seconds at a time,” she said, voice edging into sardonic teasing.

“Hah. I don’t know… If I use it too long, my head might light on fire. I’ll have to give the fox that rolls around in my head a union. It would be a horrible mess, and then it all goes downhill from there…” I told her remorsefully.

She gave me a playful whack before wrapping her arm around mine. No doubt because she heard the small ring of truth in my joke. I pressed into her, a little closer, a little warmer.

“I’ll go on ahead and give you my questions, are you ready?”

“Yes,” I told her simply, a tiny pit of the unknown forming in my gut.

She cleared her throat before proclaiming, “They are as follows… What is the next spell I will teach you? What are the Base Mana Types? With one quirk of each. What is a spell? Why isn't everyone a mage, and what are the recognized basic types of casting.”

I was hit with a sudden pang of feeling like I had forgotten something. I didn’t know if I had or not, but just the feeling alone made my head try and remember.

“Uh… I have two questions to help narrow it down. Can I ask them?” I asked her, stalling for time.

There must have been quite the look on my face because Anna chuckled a little.

“You don’t have to answer them right now, back to back, you silly goober. And you can if you think they will help, I don’t remember a reason not to answer a question, as long as it’s not one of the five. Go on, shoot. What’s on your mind.”

My head stopped bouncing around inside to get the answers, and I took a breath.

“So, first off, I remember the basic types, kind of, from the book, but do I include the, uh, Arcane ones? There was also a section on occult magic, so what about those?” I asked her.

“I would say that basic mana types include the arcane ones but not the occult ones. Arcane magic is a bit tougher to wrap your head around, but they’re useful to understand. Some of the occult magic mentioned in the book are inconclusive, so you can’t include them all, and I won’t even try to make you. That was a good question, so what’s question number two?”

I felt a little embarrassed at the tiny bit of praise, but I pushed that to the side and focused on question two.

“So, I assume normally, I would figure out what makes a spell, a spell. But normally, that would probably be about mana, about doing magic with mana, that is. But with what is going on and a little of what I know, should I answer generally for all magic? Or just with mana, or with mana and tenebra or whatever?” I asked her.

Each word felt confused, and the same confusion seemed to pass along to Anna, whose look became more and more confused and thoughtful as she picked through my question.

“Technically, when we answer the question, we are supposed to give our best and most thoughtful answer. So, in light of that, I’ll ask you to do a general one. If you know something and didn’t include it, it wouldn’t be the best answer, it would just be an incomplete answer,” she said before nodding to herself, “Gods, that’s a good question. There’s no way your answer is going to be worse than mine.”

I thought about it and nodded, “Okay. I guess I’ll be reading more than… And it’s getting late, or late-ish. I’ll make dinner tonight if your ok with that. Maybe I’ll do both at the same time.”

“Make me dinner? Why would I say no to you making dinner?” She asked.

“We’ll… I don’t know… Just figured I would ask. For all I know, you were planning something.”

“My oh my,” Anna said, “Are you planning something special tonight? How romantic..”

She drew out the word romantic like you might draw out so.

“I don’t have anything special planned for tonight unless you count tomatoes and chillies as special. Tomorrow and the next day though, if you want to try to go for another picnic, I can think of a place, and the day after I'm heading out somewhere if you want to come. Both are somewhere that’s interesting… Although I would have to carry you there and back for tomorrow, it’s quite the distance,” I told her, my mind wandering towards the nameless grove.

It seemed like it would be a perfect place to have a nice picnic, magic and beautiful and tranquil. If I found Strause tomorrow, I might even get some of that food.

I had even gotten rid of a lot of the gremlins that were nearby, so there was no way they could include patrols that far from their nest.

Should I have told them where it was? I suppose there were those hunters… I’ll check in tomorrow if I can find him. He’ll know what to do… Probably. He might even do it for me… I wonder if Gunther might know where I can find him.

“Chillies? Those don’t grow here. That's a spice, right? Like pepper?”

“Yep, though they’re kind of… Hot. I guess. Like mint, but hot instead of cold. I bought some from a merchant. Would you mind if I plant a little of it off to the side? It would be nice to have tomatoes and stuff.”

“Sounds interesting, at least, even if it’s not romantic. And sure… Go on ahead and plant them off to the side instead of in the main garden beds. As for a picnic… Sure… Though do you really need to carry me? It can’t be that far, right?”

I told her how far it was, and she started blinking at me owlishly.

“What?”

“It is… I can probably get there faster this time, I’ll be able to run the whole way there for one, but it’s still a long way.”

“What could possibly be that far out in the middle of nowhere?” She asked.

I shrugged, “That’s a secret. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Though… I can say it would be better than the sprites, though,” I told her leadingly.

"And what about the day after, what are we doing?" She asked.

I just smiled at her, not saying a word. She looked at me, measuringly before speaking up.

“You tease, you utter harlot, you evil temptress you. … I’m sold,” she said with faux indignation.

I sniffed back a chortle and got up slowly, making my way inside, “Well, evil tempting harlot I am, I’m going to go make dinner, anything I can get for you?”

“Nothing! I can’t believe this… Tempting me so… Think of the children! Don’t you go propositioning me, were in public!” She said, each bit a little louder as I left.

“I’m going to go read up, too, you want me to bring out a book for you?” I called back to her.

“Begone temptress!” She shouted back at me, barely holding back a laugh.

“OK, see you in a while,” I told her.