Me and Selly wandered out of the cabin and through the now bird-populated grove. I didn’t know why the birds had decided to stay or why Anna had presumably invited them in, but Selly fucking hated them.

She hissed like a screaming cat or some strange species of rodent when a bird came up, waving her sowing needle sword from a tuft next to my ear at it like it was some kind of magical bane that would turn the creatures. A Silvered bullet from a sling or steak to a werewolf or some other magical nonsense, waving it like a shield against the tiny songbird that passed by.

Funny enough, it had no chance to land, my long legs carrying me past its arc too quickly for it to land on me. Birds were, overall, a strange breed of animal. They were incredibly primitive, some were less so, but songbirds and the like were almost universally the kind of bird that would land on a tall person, not realizing they were not, in fact, a tree.

This one missed me as it dove, moving oddly through the air before slamming face-first into the dirt like the silly little thing it was before trying to catch me for a reason I couldn’t guess and didn’t want to know and did not intend to draw out because Selly’s hissing was incredibly freaking loud when she was right next to my ears.

Avoiding the bird, I headed out of the grove, the chill of the morning air warming from the summer sun.

“Selly, please don’t screech shrilly in my ear; I understand that you hate birds, I get it, but please… In the name of everything good in this fading world, don’t take it out on my ears and break my hearing because you have a grudge against them,” I whined at her, unable to clap my ears down without trapping her under my ear.

“You have to establish dominance; they're like flying lizards birds! You have to show 'em who's who, or they’ll never take you seriously,” she shouted into my ears.

“Gah fuck stop that, stop, or I’ll toss you out from under the ear. And stop waving that around. I swear if you stab me, I might get violent, and I’m trying very hard not to be snippy on account of your situation, I don’t want to hit you while you’re down, but please don’t push me, yeh? I don’t care if birds are the lizards of the sky or if they’re just birds. Don’t take it out on me because I like spending time with you.”

“Birds are beasts of the sky and dreck used by the wild ones, and as the new bearer of the quill, tis my duty as the head of my clan to hate birds beyond the hatred of any of my kin,” she said in a more reasonable tone, “but aye. I will keep it down while you hold me safe against them. I forget how big yer ears are, sorry.”

She added ‘sorry,’ and said it like it the admittance of wrongdoing took something from her.

I would give it to her, when she admitted wrongdoing, she was serious about it.

“Thank you,” I told her, my footfalls, with skills behind them, carrying me smoothly out of the wood and into the grass towards the sprawl of Moarn’s wall-less castle town and towards the still unnerving alleys I had been stalked and attacked in.

I had a growing distaste for it, though I knew I needed to keep coming back to town. Despite what I wanted to do, I couldn’t stay secluded in Anna's cabin; I just couldn’t. I had always needed contact with people, without it, I felt restless, and Sophy was correct that the more connection I had, the better I felt. Yesterday had been the best day in a long time; even if it was limited to when I could bring myself to go to town, I would come to meet the people I knew.

“What is so important about the quill? It looks like porcelain, but it's just a normal thing, right?” I asked her, cupping my ear down to better hear her against the rush of air I left in my wake.

“You’re a mage, you tell me. It’s a family heirloom passed from the eldest to the eldest… And now it's mine.”

I, as always, was an unbelievable dumbass. I turned my magical sight to the blade's tiny, distinct shape.

The blade holds mana, everything does… and…

Why is the mana in that toothpick so weird? Beast magic? Its… Potent... Like over-steeped tea, it's like the quill is still alive somehow.

My train of thought juddered to a halt, the odd little magic toothpick unlike anything I had ever seen. Or, I supposed, anything I had ever seen as a mage because I had a feeling I knew what it was.

And that was only because I had [Crude Foci Carver].

It resonated with some unseen aspect of the blade as if whatever made the blade potent was tangentially related. A step-sibling of carving foci, just on a sword.

It was some kind of magical weapon.

I had no idea what it did, but it was a genuine magical object like the sword currently sitting in the closet back in Annas Grove or the status stone I had used in the sunken church.

Maybe it’s more like a bane than I thought… Gods, I wish I knew what it did. That seems so cool. I can't even see any carved lines or anything; it's just smooth.

“Fuck me sideways… That,” I told her, “I do believe, is a genuine, honest to God's magical weapon, I think. I have no idea what it does, but it's tied to beast magic.”

“Are you sure? Because there were like three qualifiers for that sentence. Honestly, you have to work on this wishy-washy bit you do. If you think it’s magical, just say, ‘I think it’s magical,’ not this, ‘I do believe it might possibly, maybe theoretically, could be some sort of thing that could do something, maybe.’ Honestly, kinsman, it’s a bit embarrassing.”

Ouch… is it that bad?

“And if you’re thinking, ‘is it that bad,’ it is. Just because you’re all intellect, doesn’t mean you need to talk like you barely think know what you know. You silly git.”

I sucked a bit of air in through my teeth and almost opened my mouth to say ‘sorry’ when I got control of my mouth and stopped it in its tracks. Instead, I attempted to project confidence, picking up my posture a little while my feet pounded the wet ground under my sandals and tried to talk like I was smart enough to understand literally anything about her magical toothpick.

“It’s a magical item, like the sword in the closet, though, that works using dark magic. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what it does.”

“You need to deal with that sword, by the way,” she said pointedly, “It gives off a major league bad vibe to it. It made it hard to sleep.”

How the hell do I deal with it? It’s a sword, what the hell do I do with it? Does Anna know? Surely, she noticed that there was a dark magic-empowered sword in her grove, but she didn’t mention it.

Am I supposed to fix it?

…

Yeah, I’m probably supposed to fix it. It's my mess, and I can figure out how to clean it up. Maybe Anna wants to make a project of it, but I should be the one to make that move on initiating that. I suppose we can do that after we get the books tomorrow.

I slowed down as I came up to the old road and gave a little hop over the ditch that lay next to it, footsteps clattering on the poorly maintained cobbles.

“That’s the spirit… Now, what the hell are we doing?” she said with a thin, barely felt exuberance that I could see through like glass.

“Well, about that…”

***

We made our way through the city to the cleanest, fanciest den of depravity and withdrew money after being hassled by the man behind the desk and withdrawing funds from my account.

The unnaturally clean building, its perfect wood boards, doorknob, and utterly unnerving everything disturbed me in a way I couldn’t put into words. It was utterly unlike any other building I had been in, before or after my long sleep, and something about how it was more advanced than the other buildings and less advanced than I expected.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Selly was ready to complain by the time I left, but I made my way quickly through the streets to the marketplace, looking over my shoulder enough for Selly to pull the reason out of me, which got her looking behind me and me looking forward.

We didn’t find it, whatever it was, the cat that wasn’t a cat did not make an appearance, which left both of us tense because we didn’t know if it was us missing the cat or if it just wasn’t there.

We made it there on the main roads, avoiding alleys, and made our way through the bustle of the morning crowd.

There were a lot of empty stalls in the market, mostly the ones that belonged to the same company that the merchant from yesterday did. There were a few of them open, but they knew me by sight and watched me wearily and with quite a lot of spite.

I ignored them and made my way to Gunther.

Beatrice, still as harried as yesterday, if not more so, looked like she hadn’t slept a moment.

She had a dead look to her, the kind one gets when they are so tired they no longer feel sleepy, just tired, like their mind had run a marathon. I had only gotten that way once. It was the type of thing that came to people with desks, not people with shovels, but it was a look Skipseo got from time to time whenever Kindly didn’t put him to bed.

The paperwork had piled, but piled in the crisp and orderly way that said, ‘done,’ instead of, ‘please kill me,’ so I decided to tread lightly around her because she had the kind of tired look that went well with temporary madness and the last thing I wanted was for her to find something about the situation funny enough to snap over it.

“Hello, Beatrice, I have returned to pick up some of Gunther's slack. Is she in?” I asked her softly.

She looked up at me, and the look in her eyes was a few steps from inanimate. She had the eyes of a dead person, but when she spoke, she had the same tone to her voice that she had yesterday.

“Gunther is in, but it is too early for her to do any work. Feel free to head into her office.”

I hesitated but opened my mouth and talked to her.

“Gods, you look terrible. Have you been working all night while Gunther goofs off or something?”

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” she told me seriously, “right now I need to finish this stuff up, get this crunched so it's useful.”

“If you don’t sleep, you might end up getting your wish; you look like you're most of the way there already.”

She let out a dark laugh, a hissing chuckle that would fit in with black cats and a coven of witches.

It was spooky coming out of her face, which was all too normal to produce a noise like that. She had too few warts and no cat to pet and chimed in.

“She,” Selly chimed in, “appears to be a few bees short of a hive.”

Beatrice looked up from the desk and around before settling her eyes on my head.

“What was that?”

I straightened, but Selly chimed in before I could.

“I’m the voice in your head, the little voice the sleep keeps away. And I’m telling you to sleep.”

She said it in a funny voice, presumably more for me than the receptionist, who couldn’t understand her. I swat at my head, which didn’t even rustle my hair, but got Selly to cut it out.

“None of that, as funny as it is. She can’t understand you, it’s not fair to talk behind her back like that.”

“Well, now I know it's not in my head; what the hell is that? What’s talking… is it in your hair? What the-”

“It's fine. It's just Selly the Sprite. Gunther’s already met her. She’s hiding in my hair because she's afraid of birds. Selly, show yourself instead of being a joker.”

Selly stood up.

The look on her face was priceless; she stared at my head and watched as Selly stood up. Selly standing up in my hair was like a person standing up in a field of red grain. She was short enough that standing straight upright, she was still halfway submerged in my veritable mane of hair.

The sight of such a tiny person hiding in my hair like a bandit in the brush stupefied her into silence.

“I think you might be right,” she said, “I think I am dying.”

She stood from her chair and just walked away, shouting back, “I’m… just going to go to sleep now,” and then she just left.

“Holy crud, Selly, you broke her. She just gave up. How did you do it?”

“Don’t look at me, I just stood up,” she said indignantly.

“Well, I suppose I know whom I need to go to if I need to shatter someone's fucking mind.”

She kicked my ear in complaint, which didn’t hurt but got my ear to twitch, “I did nothing; don’t go pointing, waving, or gesturing at me, or I’ll bite your bloody hand.”

“I’ll do whatever I want; I am free and have free will.”

“You’re free to get bitten on the hand then. Think about it carefully because I have a small mouth, and it's very sharp,” she told me, her tone acidic enough to etch metal and sickly sweet at the same time.

It was a tone used when you expected someone to immediately test you, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try it.

Point taken. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should. You reap what you sow, play stupid games, and win stupid prizes.

I left the front of the lobby and made the short stint to Gunther's office, the familiar door a mere few treads of my long-legged stride and knocked on the door. I waited a few moments, expecting an answer, but got none. I knocked on the door again, expecting her voice to chime to ‘come in’ or say something grumpy about the time, but I got no reply, no response. There was in fact, no noise coming from the room.

I opened the door slowly before looking inside and was greeted with the sight of the same room as yesterday. The same, with the exception of the stack of papers beyond, the burnt-down candles, and the oil lamp, a metal construct with some form of glass flute. It was beyond fancy for the otherwise starkly barren interior. It was something out of my time, like the doorknob of the merchant house that turned and opened or the printed text, instead of the handwritten form of a more common book, transcribed by someone in a workhouse with skill-based precision.

It was the screw that gave it away for all three, a common component of each that most of my surroundings lacked. It required relative precision, skilled craftsmen, and detailed work. I had no doubt they had screws but in a door handle? In a lamp? They required small screws, small metal screws. A printing press was easier to make than a tiny screw. It was an odd enough thing to me that they were so uncommon as to stand out as just another odd quirk of life here.

Similar but different, just in a million tiny ways.

I suppose it makes sense; things changing over time are hard to spot day by day; you can see the weirdness, the change from another angle over time. I’m just living in that angle. If I had lived through all the changes, everything would make sense.

I just didn’t, and now I have to reconcile my world, or the image of my world, with the world as it is.

“Selly, do you have a good memory?” I asked her.

“Sure, not perfect, but my head is on the right way round. I’ve got a fine memory; why?” she asked, confused about my angle and unaware of my train of thought.

“I think I’m a bit too close to my issues. I keep getting caught up in stuff and going from one thing to the next. I need someone to check my rapidly worsening inability to focus on things that aren’t immediately the issue so I can fix stuff,” I told her, looking for Gunther in her office.

As it turned out, another standout oddity of the day was that there was a suspicious lack of Gunther in Gunther’s office. I looked around from the doorway but couldn’t see or hear her. If it weren’t for Gunther’s smell and Beatrice's affirmation that Gunther was in her office, I wouldn’t have known. The smell in the corridor was about the same in intensity as that of the room. It was noise.

“So, hold on. You want me to be your what? Your checklist? Why don’t you ask your silly [Druid], she seems to have her head on her shoulders, or, better yet, write it down?”

I came up with my reasons, compiling them and reducing them to their base pieces as I stepped past the threshold and looked behind the door. I felt bad for doing it, but I decided to add in an appeal to her ego to nudge her.

“I can lose parchment, and if I’m not thinking about it, I’ll forget to get the parchment or forget to write it down… And I don’t want to burden Anna. She’s smart, brilliant even, but she has a world of things in her head, and she’s also forgetful. No offence, but you don’t seem like the same type. You seem more practical. And hey, if you remind me, I can write it down, and then I can get myself in order all on my own, you know, if you can't handle all the reminders.”

Gunther wasn’t behind the door, so while I heard Selly humming in thought, tapping her foot on my head, I called out, "Gunther? Gunther! Where the hell is she? Did she crawl out a window?”

I got no reply, but to edge out that possibility, I made my way to the wall with the slit windows and sniffed, but she hadn’t crawled up a wall unless she somehow got rid of her scent before she did.

Is she hiding?

I imagined Gunther curled up in a ball in some unseen corner of the room, under a floorboard, or holding herself up in the corner of the room like a spider. I looked up slowly, which got Selly to give a brief cuss, but I found no Gunther on the ceiling or in a corner, straining her tiny stick arms in a corner to hide.

Honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting there. She's a [Merchant], not a [Assassin]. There was very little room to hide in… The only real thing is the desk. Is she… Under the desk?

Letting my feet take me slowly towards the desk in a stalk, I broke the pause of the conversation.

“So, Selly, what do you say?”

“You’re a dope is what I say. What would drive you to look at the ceiling? Were inside, it’s just wood.”

I sighed and clarified, “I mean, reminding me, are you up to the task?”

“Oh, sure, yeh,” she said coyly, “But what in it for me? Why should I act as your go-to checklist? I’m a noble [Lady]. Why would I be reduced to a checklist.”

I didn’t have a good reason, but I spoke faster than I thought, spitting out a reason without any reason.

“Because we’re buddies, I’m translating for you and can help teach you the language?” I tried.

She hummed for a moment before giving a simple, “Yeh, Ide say that’s worth it.”

I stalked up to within a few feet of the desk and swirled around to behind the desk.

Gunther was curled up behind the foot space of the desk. She was curled up around a pillow in a nest of blankets. She was serene and angelic as she was, dressed in a nightgown, her fair hair a halo around her head. Compared to her normal expression, she looked like a totally different person, more along the lines of how I had first seen her, a baby elf.

“Your first job is to remind me to ask Anna if she has a history book, and if she doesn’t, to get a history book,” I instructed.

My voice dropped in pitch while my plan started a death spin, though Selly didn’t bother.

“Sure, sure.” She told me, “So, wise leader, are you going to wake up the elf? Or leave? Because I’m not going to interrupt that.”

“I’m sure it’ll be ok as long as it’s for business. Probably… Maybe… I’m floundering again, I’m just going to do it and damn the consequences.”

I poked her with my foot, and her eyes snapped open far too wide, her face shifting immediately to her normal sour look. She opened her mouth, and in a screech that was more at home on a wild animal, she tried to bite my leg.