We were quick to leave the city proper, getting onto the grass and off of the conversation of love and my fears and insecurities. Instead, we talked a little about something a little more at my pace, a little more practical.

We talked about hitting people with shovels.

“Listen… Listen. All I’m saying is that you’re not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, if you get my meaning. As good as a shovel is, it can’t outshine a weapon.”

She had a point, and it was a point I knew and understood. I just didn’t care.

“And I’m telling you, I don’t know how to use a weapon properly, so I’m using a skill to make my shovel count as a weapon, and skills to make me better with tools, and skills to pile on skills and so on. I get what you’re getting at Selly, really I do, but I am starting to get some good synergy’s going.”

She chortled sharp enough to substitute human cheese, tittering to herself like there was a joke only she understood.

“You have skills, alright… Hahaah! You and you’re Anna both. You both talk about skills but never show them off. Are you sure you even know what your skills do?”

I squinted, trying to put her words together in my head. She was alluding to something, but it was momentarily out of reach, leaving me tongue-tied as I tried to puzzle it out.

Not showing off my skills? Both me and Anna? What is she going on about? I use my skills all the time. I’m using one right now! Gah, I wish I could wipe the smugness out of her without making her depressed.

We never show off skills… We never show off…

I couldn’t for the life of me put it together.

“You know, for someone that’s supposedly real smart, all you're being is a real smart ass. What are you yapping about?” I asked her, unable to keep the hint of annoyance that Selly seemed to feed off out of my voice.

“Oh… I don’t know. You seem to have everything in hand. What was it you said? You have skills to pile on skills?” she said, a bit of ridicule in her voice.

Selly was many things, but a bully who pointlessly belittled others was not one of those things. She had a heart under all that black armour and white fluff, big enough to keep a mammoth up, and I had a feeling this was one of those times.

Knowing that and feeling it was too different things, however, because what I was feeling was more along the lines of swatting the mosquito rather than sitting down and listening to her.

I decided to go one way, my mouth another, and I ended up spitting out, “If you’re just going to lead me on, you’re not half the Selly I know you can be.”

She spluttered, aghast at my nerve… or perhaps at the fact that I went straight for her pride, which necessitated she defend it.

I waited while she hit me with all the force of a mouse tackling me.

“I will warn yee, dishonouring another dishonour’s yourself, and as a [Tall Friend], it would be remiss if you were to do so. It would reflect poorly on my queen and clan. Do not do it so lightly. That said, it should be obvious. You don’t show it. You use you’re skills like you would a hammer. Just another tool in your toolbox. You need to start treating your skills like any other weapon. Anyone can do amazing things, but you have to work on them… Train them as you do with your drilling and magic. It's all well and good to use them, but practice makes perfect, and neither of you practice with them; you just use them.”

“Their skills, they're supposed to be used,” I told her simply.

“Aye you daft fanny, and the [Swordsman] that practices a skill so many times he can do it without speaking beats the one that doesn’t. When was the last time you did something new with an old skill? The last time you took a skill and pushed it a little?”

I thought about that for a moment, spinning it through the gears of my mind. It wasn’t a common occurrence that I just practiced it.

“Uhhh… Back when I pushed mana into my skills the other day when we were fighting Gremlins.” I told her. “I had never pushed mana into a skill, and it opens up new possibilities.”

“Ahhh. Wrong,” Selly said, “That’s magic nonsense. It’s a twinkle-fingers way to use mana. I can’t, and a [Swordsman] can’t, so it's magic. Other than that, what was the last time? Think… when did you push a skill? What was the last time you did it?”

I wanted to argue, but I decided to go along with it. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I could use some active skills because I had a ton of familiarity with them. I had used them so much that they were second nature, and I knew them inside and out.

When was the last time I did that? Just futzed about with a skill?

My mind spun out and out, my memory, a rat's nest of twine and straw and twigs loosened, and the little fox in my head started sorting it like a secretary. Embarrassing moments next to important ones, next to the smell of Anna. I flexed my fingers… and stopped as the fox sniped a memory and presented it to me.

I had gotten my claws to count as a tool.

Gods above, it must have been months ago, way back after I had met Anna, and she had gone to talk with her mother, and I had just frolicked with her towards the city, hand in hand, while that was still a new thing. Before, I had become a mage and gotten ganked by the [Hunters].

I remembered my hand and her hand, and I had a sudden urge to hug her instead of holding a basket.

“Months ago,” I told her, “I… I got my claws to count as a tool, like a knife.”

There was a warmer tone in her voice for a moment, that was very her. Not the her that was with me now, but the her that had told me to use my head. The her that stood behind the mask and scar of life.

“That’s more like it. While it's probably common with clawed people, it’s still a good flex. You have to work on some of that with you’re drills and magic. Flexing your skills is important, and it's good for growth.”

It was, and in a weird roundabout way, I knew it was because a skill doing something it wasn’t used to would probably wear down faster, which would make the experience faster. And unlike when I sucked up a bajillion souls every other week, it was scalable and didn’t make me feel all soft. Working with mana and skills would both give me passive experience, and passive levels. Both together would probably give a good amount every week.

There was only one problem with it: one glaring weakness. I couldn’t think of how to do it. Flexing a skill like that was one of those things that came to you, not that you found, a thing where a bunch of small things clicked together.

“But what do I do to get that flex? It can’t be just using them. I had to make a mental leap for the claws thing; I can’t just pull that out from under my non-existent hat every day.”

She sighed, and her weight shifted. I could see, as I turned my head to see her on my shoulder, she shook her head in the corner of my eye.

“It's not about that. You can only do it if you know a skill, inside and out. A breakthrough isn’t an everyday occurrence. It's something you think about at the moment that gives you the idea to do something with it. But if you train your skills, it's more likely. If you have an idea for a skill pop into your big empty head and you are practicing, you’re more likely to try it. If you have an idea and you know how your skill works, you can work with them. If you know your skills well enough if you train them. But you're not. I know it’s tedious, but you and your Anna haven’t even used your newest skills. She told you she would show you her new skill, but if it was me, I would have used the skill a half a hundred times by now. You probably have new skills, but have you even used them yet, even once?”

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I hadn’t I had gotten a bunch of new skills and not used them. Not so much as a single use for some of them, while others were passive and always on. I hadn’t used a good chunk of them.

“Isn’t it a little wasteful to use them? I mean, they tire me out, so it’s not like I can use them forever… And I have stuff to do,” I told her defensively.

She wasn’t having it, though. She was smart enough to know that my being defensive was just being defensive automatically and not an active defence of myself.

“Tut tut. It’s training; when would it not be a little draining? And as for you doing stuff, you could have been training while you did that math, or walking or doing almost anything. Theres no way all of you’re skills are about hitting people with shovels. Try futzing with them now. It's not about spending tons of time with them, just playing around with them every day.”

I thought about it but couldn’t think of what to try. I was so used to just using a skill as a tool that my mind warred with itself to figure out what I should do. What skill to try?

I kept bouncing between them, trying to pick one, only to think of using a different one, then another.

I hadn’t picked by the time we were getting back, Selly egging me on to just try one out like it was a hair ornament. We came up and entered the grove with a basket of food, and through an open window, I saw Anna painting.

It looked picturesque, a tiny slice you would see in a painting.

I could feel a smile spread across my face as I took her in.

We were going to go and spend the day in the woods.

“Hey, Selly, are you going to join us? Into the woods on our picnic, that is. I haven’t told Anna yet, but I’m going to bring her to that grove, the one with the Nameless in it.”

She sighed, taking a step back to take in the side of my face.

“Are you going to be ich about it? No, don’t tell me, of course you will, you dope. Are you going to be lovey? Kiss one another? Hand-holding is fine, but I draw the line after cuddles and kisses.”

She looked like the very idea of kissing was some terrible breach of conduct, both scandalous and a thing of disgust, and that beyond that lay something beyond the pale, unmentionable in its own way.

The unmentionable was beyond my ability, and no flush was what it was. And the things it conjured in my mind were a great embarrassment, not because they were bad, but because I didn’t want to look at Anna that way, and all they did was feed my mind and instinct a reason to stare at her.

If Anna wanted, that would be one thing I could stare all day and admire, but as it stood, it just made me more aware of whenever I inadvertently stared at her. The golden rule held sway over me, and I didn’t like it when people stared at me, so I didn’t want to leer at her.

Good people were hard to come by at the best of times, and I really didn’t want to fuck that up on top of me being a dud pick to court. I didn’t want Anna to regret saying yes.

I shook myself from my thoughts, the smile gone, and responded, “No, nothing like that, it’s a picnic, not a rendezvous. I don’t plan on having sex with Anna in the forest.”

“Good,” Selly said, “Then I’ll come, but I’m not going to spend it with you, give you a little alone time or whatever. I’ll spend it with the Nameless, I wouldn’t want to rain on your time.”

“Nonsense, I enjoy the time I’ve had with you so far,” I told her.

“Sure. Well, go on then, no waiting, go-getter.”

I nodded, trying to pump myself up, and didn’t dally; I walked straight up to the window with a swagger I didn’t feel and leaned onto the sill. The noise drew her eye from the easel and the fruit she was painting.

“You’re back,” she said owlishly, blinking too much, the light behind me casting a light shadow over her and the apple. “You’re back, and you cut your hair.”

“Eup, I’m back. What do you think? Is it any good?” I asked her

“It’s quite fetching,” she said a bit bashfully, her words sending a bit of warmth to her cheeks.

We just looked at one another for a moment, but before it could lapse into an embarrassed silence, I told her, “I bring good food and a mode of transportation to the place I wanted to show you whenever you’re ready.”

It broke whatever fragile thing was held in the air between us, and she looked at the painting and sighed, muttering, “I’ll finish you one day,” before speaking up to me, “I need to use the pot; I’ll be out in a minute.”

I watched her go and waited two minutes for her to come out, but she did, and she came out with a thinking face.

I walked over to her and held my arms out, but she raised a finger and said, “Hold on, I need to talk to Selly for a moment. Selly, can you come with me? I need to talk to you for a moment.”

Selly buzzed her little wings, and I was left outside for another half a dozen minutes. I passed it mindlessly, lying down on the grass. Then, do some push-ups, and then half a dozen became a dozen, and I stopped doing pushups. I thought it over and decided that considering the gremlins were around there, I might as well go armed, and I got the spade and tied it to me. Continuing to think it over, ready to head out, I got to thinking about carving foci, and I realized that I could carve the shovel.

The handle was wood, it was, as my absentee tutor would say, a stick, just like a staff.

I could carve the shovel, and then I would have not only a magical weapon but a magical foci whenever I had the shovel.

I didn’t even know what a foci did, but I felt that that would be a good thing. A magic weapon that was a focus sounded good, if nothing else.

It was such a simple thing, such a basic thing, that it hadn’t occurred to me yet. And I congratulated myself just after the door opened.

“Holy shit. Am I a genius or what?”

“What are you going on about… And why do you have a shovel?”

I looked up at her and grinned, quickly explaining that I could make the shovel a foci, which was also a weapon while I held it and a magical weapon.

Anna, for her part, raised her eyebrows.

“When did you get a magical weapon proficiency?”

“It’s a magical tool proficiency… or well [Magical tools], and [Magical Tool Proficiency]. It's not a straight-up magical weapon proficiency, but for me, it’s just as good for me.”

Anna, for her part, looked at me, then grew thoughtful. Nodding along, tapping her cheek as she held her chin.

“That would certainly be something. Maybe you could go for some kind of magical fighting class? A [Spellblade] perhaps, or more like a [Bladesinger]? No, you couldn’t be a [Bladesinger]. That’s elvish. I wouldn’t even know how to help you get that…”

I walked up to her hand on one hip, “I can get my guide to help me, I’m sure she knows. Don’t go worrying about it, today is not a worrying time, it’s a date time. Come on, it’s time to pay up so we can go,” I told her with a grin.

Anna puffed up her cheeks a little, then blushed, “What exactly are you implying? What are you expecting as payment?”

I walked up real close and leaned in, close enough to kiss and watched as she blushed. I leaned into the shoulder opposite Selly so I didn’t bump her, right up next to her ear, and I heard her take a breath.

“I was thinking…” I told her as sensually as I could, “That you show me that skill you were talking about,” and then I stepped back and watched as her face shot through several different emotions.

It started as confusion and flushed cheeks that told me she was expecting something like a kiss and ended with disbelief.

“I ought to slap you,” she said crossly, “getting my hopes up like that… I don’t want to do it right now. And it would be embarrassing, I’m not going to do it.”

I watched her face and gave her a look.

“I’m not! I’ll walk right back in there now and finish my painting. I’ll do it,” she threatened.

I didn’t buy it and held my ground, changing the look to be a little more exaggerated, a little more goofy to cut some of the tension.

“If this place isn’t worth it, I’m going to make you sleep with Selly,” she told me, drooping a little as she caved, “and if I hear a laugh out of you, I’m going to bash you over the head. I will.”

“I won't…” I told her, “Come on then, you seemed excited. Show me.”

She looked at me seriously, then asked, “Would you still like me if I was a mouse?”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but I nodded.

“I would still like you if you were a mouse… I could make you a little mouse bed and mouse house. Maybe get you some nabours, though I would have to be careful, or you might just pick one of them instead of me,” I told her almost immediately.

She palmed her face, but she knew that I was being serious and nodded, quickly shooing Selly from her shoulder.

She looked at me again and said, “You’re going to have to carry me like this, I can’t change it for an hour.”

I was going to be honest with myself that I had no clue what she was going on about, but I was a little excited.

She took a deep breath as Selly hopped in the basket, kicking up her feet on a sandwich while Anna said, [Wild Shape], and in a moment, so fast you would miss it, she disappeared.

It was instantaneous; one second, she was there, and like an untaken blink, she had been replaced by a floating mouse that let out a squeak as it fell.

Prey, my instinct whispered, our prey, our mouse, catch her before she flees. The thought raced through my mind and raised the hair on the back of my neck.

I didn’t rush her; instead, I walked up and quickly gripped her delicately. She wriggled uncomfortably, and I quickly placed her in the basket before I raised it to eye level.

Anna didn’t act like a mouse, there was no timidity or skittishness.

I reached down and petted her trunk, and she squeaked a little.

“You’re incredibly cute as a mouse, you know?”

She squirmed out from under my finger and turned to look up at me, head turned slightly and said in a perfectly normal voice, “I’m not a pet, and I’m not for petting.”

I took her in and had to actively stop myself from laughing. Selly laughed her ass off, and I quickly started moving to our destination. Anna could see it in my face while I started asking her about where her clothes went, how it worked to try and draw her attention, and the ire it held to something her speed, namely explaining cool magic stuff.

And then we were off, me carrying a mouse and a sprite in an open basket, with Selly laughing her ass off like the little stinker she was, and Anna talking like normal about the indignity of not being able to transform back and bringing me to task over not finishing my test already so she can teach me more.