I woke up, and sat up in bed. Not my usual bed at the rundown inn I stayed at, but one belonging to someone else. I looked around me, seeing what environment I had ended up in. It was a small room, barely big enough for the bed, with a chest at the foot of the bed with my clothes on top of it. The ceiling was strange, made of fabric and I had to guess I was in a tent. As I shifted around I felt the bed under me creak and I could smell old wood, even the blankets smelled like it too.

“Hey, you're awake!” I heard through the fabric wall to my left.

“Where…who…” I said, trying to work out what happened. I clutched the blanket to my chest and checked my arms seeing I was bandaged up.

The curtain subsisting for the door was opened and a cute cat boy looked at me with his ears wiggling on his head. He had an apron around his waist with the image of a rippling minotaur in a chef outfit with the text ‘kiss the cook’ above it. In his hands were two plates of waffles, stacked high with molasses drizzled on top.

I accepted it and a fork, mumbling a thanks before sliding over to make room. The cat boy sat with me, keeping his eyes upwards as we began to eat. Only then did I notice it was slightly chilly and looked down to see I was naked still.

“So are you a nudist by choice or…” the cat asked, trailing off.

“I was robbed!” I shouted, as the entire day's events slammed into my skull. “What happened to us, Bazz?”

“Oh, that cloak you picked up was full of helpful spells. It used one called ‘feather fall’ or something to slow us down at the last second. Right now it’s using cleaning spells to tidy the place up!” Bazz said cheerfully.

I stared at him dumbfounded. “We have a cloak…of spells…and instead of selling it…you are using up its spells and wasting its value?”

Bazz’s fork froze in the air, the waffle piece slowly sliding off onto the plate. “Oh, uh…sorry, are those rare?”

I face palmed and just settled for eating with the blankets covering me. We ate till we were full and Bazz took the plates out. I finally got dressed feeling civilized again, being covered head to toe. My shirt was long gone and I checked inside the chest, finding spare clothes. The white blouse I chose was scratchy and cheap, but it would work. As I clipped my belt on and tightened it around my pants I felt strange. A part of me enjoyed the feeling of the wind and sun on my skin, the grass touching my sensitive areas and being one connected deeply to the world around me.

“Bah, this is why some elves go wild,” I said, tugging on my ears and jumping at the sharp pain. “Get a hold of yourself Willow.”

I entered what I could only assume was the main room of the tent, and looked around to see several more branching rooms. There was a fully functional kitchen, reading room with desk included, parlour with a smokeless fire and a bathroom like the one in the dungeon. More glow stones were dotted around the ceiling, giving the whole place a warm sunny glow.

“A mage tent, a portable home for every road,” I said, remembering the Mevellian jingle that played in every major magic store. “Now where did you get this?”

Bazz threw out his hands and did a sweeping stage bow. “It was in the huge treasure pile, so I grabbed it. From the far east, the brass city of mages, a home for-”

“-for every road, yeah I know,” I said, waving him off. “Let’s not get into the ads. They stick in my head for days.”

“You look delightful Willow, a classic ranger, ready to take on the wild,” Bazz said, walking to the parlour. “Now look at all this treasure!”

The first thing I saw was that my weapons were to the side and I put them back on my person feeling partially naked still. A counted a massive pile of coins, the weapons I grabbed, and gemstones littering the floor. In the midst of it all was my family sword and I snatched it out of the pile with haste.

“Whoa, all good, you choose what you want and I’ll take the scraps. I call the tent and carpet however, if that’s okay with you,” Bazz said, flinching when I looked his way.

“That’s more than fair Bazz. You flew that thing out so I have no issue with you taking a good cut. We have probably…hey what’s wrong with this stuff?” my train of thought went right out the window as I started picking up the magic weapons I found. “These things have no charge, what happened?”

Bazz shrugged. “The lighting was weird down there, and maybe the crash had something to do with it?”

I checked over everything, the magic weapons, the gems, the potions and the upgrade shards. Most were in a state of disrepair or badly discharged and would need the service of a magically trained crafter to repair. It was a horrible shame, and I could only guess there might have been an illusion on them to make the treasure hoard appear amazing. I growled as I realized the only things that were intact were the potions, I would have to comb over everything later.

“Oh my gosh, the quest item!” I said pulling on my hair. “I forgot-”

“This?” Bazz asked, taking a package out of his satchel. “I found this weird thing down there separate from the rest when we were running. Figured it was important.”

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I opened the package and revealed a delicate wooden bracelet with a jet gem in it. Engraved on the inside was the word ‘Sora’ just like the quest wanted. My heart did a leap and I pulled Bazz into a hug, squeezing him tight.

“Whoa, okay. I love hugs,” Bazz said warmly, returning the gesture. I saw his cat tail curl behind him and wag. “Uh, Willow. Are you going to let go?”

“Whoops,” I said, backing up and blushing. “Sorry, it's been a really hard time. Want to split the reward with me?”

Bazz held out a hand, gave me a winning smile and winked. “Want to party up?”

I shook his hand and we started the process of dividing the haul. Bazz had a few burlap sacks with his kit and we put them to use, stuffing them full of coins. As I divided the sacks evenly a thought came to me. I stood up and looked around.

“Bazz, where did you set up the tent?” I asked, my hand going to one of my swords.

“Under a willow tree by the river. The tent has a minion illusion to blend in and the slimes are scouring the area for all the coins we dropped. So I thought it would be best to hide until nightfall,” Bazz said.

“That's…a really good idea actually. Why did your team ditch you?” I asked. “So far you might be my best party member I’ve run into.”

“They were jerks. They always teased me for taking time to dress and comb my hair in the morning. I was always last for pay outs since I can’t really fight. They even put syrup and stuff in my tail when they thought my jokes were bad!” Bazz said, frowning. “Let’s get back to the treasure and then I’ll whip up supper.”

I let the issue drop and refocused on what my greed had gotten me. The face value of the coins were mostly all ones or twos meaning we had a lot of weight to carry for value. What was strange was that the highest value coins were silver, still good enough for a room and a bit of food, but I swore I was handling gold coins before.

I hefted the metallic bow with the silver string, seemingly the only weapon that remained the same. The gemstones in my bag looked faded and cracked, their value plummeted to only a single gold coin, and the wands looked more like training wands than ones with spells in them. I picked up the spearhead and found it looked the same as before, like the bow.

“How strange…” I said.

“Hey, these upgrade shards are pretty low grade, but you can have them since you use weapons,” Bazz said, sliding them over.

They didn’t look like the ones Sergi the blacksmith had shown me. These had little in the way of showing their prowess and looked more like regular rocks. Still if they could help Sergi I would take them to him to see what they were about. Finally I checked the two glowing daggers, now a whole lot less shiny than I remembered.

“Dragon dung!” I swore, punching the soft pillow I sat on. “Why does everything look like junk now?”

“It’s alright Willow. We still have…carry the six… about five hundred gold between the two of us. We can keep it in the tent and fetch the money as we need it so the banks don’t take a huge cut,” Bazz said, trying to lift my spirits.

“That is enough we could kick back for a year on a beach villa,” I said.

“Exactly, let’s just relax, get something to eat and slip back to Carrington in the dead of night. We can catch a room, turn in your quest, and you can pocket another ten gold,” Bazz said.

“Five, you found it, so we will split it,” I said, patting the wooden bracelet.

With the piles of weapons, trinkets, art and money divided we went to get dinner. True to his apron Bazz was a cook, a good one too. He swore the strange box in the corner of the room could keep food perfectly fresh, but I looked at the plate of veggies, fruits and roast with skepticism. Who knew how long this tent had sat unused?

After a few bites to test the waters I found it was safe to eat and dug in. We chatted a bit over dinner, just nonsense stuff. Bazz was a big fan of heroes going through trials to vanquish a great evil at a great cost to themselves while I liked the more simple to understand and upbeat ballads. He was a huge fan of dry wines, while I loved a good cold beer.

It almost felt like a lunch date, something I hadn’t gone on in forever. It was comforting just to chat and learn about a person even if it didn’t matter much what we spoke about. It was a bit odd to be this relaxed while the minions of an evil dragon scoured the forest, probably looking for us still.

“Oh right, we should warn the guild about the dragon. I’m good friends with one of the workers there so I’ll let her know to post a sign up,” I said.

“Yeah, that place is for the big pros. Imps, automatons, slimes and a dragon?” Bazz let out a whistle and leaned back in his chair. “That’s going to need a solid team of paladins, wizards, and dragon hunters to solve.”

“Maybe a bard to record it, and to tell the tale for a good sum of gold,” I said, winking at him.

“No way, I tried adventure journalism once, and nearly died to an orc warlord’s possessed sword. It was spitting out lightning bolts and when the guy got mad he transformed into some kind of werewolf thing,” Bazz said, instantly diving into the story. “I remember it like it was yesterday…”

…

Bazz was a good talker and a decent story teller. Before I knew it we were laughing on top of our pile of coins and Bazz went to fetch another bottle of mead from the magic box in the kitchen. He took a detour to check outside and hurried back.

“Willow I’m so sorry, the moon is at its zenith!” Bazz said, pulling on his ears.

“Hey, all good,” I said standing up quickly and feeling the world spin around me. “Maybe we had one too many drinks.”

I calmed Bazz down and went to check myself. It was a moonlight night with a decent amount of cloud cover. I waited until a cloud passed under the moon and told Bazz it was time to go. We got our equipment together and left the tent, keeping our eyes out for trouble. Bazz then tapped the side of the tent, mumbled more nonsense that sounded like ‘Pasgetthi” and then I watched the tent roll itself up into a tight tube.

I looked up and saw we were hidden under the branches of a mighty willow tree, a sister that had watched the days pass for generations. I put my hand onto the tree and bowed. “Thank you for watching over us.”

The tree woke up and gave me a lazy acknowledgement before dipping back into its rest cycle. I quietly crept away from the old tree allowing it to rest undisturbed. We were now in the deep woods with enemies all around, and only me to lead us to safety.

“No pressure Willow,” I said to myself.