Chess sighed as she tied another wooden marble to the rope and watched it rise into the sky buoyed by the pebble of skystone inside and pulled by Lynn and a pair of muskrats stationed on the far shore.
Their first guideline had broken once a goodly amount of silk rope had been hefted halfway up to the small island and they’d been forced to drag the sodden line back to shore and solve the new problem.
Their solution, marbles, required Chess to encapsulate the stones they had saved for the safety vest in wood and tie them to the rope so the line’s weight wouldn’t rest on the floating island until the bulk crested the apex.
A goodly amount of the remaining day had been spent enlisting the help of most of the villagers to spin any and all of the dragline silk they had or could beg borrow or trade for, into a cable the thickness of one of Chess’s slender fingers. While Chess and Lynn returned to the tunnels to harvest what skystone they could. The line cost them a not-insignificant amount of their weaving and swathing silk pyth's. But both Lynn and Chess deemed the cord worth it.
This left Chess standing on the bluff guiding the rope up and attaching floats as the sun sparked reds and yellows off the lake as it rose over the rim of the tall trees and pierced the mists falling from the floating mountain above.
“I wonder how much people back home would pay for this view.” She panned her eyes back and forth for at least the hundredth time then up to the mountain spewing water above. “Or that one."
“I’ll have to do some more fishing later,” she decided, then added with a sigh, “Once we have a working bridge.”
Chess had found the line the muskrats wove incredibly strong after she’d done an extensive battery of tests. Including making a wooden quad pulley system in a tree and lifting a net full of stones from the ground. Several stones that far surpassed her weight and that of all the line combined. Not surprising considering it's spider’s silk but better safe than falling to our deaths on the concrete-hard water if it lets go.
At least I’m not dragging this blasted heavy line over. Chess allowed herself a brief smile as she watched the small group tugging away on the far shore and for winning the coin flip that would’ve required her to walk to the other side of the lake and take a short swim to retrieve it. That and for winning the toss afterward for the privilege of dragging up the heavy rope. Then again her magic made attaching the marbles easy. Lynn would’ve been required to feed them up from the end of the insanely long line.
I wonder if she lost on purpose, Chess mused as her hands ran through the motion automatically. After the first couple hundred feet, the task didn’t require thought.
The next hour passed in the pleasant fugue Chess often got from a good workout as she shifted the line and kept it from tangling.
They finished the first line, and a muskrat boy brought her the thread, once more wound onto the reel of her crossbow, and shot it over again so they could have two lines. One as a base and another so they could assist whomever first ascended.
After two lines were up and secured, Chess once more sat with her back to Freya's altar and thought about what they would need to make the climb as easy and safe as possible.
A belaying device to start. It would be easier than pulling the line around a tree. With the added benefit of not damaging the line as much.
Chess pulled her armor from her vault and got to work.
When she finished she got an unexpected message.
Congratulations on your new creation!
As the first person to create this item, you have the privilege of naming it.
Please speak its name.
“Really? You gotta be shitting me,” Chess cursed at the prompt in bafflement.
"It's a belaying device," Chess muttered to the world.
Please confirm: Belaying device?
"Yes."
Tinkering +5 for creating a new basic device.
Climbing +5 for creating a new climbing device.
Knotwork +5 for creating a new rope device.
Chess leaned back and stared at the object in her lap. What else doesn't exist here?
She turned at the sound of approaching voices.
“You can’t seriously tell me no one has ever made one of these?” she asked Lynn while holding out the device as the kin woman climbed the bluff with her small crew.
She'd created a smoothed block of wood from her own left greave like the rest of the gear she intended to make for the ascent. She’d embedded a tight loop of silk cord into the tightly woven wood, making knots at the end before covering them, which formed a thick tall, and inch-deep oval with gripping ridges near the bottom.
"What's it for?" Lynn asked.
"Here." Chess took it back and demonstrated how it worked with a length of rope. What I need next are some carabiners.
"You can do the same thing with just rope," Lynn explained before showing Chess how she would accomplish the same thing. "Though your device does simplify it."
"Thanks," Chess said and turned back to her work.
A quick expenditure of her gem's magic and some molding with her fingers and a few turns with her screw jig and she had a classic screw carabiner in her hand. The spring mechanics were a little tough to figure out with ironwood and she was unsure how long it would last but figured the screw lock would suffice once it failed. It was also a little thicker than a normal one since she felt uncomfortable with it being made from wood.
Another message set appeared. This one came with an outrageous reward. Chess waved off the first two prompts and said, “Screw-Gate Carabiner,” and “Yes,” when they showed.
Tinkering +4 for creating a new basic device.
Climbing +4 for creating a new climbing device.
Survival +5 for creating a new survival device.
Knotwork +4 for creating a new rope device.
Sailing +5 for creating a new nautical device.
Her mind spun, and she had to grip the altar for balance to keep from toppling over sideways, as a multitude of random facts half-heard throughout her life coalesced into real understanding about the various skills.
“Freya’s Fantastic Fanny, I need more results like that,” Chess muttered as she read the prompt. “It’s almost like cheating. I remember my Scout knot skills again.”
“What’s like cheating?” Lynn asked looking up from where she was still playing with the belaying device and a length of line she’d draped over a tree branch.
Chess held out the carabiner. “Here, another new item. I want to try a few more things.”
Chess sorted through her bits of ironwood and drew out some of the leftover silken cord.
“I want a bunch of these. Do you have any idea how useful this could be?” Lynn asked in wonder.
"It's you that has no idea," Chess countered with a shit-eating grin.
“What?” Lynn prompted.
“I got a total of 22 skill points for that thing.”
“This?” Lynn shook the carabiner.
“Yup; sailing, survival, knotwork, tinkering, and climbing. Here,” Chess said. Taking it back, she tied it to Lynn’s line and used it to tie off one end of the line to the tree branch by throwing it over and looping the free end through. “It’s technically not a proper use but for tying things down,” Chess shrugged.
Lynn looked at the simple D shape in wonder. "I've heard the first time you make something new is always the best for any given skill. It's also the only time you can get a perk through crafting for that field."
Chess nodded "Yeah, now that you mention it I only got 4 points towards steam-forging when I made my reel."
Despite the thought, Chess grinned and got to work. It only got easier and more cringe-worthy from there as Chess followed the same vein of a lack of climbing or related gear and exploited the shit out of it. Next, she made a hanging dual zipline pulley with a slowing break then a harness with a set of heavy-duty screw carabiners and silk lanyards so she could sit in it. The dedicated pulley with its break rewarded windows with a boost to climbing and tinkering. This time she received a three-point boost too each.
This boost reminded her of some youtube videos she’d watched at some point, allowing her to recreate the strange-shaped nuts that climbers used as wedges and a proper climbing cam, netting her two more similar boosts. Two points each for the first and one for the second.
Climbing knowledge coalesced in Chess's mind as she worked. Every tidbit she'd ever gleaned from watching climbers like Alex Honnold on YouTube to half-remembered conversations about gear. And safety classes about proper harnessing and a few more things from her time in the Scouts.
“You realize if we’d had this stuff before we could've lowered ourselves into the cavern behind the falls and maybe saved ourselves a lot of grief,” Lynn said once Chess finished and had gone over what everything was for with her.
“Hindsight is always clearer. It just never crossed my mind. We don’t know that there is even a way around the falls. The weight of that much water could easily kill or drown us.” Chess admitted.
“Fair enough, but more options are always better.”
“We never did find where that other balcony led,” Chess agreed.
“We could use it to explore some of the pools in the tunnels as well. Goddess knows what is buried in the silt down there.”
“It’s a thought.” Chess nodded.
Next Chess made herself a chalk bag and didn’t get anything. Granted it was a shitty bag and well a bag. A few more items that seemed simple, like pitons, were failures and by the end of it, she couldn’t stop giggling. She felt like cackling. Then she pulled up her stat sheet out of curiosity and looked at her climbing skill.
She choked on her spittle and was near tears with mirth at the result. 20! Holy fuck. I’ve never climbed anything more difficult than a hill or a ladder. And tinkering is at 29. Holy shit Tinkering has been added to my profession tab. However, the knowledge on the subjects was now firmly set in her mind, and she found using the gear near instinctual.
She looked up to find Lynn standing over her, her head canted to the side in bafflement. "What's so damn funny?"
“I...” Chess went to wave her off but then the question brought Chess up short. How much do I tell her? How good is that promise she made what seems a lifetime ago? Can I trust her?
Chess studied the young kin woman for a long breathless pause before she decided 'to hell with it'. Lynn had become her friend somewhere in this hellhole without Chess really realizing it. And if she couldn't trust her now, she wasn't sure she'd be able to trust anyone in this crazy backward magical world again. She's even come around to my sense of humor at times.
Chess let out another sigh then plastered a shit-eating grin on her face. "That’s five crafting firsts. All in the last hour. All related to climbing," Chess pronounced.
"You're lying," Lynn countered.
"Nuh-uh." Chess's smile found a way to become wider. She toggled her new primary profession to show its new journeyman level for all to see.
"But how?" Lynn asked in wonder. "The bearing I understand. I've seen large ones on mills but they were open to the air. The cover and lubrication are inspired ideas, and your fishing device uses the bearing in its construction, but five of these? In a completely new field?"
"I just copied a bunch of things from home. Apparently, specialized climbing and zipline gear doesn't exist here." Chess threw in her cards and leaned back onto her palms to watch the fallout.
"Wait. What? Where are you from exactly?" Lynn's voice drew down as the mental gears started to churn and she started pacing back and forth.
"Not Astra," Chess allowed, keeping her grin plastered on.
Then Chess had an idea. A truth that fit her developing narrative perfectly but allowed her to retain the status they thought she had. I don’t have to tell anyone everything. No one needs to know elves don't exist on earth. "I came through a couple of rifts from an entirely different world. At least I think it was a different world and this isn't some sort of time travel."
"A different world? Not a rift like this or one of the 10 planes or one of the heavens or hells?" Lynn said in a breathless whisper before plopping down beside Chess.
"Yeah, I don’t think so. We didn't have magic as you do here," Chess explained.
"Truly?" Lynn met Chess's eyes.
"Yeah. We used technology and science for everything."
"That would explain the crafting firsts," Lynn reasoned as though to herself. “Though it doesn’t explain your goddess.”
"You believe me then?"
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Lynn nodded slowly. "I believe you think it’s true, and there are rumors of paths to other worlds like Astra. Though, It could be that you're an unparalleled genius... one that's also starting to lose her mind. Both of which are concerning ideas."
"Ass," Chess snorted and shoulder-bumped Lynn.
The Kin woman gave her a smirk and opened her mouth to speak before breaking into a giggling fit that found her flat on her back.
"What?" Chess asked, her smile losing its radiance.
"You? A genius? You can't even remember to repair your bloody armor," Lynn gasped out between giggles.
"Hey! Even a genius can't remember everything. You don't have to laugh so hard about it. Besides, there are like a thousand other things to remember... I thought we were friends," Chess mock pouted and turned her back on the skunk with a huff.
"Hey," Lynn tempered, laying a paw-like hand on Chess's shoulder and pulling her back around to face her. "I'm sorry. I… we are friends." The admission seemed to surprise Lynn, and the smile still fighting for dominance on her face belied the apology, but Chess could tell the kin-woman meant it.
"Good, I'll hold you to that," Chess said while losing the grip on her own grin and once again shoulder bumped Lynn which broke the dam on the Skunk-kin's mirth, and the pair fell back chuckling into the fragrant grass.
"I have 20 in climbing now, and I’ve never climbed anything worse than a ladder or roof member before," Chess admitted with a chuckle.
"Genius," Lynn snorted.
"I suppose we should finish our ladder-bridge-thingy, whatever." Chess slapped the ground and stood, offering Lynn a hand up once they’d subsided.
"We could always just use your pulley system. Even if the muskrats let go, the line would slow you enough to land safely," Lynn reasoned.
"About that," Chess grinned at her friend. "This will allow us to ascend without falling." Chess held up the rope grab she'd made for the pulley system. "So long as one line is still secured above, it should be safe."
"So the real danger is in the first climb?" Lynn asked.
"It always is. At least we have two ropes."
The two sat down to plan and build what they'd need.
“You’re the one with 20 in climbing,” Lynn snarked and indicated Chess should get to it when Chess tried to convince Lynn to go up first.
"You’ll need to go round to the other side to pull me up," Chess grumbled her lunch suddenly heavy in her stomach.
Lynn sighed with a nod and collected her group of helpers from the base of the bluff where they waited, working on various tasks.
The wait for the others to get into position was torture for Chess. Then she went and made it worse by taking the time to go around to make sure they were set up the way she wanted.
They tied one of the muskrats to one of the huge red trees with another harness and the belaying tool so the pullers could take breaks and switch as needed.
"Okay once I'm up there remember you…"
"I know," Lynn rolled her eyes. “Let's get on with it already."
“Get on with it. Right,” Chess swallowed and turned, and headed back to the other side.
Shaking her arms and doing the odd jumping-jack, Chess eyed the short set of steps to the rope that was tied high in yet another of the massive trees back from the shore before sliding a rope grab onto the free rope, the one the others were to drag her up with. Then she clamped her pulley on the top line then her two lanyards to it before she gripped it and lifted herself off the ground kicking the set of steps onto their side.
"Well shit, here goes nothing," she muttered and swallowed against a parched throat as she looked at the long line snaking up to the small island above then pulled.
It turned out Chess didn't have to do any climbing, only hold onto the pulleys' lanyards to keep from spinning as the others dragged her up. They started in fits and spurts at first before they quickly fell into a smooth motion that ate the distance faster than Chess would've believed possible.
For the first half of the accent, she kept her eyes firmly on her destination and the magnificent mountain framed behind it, the pit in her gut a nagging companion that wouldn't let her loosen her grip.
Chess did her best to think of anything but what she was doing, only achieving half-formed ideas about potentially exploring sport fishing as a new means of gaining more of the skill bonuses. Nothing helped with the gnawing terror gripping her belly.
She allowed herself to get a little comfortable.
She glanced down.
Chess desperately flailed to reassure her grip on the lanyards and squeezed her eyes shut against intense vertigo that nearly stole her lunch. Yup, still scared of heights. Guess all those ranks in climbing didn't help for shit. If her chest hadn’t been so tight, Chess was sure she would’ve laughed.
It took a colossal effort for her to force her eyes back open and to fix them on her destination. Much too aware of the potential of one of the lines failing and her need to break any momentum that would result, she took a few shaking breaths and looked up as she steadily rose into the sky.
She watched the last dozen yards disappear with a slight easing in her gut and when she finally grasped the edge of the island and used clumps of grass to pull herself up and over, she had tears in her eyes.
She allowed herself to be dragged a few yards from the edge before she started tugging on the pulley line to indicate they could stop.
She crawled forward and kissed the ground in thankfulness.
“Thank Freya that’s over with!” she decried to the sky and slowly picked herself up and stood. Though she left her harness on and the pulley on the rope. Good thing they pulled me up. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to make myself do it. Better not tell anyone that. Chess grimaced and took in the small island.
The island wasn’t that large, maybe close to half a city block. Green and brown ankle-high grass covered the entire surface aside from a small circle of stone, maybe a handful of yards across, smack dab in the middle. Nothing else, just grass.
Both of their ropes crested over part of the weathered stone circle and Chess was thankful that the smoothed stone likely hadn’t damaged their lines much.
She gave the line the others had used to pull her up three firm tugs before she started hauling it up using the outside of the stone ring for leverage as she built a large coil at her feet. It wasn't long until skystone beads on tiny carabiners appeared on the line and she removed them as she went tying them to her belt until she was forced to store them.
“Okay, time to make an anchor point. At least it looks like the easier option will work. The stone circle is a bad idea.” Chess approached the waist-high circle and took a walk around it. Inside which another perfect and even circle of grass stood. Yeah, not stepping in there yet. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s the exit. She chuckled ruefully to herself.
She paused to take in the new view, from a safe distance, for a minute before sighing and summoning her vault to take out Sprig and planting her than her now-familiar mining pick and a wooden shovel and got to work.
First, about twenty feet back from where she’d come up, she dug a pit in the soft topsoil to determine its depth and what the stone of the island was other than skystone.
The years had allowed a solid three feet of topsoil to accumulate, and it took her longer than she would’ve liked to reach the limestone bedrock below before she started widening her pit, looking for some suitable cracks.
More soil than I thought could collect up here. I wonder why no trees are growing up here? There is enough mist off the falls alone for water. Unless all the local trees are a type of acorn? I should look.
Once she found a suitable crack and made a pit about 6 feet in diameter in the soft soil Chess summoned her vault and pulled out one of the big blocks she’d stored for her work and made herself a ladder to climb out before setting to work digging three more identical pits in a diamond pattern with the last and shallowest a handful of feet from the edge of the island.
Lynn and she had had a long discussion on the subject and had decided to attempt to make something that would last with a little care by the muskrats. The hope was the time dilation wasn’t that extreme and something made to last a century would still be useful to a Delver team that returned in around an Astran week.
Chess wiped the sweat from her face and hair with her shirt which she’d discarded in the first pit and surveyed her work. The sun had dipped significantly while she worked and she smiled in the satisfaction that came after a hard day of physical labor.
“I missed this,” she said while taking a pull from her waterskin and eating a handful of dried spider meat before pulling off her dirt-caked pants leaving her in only her indestructible underwear.
“Now for the easy part,” Chess said and started pulling large blocks of wood from her inventory on their makeshift caster wheels and putting one in each pit except the last. Each weighed more than twice what she did and was a little less than a four-foot cube and she was forced to shoulder them around until they were in place. “Easier,” she muttered.
Using her Gem’s magic she touched each block and sent the senses it provided into the wood before flowing the base of the block into any cracks in the limestone below including some divots she’d made with her pick. Then she climbed out and started shoveling the loose soil back around the blocks, using her feet to tamp it back in.
She'd buried a large lake stone in the center of each block and left the top open so she could thread a silken line through it and lay the line so they all converged before her last pit. She'd taken care to make sure water could slough off or run out of the blocks. The muskrats had insisted that the wood behaved much like cedar back home and was resistant to rotting but she wanted to be safe.
In the last pit, she placed half a dozen two-foot cubes and anchored them like the first in two lines leading to the edge of the island.
Making sure she was once again properly tied in, this time tied into one of her anchor blocks as well, she used the smaller blocks as a base to build a short pier with solid railings that led out a handful of feet over the edge into oblivion.
She kept her eyes firmly on the redwood she worked on and formed each joint with her magic.
Backing off the finished pier, Chess let out a shaky breath before turning back to face her earlier work.
Then, pulling four large acorns from her vault, Chess knelt to plant one a few feet from the end of the pier before taking off to plant one at each of the other cardinal directions.
Retrieving Sprig, Chess returned to the first acorn and began playing, starting with credence songs to make it sprout from the soft ground.
Once it reached a good 8ft tall she moved on to the next until they were all the same before starting again on the first. She didn't stop until they were all a good foot thick at the base and she could tell she was stressing the surrounding soil.
Lynn had figured the trees were more than likely to survive if the soil was good and had a potentially long life even if her pier and anchors were to decay beyond use.
Chess moved back to the pier and pulled her last block out, sinking it into the hole she'd left for it. Once she had it held fast to the bedrock she strung the lines from the other anchors to it before running two more to each corner of the end of her beefy pier railings where they hung a few feet past the end.
Then carefully and with much hesitance she pulled out the last piece of wood and set it across both railings before threading the free line through one of the five pulleys anchored to its bottom on loops of ironwood so they could swing if needed. She did her best to leave an equal amount of line on each before pushing it forward with a heavy stick until it fell into the groves left for it at the end of the four-foot railings. She finished by tying the last few loops of her anchor cord around the beam, adding a handful of knots to each, then flowing the wood over the result.
Sticking a pole into the threaded pulley she kicked each end of the coiled rope over the edge then sat down before shuffling to the end of the pier to look down.
Another wave of vertigo assailed her but the steady weight of the railing reassured her as she watched a half dozen muskrats returning to shore dragging the ends of her line.
"Now we see if it works." Chess grabbed the other line she was still tied to and readjusted it so it lay over the center of her pulley beam then made a hoop over it so it wouldn't slide around.
Then Chess retreated to wait and play Sprig.
Construction readjusted +3
"Nice."
Chess regrew the grass around each of her blocks as she waited.
The first to appear on the end of her pier was one of the muskrats. The young male set off immediately to explore the small island as soon as he tied a stone to the end of his line and dropped it back over the edge and waved at the others below.
Lynn came next with a huge grin on her face. "You were the only real choice to come up here," she said while she took in Chess's work.
"Yeah, just one problem. I'm not going back down there. I like this nice firm ground below me." Chess gave Lynn a level look and stamped her foot.
"You have to. We have work to do in the tunnels besides Ashley isn't back yet. You can't stay up here for days. " Lynn frowned at her.
"Watch me. I about shit myself on the way up and again when I put that thing together," Chess protested looking to the end of the pier.
"How about we make Gethin there go first so you can see it's safe?"
"I don't know."
"Come the sun is gonna set soon."
Chess sighed deeply and eased out to the edge again to take another mind-numbing look down. Yeah, fuck that.
Chess watched with trepidation as Gethin backed from the pier and sat into his harness before kicking himself off and out on the upper line. The crew below eased him down the taut line and down to the bluff below.
In no time at all Chess found herself being reluctantly tied in.
This is crazy, Chess thought looking down at the curving line.
You can do this, Chess thought while holding the support beam in a death grip.
"You're all set. Everything has been checked three times," Lynn reasoned behind her.
"I know."
"You came up here the same way."
"I know."
"You…" Lynn started to speak, then before Chess knew what had happened she was a few dozen feet out along the upper line and getting further away by the second.
"You bitch!" Chess yelled at her friend giving her a middle finger as she spun around on the lanyards.
"Face your fears!" Lynn yelled and returned the gesture with a smile.
"Hoebag!"
"Enjoy the ride!"
Chess's anger saw her through the whole descent, and she was on the bluff before she remembered to be scared.
Lynn wisely took her time following, and by the time she joined Chess in front of Freya's altar, she'd cooled down.
"That was a dick move," Chess said to Lynn as she watched the sun sink below the edge of the island.
"Maybe, but you made the device as safe as possible, and I didn't see any other way to get you to come down." Lynn shrugged. "I thought it was fun. The view up there is amazing. You can almost pretend you're flying."
"You would like it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nevermind," Chess sighed.
"You should do it a few more times until you get more comfortable. The first time is always the worst for things like this."
"Maybe," Chess grumbled.
Chess's pity party was interrupted by the sound of a new group approaching before it could start.
"Look who it is, only a day later than expected," Lynn said in an aside to Chess while crossing her arms.
Chess looked up to see her daughter cresting the ridge with a gaggle of younger Muskrat-Kin ranged out behind her, and a smile blossomed on Chess’ face.
"I thought you were only going to get one cat?" Chess raised an eyebrow at her daughter as she came into hearing range.
Ashley had two beautiful Heliwr gliding back and forth around her on the light breeze off the lake. One was a tawny golden brown with black rosettes while the other was vibrant forest green with white rosettes.
"I didn't want them to be lonely besides I think they're sisters," Ashley hedged.
"Oh?" Chess asked.
"Yeah," Ashley said excitedly. "They both have nearly the same markings just in different colors."
"Sisters? I thought it was young males that found themselves here," Lynn questioned.
"We got lucky! Found a whole pride of younger ones. Though we were forced to kill a few of them." Ashley frowned at this last.
That was when Chess noticed a third cradled in her arms. "A third?"
"Well..." Ashley began sheepishly.
"That leaves you with no bindings," Lynn pointed out, interrupting her excuse.
"I only bound him," Ashley protested holding up the one in her arms. "The females calmed down and followed after that."
"Well that won't do," Lynn countered.
"They're a pride. It doesn't have to do." Ashley met Lynn's gaze firmly.
"That's not what I meant and you know it. We won't be permitted to enter any large settlement without binding or caging them."
"Oh," Ashley hung her head.
"Yeah, oh. So if you intend to keep them as a breeding group, you'll have to bind them properly."
"They could be valuable," Chess interjected.
Lynn snorted. "Oh definitely. It's more than likely someone will attempt to steal them. I can see them becoming a craze with young ladies of means. But that's only another reason to bind them now, isn't it?
"Yeah," Ashley agreed, pulling the one in her arms tighter against her.
"Well?"
"Alright, you hold him," Ashley said, dumping the lazy male in Chess's lap before turning to chase down the females who decided to make a game of remaining just out of Ashley's and the other youths' reach.
Chess watched the antics for a while before turning her attention to the squirming bundle in her lap.
The Heliwr, about twice the size of an adult house cat, had a beautiful seafoam green coat with mackerel stripes of deep black throughout. His wings were an even lighter green with the same black at the tips.
If you're a yearling how big are you gonna be when you hit your full growth?
Once he'd made himself comfortable he quickly started up a low rumble deep in his chest as Chess scratched the top of his head.
"Seems a lot friendlier than I was expecting from a wild animal," Chess observed.
"That's the binding. It allows it to pick up on things like family. Strangers will have to be careful until she spends significant time training them," Lynn explained as she sidled up with her to run a paw down the center of the Heliwr's back.
A yowl drew Chess' gaze to where her daughter had wrangled one of the females with a catch pole and was holding it to the ground while digging into a pouch on her belt.
"Apparently my daughter is a crazy cat lady." Chess sighed.
"Apparently," Lynn agreed.
Huh, I guess they have those here too. Or does she think I meant Ashley's blood?