“Hup!” Reed said as she hoisted her broadsword over one shoulder. I hoped that thing didn’t bruise. With a delicate smile, she asked me, “You want to lead?”

It was hard not to stare. That was the same sword I’d seen her wield twice now, and never in the light of day. It wasn’t one solid color; wisps of darker gray darted through it like lightning trails. And it had nearly killed me.

We were standing a couple meters away from her camp, where the anxious ranger was setting up a tarp. I could see now that the campsite was framed on one side by a magnificent reddish-purple ridge of exposed rock. The spruces around it, even with their vibrant peppermint-greens, couldn't compete. It was bound to look even better when we came back in sunset.

Reed looked at me, then the blade, then frowned. “Oh…I’m sorry if seeing this is…” It took me a few seconds to process her last word: “traumatic.”

No! I shook my head wildly. I wanted to see her use my murder weapon! Which sounds strange when I put it that way!

She was still uneasy about it. Holding the sword by her side, she said, “Well, okay…”

We left the camp in a curving path up the mountain. With a flattened dirt route this obvious, surely Reed didn’t need me to lead the way. She was probably just being polite. Darnit.

The ranger wished us good luck, and the moment the last word left his mouth, the condor’s wings opened like a black canopy and the creature took off, flying straight upward, leaving the glove. The fist fell to his side, and the black miasma left his eyes. We didn’t make time to stop and stare, but as we turned off through the trees, I thought I heard a whine.

Should I have been concerned?

Reed sighed as we jogged. “It’s hard on him.”

The more she thought she was explaining things and putting me at ease, the more jumbled I felt. Maybe that was what it meant to be human.

Maybe it sucked.

Reed was not only armed with her broadsword, but also carried a canteen and sipped at intervals. What great ideas humans had sometimes—great crafts forged by tools held by their opposable thumbs, then operated by said opposable thumbs. I probably could’ve gotten a water container of some kind (or stolen it) (from Reed’s place), but staying hydrated on the go would still require some…forethought, to keep it from bouncing on the ground and rolling off forevermore.

Meanwhile, besides being thirsty with only drops of rainwater to sate me, I was starting to look sad and wilted. It was decidedly drizzly, soaking our skin and softening the earth, making us chilly and just plain uncomfortable. And soon it would really get hard. The coming of heavy rain, I knew, was our time limit. Not because I fully comprehended what we were searching for, but because my fur was suffering and my whiskers were as ineffective as any mustache.

As we rushed side by side, the trees around us rustled furiously. Those were birds racing to beat the rain—I could tell even though most of them were too fast and furtive to see.

I grazed a tree teeming with lines of busy ants. My hungry EXP bar called out to me…

EXP: 1% (10/900)

No, I couldn’t stop and fight them. Even if it was an easy point grab. Not in front of this person I had decided to respect, not while we were on a time-sensitive mission!

We trudged on through the waving, rattling woods.

When we came to a mass of thorny bushes reaching up to Reed’s chin and I watched her stop short and gasp, I panicked. Would my Swiping claws be enough to break through? Would I have to tunnel underneath? Or would I have to transform and do some extreme gymnastics?

Oh yeah, Reed literally had a huge sword. “Stand back,” she warned, and mere moments after I sprang away, she’d swung her sword cleanly through the briars. I still didn't know where she got it from, and it clearly didn't sit in an Inventory of the same make as mine. As if she had an Inventory that was cleaner, more…energy-efficient.

The spiny bushes were still in our path, though, just collapsed and droopy. Reed, with her tough boots, could step through them at their current height, but I’d be pricked all over.

Was she going to have to pick me up? Again? Aw, I’d been hoping that this adventure would let me prove myself. Reed had saved me from death and I was dying to return the favor.

I sat before the cut bushes. Reed looked at me with a puzzled frown.

Then I reared back, waggled my butt (it helps, shut up), licked my lips (that helps too, shut up!) and launched myself with a Leap.

Aura coursed and rippled through the air as I Leaped, stuck the landing, forgot the ground was turning to mud and mush, scooted a bit too far, lost my balance, and plopped on my side.

HP: 97% (121/125)
SP: 82% (82/100)

We take what we can get in life.

Reed chuckled for a second, but cut herself off—mercifully. She was about to ask if I was alright, but I cut her off by wobbling to my feet and shaking myself off.

How far along were we again? I checked the Map.

Woah, we'd barely even moved! We had a lot more ground to cover, so I didn’t waste any time. I scampered up the slope. Did Reed have that much Speed? Did she even have Stats? Well, she would just have to catch up.

“Hey!” she cried, but not without a laugh.

***

The drizzling got a little heavier. In other words, drips had become drops.

I was racing now, zigzagging between leaves and bark in a way I was now sure Reed couldn't cope with. In my current flow state, that was hard to remember. I paused every now and then, looking over my shoulder, swiveling an ear. At the first sound of her heavy human footsteps, I’d spring and charge onward.

My progress was halted by a small watering hole. Five blue-headed mallards were peacefully gliding through the middle, and at the bank, drinking, was…a ram.

A whole ram, their fleece yellow-white and their horns heavy and long. As they drank, they glared up into the evergreens with eyes like boiling lava.

I froze at the opposite edge. I was careful, this time, to make sure the leaves before me didn’t shake and give me away. I had no experience with rams (no surprise) but I did have some idea of them: determined, aggressive herbivores.

Despite my time limit, way too many recent run-ins with surprisingly dangerous foes had taught me to stop playing every second and take my darn time, so I backed up as carefully as I could, preparing to go sideways.

And then I remembered Reed was coming, and that her boots would be loud as thunder. Crap!

Wait…she had a weapon. And evidently, a Skill! And she was, to some degree, a woman of the wilderness. If I could just signal to her quickly and accurately, we could solve this—either go around the obstacle or massacre our way through it!

I tiptoed backward until I heard Reed coming up the slope. I turned around, tried to seat myself on the most conspicuous spot possible, and kept my sparkling eyes wide open. Then I held my paw pad out—sort of an improvised stop sign.

Reed came into view, and my weird posture grabbed her attention. She was about four meters away, looking up at me through the pines.

With an inquisitive face, she pointed her sword up and over my head toward the watering hole.

I shook my head, in as huge an arc as possible to make sure she could see it.

She made a curve with her sword.

Going around the obstacle? Good! Good. I kinda wanted the Experience from fighting those animals, but that was why they called me Low-Intelligence-and-Wisdom-Stat Jones.

Without an explicit response to Reed, I curved around the watering hole and continued the trip. And this time, I slowed to a gallop so that my adventuring partner could keep up.

When she reached my side, an ominous current of wind blew through and whipped heavy raindrops in our faces. I blinked them away; Reed shielded her eyes.

We were about three-fourths of the way there. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

We got high enough that the trees began to break up. At first, the only new things we could see were dramatic patches of the grayish-brown light filtering through the fuming clouds. The color reminded me of earth tornadoes, ravaged sepia valleys.

Then we came to a flat ledge of mingled mud and rock and, since Reed was breathing heavily and already slowing down a little, this was where I came to a stop. I sat on the edge, and Reed sat next to me. Well, almost—she stood there, dropped her sword with a clank, bent forward, and set her hands on her knees, breathing deeply. The rain pattered on our heads, a constant reminder.

Only now did I realize how great the view was from up here…and how much better it would be from the peak, and on a clearer day.

You know how when the rain is heavy enough, you’ll see big chunks of it coming down in the sky? I expected the rain to be blocking my view like that, but it didn’t. But I was sure it would. The downpour hadn’t truly arrived yet. I could scan more of the Vencian Wood than I ever had before. The landscape reminded me of Reed’s quilt: a forest here, a field there, in what almost looked like checkerboard squares. Hm, maybe the design of my Map made more sense than I'd anticipated.

Above in the cloudy vortex was that familiar bird, the only bird in this drenched sky, ever boomeranging.

Southeast of here were dramatically looming shapes, too distant to see clearly, but I knew a mountain when I saw one, and unlike Reed’s, this gang of mountains was skyscraper-steep. Like the cones of wizard hats.

All this I saw in a few quiet moments, while Reed got her bearings. She was the one to break that quiet.

“We’ll talk more later, but…do you mind me asking if you have a name?” she said.

Huh?

…Huh.

I understood the question, I just didn’t know how to answer it, or…why she was asking it that way?

I definitely did have a name, and I was yearning to share it with someone who wasn’t a goddess or a System that knew it by default. I was pleased as punch that she’d care that much.

But I could only communicate in “yes” and “no.” And “meow,” if we’re gonna count that (and I refuse to). Why would she ask me for a name if I had no way of sharing it?

So I nodded “yes,” but I did so with a whimper.

“Oh,” she said between deep breaths. “Did someone steal it?”

Huh?

Oh yeah, this was a world of witchcraft and whimsy. I should’ve realized how many weird conclusions her mind could jump to if I said something ambiguous like that.

“Meow!” I shook my head in a hard “no.”

“What?”

“Meow,” I said, hanging my head.

A crack of lightning sprouted in the southeast.

“We’d better get going,” Reed said. She snapped up her sword in one hand, with that same combo of strength and casual dexterity. With a swig from her canteen, she went on jogging. I followed, and we got back on the road.