Emma sat on the ground as she ate the cold rabbit meat they had left over from yesterday, there wasn’t a lot left after she had devoured everything she could in an attempt to appease her starved stomach. But Aelin, the elf guy, had luckily had the wherewithal to insist she leave something for her own breakfast after they both decided to give her almost all the food they had left. Only almost, as Aelin had insisted that they needed energy too if they wanted to get more food, even in the face of Oliver’s insistence.

The food itself was, honestly, pretty good too, sure, it was cold and dry, but it had a nice chewy quality, and the taste of meat was pretty nice even when it was cold. Although, honestly, that may simply be the three days of nuts, berries, and the scraps of her lunch talking… Especially the part where she appreciated the chewiness of the meat, since she could, in some recess of her mind, recognize that she was, perhaps, simply appreciating that chewing for longer made it seem like she ate more than she actually did.

Emma once more sunk into more and more meandering subjects of thought, until, finally, she ran out of things to do other than fixing the tension between her breakfast companions. Aelin was scowling slightly as he nibbled at his meat, a mere fifth of what she had, as he once in a while raised his head to look around for something in the forest, before once again settling down to glare at his cold rabbit. Oliver was sitting down calmly, smiling hopefully and a bit apologetically at Aelin, a smile which only widened whenever he happened to make eye contact with Aelin after he looked around, before going back to his passive smile when Aelin looked away once more.

Emma had Known Oliver for far too long and seen it far too many times to not know what that particular expression meant, and it meant something along the lines of ‘sorry, but I just don’t agree with your opinion on my opinion, and I hope we can look past it and still be friends'. She couldn’t help but wonder which of the four usual subjects Aelin had tried to change, but she supposed it didn’t really matter, the speech would be the same either way.

Emma sighed at her best friend’s stubbornness, before starting the speech she had given at least fifteen times by now. “Aelin, I’m sorry, but I feel like it’s my job as the most experienced ‘friend of Olliver’s’ here to tell you something. It's not going to work. I don’t know exactly what your argument was about, but I am willing to bet that it was either about Oliver’s inability to plan for failure, his tendency for borderline suicidal plans, his mythical capacity to trust in the power of hope, or his magnificent skill in ignoring the mere concept of teamwork” Emma says, rolling her eyes at Oliver’s affronted expression, and smirking slightly at the wide-eyed surprise on Aelin’s face. “Now, let me make something very clear, it’s just not going to work, even if you gave him an ultimatum of some sort, it won’t work, trust me, friendships far longer than the one you guys share have ended because of this” Emma said, smiling apologetically at Aelin.

“Are you telling me, that no matter how many times someone he cares for asks him to change, he still refuses them?” Aelin asked.

“Based on my extensive experience, I would have to say yes, but, on the positive end of things, his belief in the power of hope is so rigid, that I’m pretty sure it will shatter at some point, and when that happens, we just need to help him put himself back together, so he doesn’t stay so inflexible,” Emma said, a strained smile on her face as she looked worriedly at Oliver.

“Well, then,” Oliver said as he leaned back with a relaxed smile “if I truly am so rigid and inflexible, then why exactly is it that you were the one starving”

“ok, you had as much to do with thriving in this forest as I had to do with us winning that biology jeopardy game in last week's class, I was there, but I was probably more of a hindrance than anything else” Emma said.

“I know that, I’m not competent,” Oliver said, laughing at even the idea as he did, before continuing with a smile “I’m just saying that I used the power of hope and my willingness to try to look for people who have even the slightest inkling of what they are doing to thrive… and maybe also a bit of incredible luck, but I am sure, that even if I hadn’t found Aelin, I would have figured out something,” Oliver said.

Emma simply shook her head with an exasperated sigh, knowing that Oliver wouldn’t see that he essentially just said, ‘hope might not actually work, but determination and positivity does’. He always did so, renouncing and defending the power of hope in the same sentence, that is, yet he never saw it, he just wouldn’t let himself.

“As satisfying as it is to watch the madman flounder in his attempts at defending his stupid philosophy, it isn’t actually what we need to do right now” Aelin, the elf guy, said.

Emma looked at him in interest “Right, I’ve been trying to catch up with you two for a couple of days now, and you keep moving eastwards, what are trying to do?” she asked.

“We are trying to find something, anything, to actually get tools and weapons beyond rocks and sticks, but we haven’t even found the most pathetic flint splinter, nevermind a piece big enough to let us stop dressing our prey with our bare hands” Aelin scowled, frustration clear in his voice.

“he is right, we haven’t found anything yet, but I am sure that it is only a matter of persevering a little longer before we find something. Besides, it’s still better than what you have endured up until now, so really we already have been quite lucky” Oliver smiled as he got to his feet.

Aelin rose to his feet and stretched slightly before he spoke “even if there is no reason for him to think that there will be a basin at the bottom of the chasm, he is right on one front. We have no alternative, we will just have to keep looking, so we might as well start now” he said, looking out over the many entangled branches of the forest with grim determination.

Emma couldn’t help but smirk smugly as she stood up and slung an arm around each of their shoulders “well, as much fun as walking up and down endless branches in a gigantic forest after starving for a couple of days sounds, I think I have a better idea” she patted each of them on the shoulder, although she could have been tricked into thinking that Aelin’s shoulder was a boulder with how hard his muscles were tensed, before walking over to her splinter “Allow me to introduce the two of you to one of the natural wonders of the ever-fall forest, Heartwood” then she held onto the wooden splinter in one end with both her hands and held it over her head, before driving it towards the bark below as she fell to one knee and put all her strength and weight into the stab, plunging it through ten centimeters of bark and wood.

“Could… could I borrow your splinter?” Aelin said, his face a stoic mask as he looked at the splinter with veiled desire.

“Sure thing, I mean, that is why I brought it out,” Emma said, twisting the splinter free from the branch beneath them and holding it out for Aelin to take. But Aelin didn’t take it. He simply looked in suspicion.

“Uh, do you want it or not?” Emma asked

Aelin finally reached out to take it with a resigned sigh, shaking his head before speaking “what kind of world are you two from? First the madman swings in a strip of cloth over two meters of empty air into a creature that could easily kill him. And now you hand a dangerous weapon, one far better than any other we have, to a stranger you know nothing about, for free, even when you knew I desperately wanted it” Aelin said.

“I mean, why wouldn’t I give it to you? You need it more than I do right now, and the only way we can all thrive is if we work together, right? Besides, helping people feels good, you know?” Emma asked with a confused smile even as Aelin shook his head and walked away in resigned confusion and started carving strips of bark off the branch.

“what is he doing?” Emma asked as she looked at Aelin.

“I quite honestly don’t know, but it is presumably something very useful and necessary that we have no idea even existed” Oliver said with his usual smile, apparently, he was completely unaffected by the end of the world as they knew it.

“Where did you get your splinter from anyways, after all, I assume you didn’t carve through forty meters of harder and harder wood until got down to the iron layer with your bare hands?” Oliver asked curiously.

“Oh! It was the first day right, and while I didn’t know it at the time, I was walking on a branch a couple layers below the one you two were on. It is rather dark on the lower layers, so when I stumbled across the perfect place to go up, I thought it would be better than being down in the dark. It was steep enough to let me get to a layer where I thought there would be at least a little moonlight, but not so much that couldn’t get up, but I didn’t notice that the branch was coming down from above” Emma said, making Oliver smirk.

“Let me guess, when you came up to the end of the bran-” Oliver started, but Emma hushed him just as he was about to finish his sentence.

“Hey! Don’t spoil yourself, just enjoy the story. Where was I, oh yeah. And so, when I finally made my way to the end of the branch I suddenly came upon a canyon filled with spikes. Yep, you guessed it, the branch had snapped at some point. I was going to go down the middle since there were bigger splinters there, so it wouldn’t take as long, but, well, then this fox or something fell from a branch above me and got torn to literal ribbons by the splinters in the middle, so I figured that maybe it was a better idea to take the slow path along the outer side of the branch. And when I got to the bottom where there was this carpet of bark connecting the two pieces, and, well, there it was, a splinter as hard as iron but light as wood, and, I mean, it even has the same dimensions as the longsword I usually train with, so I took it, and a short climb later I reached the top, got ambushed by a bright autumn-leaf colored lynx, and I was suddenly very happy to have a weapon. At least, a weapon better than the femur impersonating a bone club I got for picking BRAWN” She said, finishing her story.

Emma stood in silence with Oliver for some time as they watched Aelin work on whatever he was doing, before she turned to speak with Oliver “Hey, are you doing okay? I mean, if you are worried about your mother and our other friends, then we can talk, okay?” Emma said.

“Why would I be worried? Sure, I suppose this forest is a bit dangerous, but I’m sure they’ll be fine” Oliver said with a smile as he looked down at her, not even a hint of doubt in his sky-blue eyes, and, honestly, what did she expect, for him to confront that he might not see the one family member he had ever again? No, of course not, he didn’t do that.

“So, what should we do now?” Emma asked as she stared at Aelin while he peeled off the different layers of the long bark strips he cut.

“I’m going to try and figure out magic, with you picking the Brawn class and Aelin deciding that he couldn’t afford to hold back his growth any longer without it giving diminishing returns, I think it is time that I figure out how to bend the raw energy of the world to my whims,” Oliver said before he sat down to meditate, leaving Emma to wonder what she should be doing.

She ended up pulling up her status and her craft description, just to do something to distract her mind while she let her subconscious think of something she could do.

Emma grumbled slightly to herself, not at the system, but at Oliver and his tendency to be really annoying when it came to things like planning and staying alive through groundbreaking methods such as 'sure, we might be able to jump over that cliff, and it would be faster than walking over to the bridge, but we could also die'. but he also had a slightly annoying tendency to figure out things like, 'there are always hints in the system about what you need to get better at to progress' really quickly and easily. and, you know, he brought overwhelmingly positive energy to even the bleakest situations and would take a bullet for a stranger so long as he was innocent. those were also slightly admirable traits. But Oliver really did have a knack for understanding things fast, but honestly, who reads a bunch of degrading comments on all your skills and thinks, 'hey, maybe these are hints about what I should get better at?'. he was right, of course, before it was something along the lines of 'blah blah blah, you have no talent, insult insult insult, but if you start right now you might become decent' and well, now it was that. Sure, both were essentially just telling her ‘Do something that relates to your class', but that was really the best thing to do right now, to just get started. 

Emma shook herself out of her thoughts and decided to follow the system's advice to just make something, who knows, maybe she could cobble together something to make her splinter more comfortable to hold, a grip of some kind, probably not leather, but if she used sap and some longer heartier plants to fasten some leaves around one end, it would be pretty nice to hold.

Emma smiled slightly as she started searching for materials for her first project in the new world... maybe Oliver was right, maybe, this wasn't completely horrible, besides, if all three of them were fine, then weren't there pretty good odds that everyone else was too?