When Donaldson had mentioned them going to his secret favorite location, Renalia had thought he meant a spot filled with boglings. So her apprehension had grown with each step. While she had learnt a lot about killing boglings, she still doubted she could fight one, even as part of a duo.

Farther into the bog than she had gone before, he called for a halt before a large, but otherwise nondescript, patch of moss and sedge. It didn’t look like the dark horror of a bogling lair she had imagined.

The moss covered parts of the ground, resembling a pillowy cloud that was dyed a vibrant green. In other parts, the green sedge lay, looking like spun thread haphazardly layered into thick padding. If anything, she had to suppress the urge to roll around and nap in the implied softness.

“Where are the boglings?” she asked.

“Boglings? Why would there be”–he slapped the side of his head with a hand–“Oh, you have a weird definition for a favorite place, little one.”

He kneeled and untied the harness from Killer, motioning Renalia to do the same for Boogie. Before they left, Malchim had requested some bog water to submerge the armored bogling’s innards. So they had hung multiple empty waterskins on the dogs’ harnesses. The flopping of the waterskins, when the dogs ran, had appeared comical to Renalia, but the dogs seemed unbothered by them.

“Well, I thought you meant a favorite place to hunt since we’re, you know, hunting.”

“Bah, hunting is work, and I’d much rather work for myself than the baron. This is for fun. And, by the way, if anybody tries to sell you a map to a secret location where boglings live, just walk away. Trust me, nobody knows when and where boglings will appear.”

“Okay. So what’s special about this place?”

“You’ve heard of quaking bogs before, right? Those are patches soft enough–yet with a firm enough layer on top–that it feels like you’re walking on liquid mud. Well, I call this patch the ‘bouncing bog’. Killer, pee.”

Released from his authority, the wolfhound rushed forward and leapt. As the dog landed, the moss caved in around her, almost hiding her from their view.

Renalia gasped, taking an involuntary step forward.

But in the next second, the ground under Killer reversed itself and flung her up and out. Killer pushed off at the apex, her paws sticking out behind her and her tongue flapping out the side of her mouth. At the peak of her graceful jump–higher than any dog had a right to be–she drew her legs and tongue in. As she fell, she extended her paws out ahead of her, toes splayed. The sedge that she landed in sunk and she crouched at the nadir, preparing for the next launch.

Renalia realized she had left her mouth open and closed it with an audible click of her teeth.

Donaldson chuckled beside her and laid his lance by his feet. “My turn.”

He squatted and launched himself, streaking overhead in a Card-assisted blur. Whooping as he flew through the air, he somersaulted and hung in the air for a brief second before gravity seemingly remembered to assert itself. As he landed, the ground deformed to a much greater degree than with the dog, completely hiding him from view.

Killer yelped as the ground unexpectedly dropped below her feet just as she prepared to push off. Her legs windmilled in the air. As the land came up to meet her, she shot forward in a dash, pushing little hills of moss and sedge behind her.

As Donaldson ascended with the upsurge in a squat, he pushed down against it with his legs, which caused the earth underneath him to reverse course. He pirouetted inches above the receding ground.

By pushing against the swell and pulling up against the downswing, he quickly stabilized the bouncing. “Jump in!” he shouted. “The water’s nice and dry!” He tossed his head back and laughed at his own joke.

Renalia closed her mouth again with a click. At her side, Boogie reflected her desire to join in. He hopped on his toes and barely suppressed his urge to bark, instead blowing air through the side of his mouth in excited breaths.

But she held on to her spear with a firm grip. They were in the bog, and danger lurked everywhere. “What if boglings attacked?”

“Nah, I’ve never seen any boglings here.”

“But you just said no one knows where and when boglings would appear!”

“It’ll be fine. I don’t need my lance to activate [Pierce]–anything pointy would work.” He held up a forefinger as an example.

Renalia remained uncertain, though. Even though her bogling cards provided weapons and armor, her reluctance to reveal those cards lingered. She had concocted a perfect reason to explain their existence, but still felt uneasy about sharing with people she barely knew.

Noticing her hesitation, Donaldson rolled his eyes and made his way to her in long, bounding strides. She caught him muttering under his breath. Something about “too old for her age.”

“Alright, tell you what, little one. We’ll take turns. One of us will keep a lookout and the other can play in the bouncing bog with the dogs.”

With one final hop, he landed on the solid earth next to her and picked up his lance. “Fortune favors the prepared, yes?”

Renalia didn’t understand what that meant, but she supposed one person standing guard was better than nothing. But shouldn’t one of the dogs stay back also? In her hunting experience so far, it had always been the dogs that first noticed a bogling. Yet, looking at Boogie’s barely contained eagerness beside her, she couldn’t bring herself to mention it.

“I guess that’s okay.”

“Alright, you go first. Take it slow in the beginning and get used to the bounce before really pushing it.”

She freed Boogie, who rushed forward without a glance back. The wolfhound outran the dip and bumped his chin on the sloping ground before him. But he adjusted quickly and started making short hops.

She followed slowly, experimenting with how the soil shifted beneath her feet. But before long, she too, was skipping around in long strides. She joined the dogs in a game of chase. The only rule seemed to be that someone always had to be in the air, since the role of predator and prey swapped without reason.

With every bounce, she felt lighter. The accumulated knots of worry and fear in the past eight days loosened and fell away, left behind with each hop. It all seemed trivial, when flying through the air, planning the perfect angle in order to intercept a bounding dog.

After a while, she lay on the undulating moor, catching her breath. As she did so, she also unconsciously released the responsibilities of adulthood that she had burdened herself with two years ago.

Laughter erupted unbidden as Boogie decided no time-outs were allowed and shoved his nose into her side. She jumped up after him, simply a kid chasing after a dog.

 

Renalia had checked with Donaldson several times to see if he wanted to switch with her, but he had waved her off every time. He called for a lunch break when she and the dogs collapsed into a giggling and panting pile. She crawled over to him on all fours, too tired to stand up just to sit down again.

Donaldson unwrapped her lunch for her as she collapsed in barely exaggerated exhaustion upon reaching firmer ground. He laid it in front of her face. “Lunch for the hairless dog. I’d recommend using hands, though.”

Renalia rolled her eyes in response. She had previously bonded with Lexi over the young woman’s teaching and care. On the other hand, she had found Donaldson a bore with how often he distracted from his sister’s lessons.

But now… She could see a certain appeal to his boyish charm, even if it didn’t seem very fatherly.

Except, was he even a father? She realized that, despite seeing them around the village sometimes, she didn’t really know the sibling pair that well.

“Do you have kids?” she asked, as she started eating.

“Oh Lord, I hope not! Ahem, that is to say, I’m not even married.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to deprive the single ladies of my company.” He chuckled as he added, “Nor the married ones.”

Renalia stopped chewing and glanced at him with a flat face, lowering one of her brows in disapproval.

“Well, excuse me, mom. I guess liking girls just runs in the family.” Observing Renalia’s scrunched brows, he added, “You know, cause Lexi likes–”

He froze in mid-sentence, mouth agape, showing the half-chewed jerky within. His arms weaved in an awkward pattern, as if to disrupt the sound waves that he had emitted seconds ago.

“Lexi likes girls?”

He shook his head, worry lines creasing his face. “I didn’t say it. You didn’t hear me say anything like that.”

“Is that why your parents didn’t approve of who she fell in love with?”

Donaldson made a show of tightly pursing his lips and making indecipherable noises.

“I don’t get what’s the big deal. I love both my Mama and Papa.”

He exhaled with a puff. “That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Ah…” He faltered for words, but then asserted quickly, “It just is. You’re too young to understand.”

“Hmph,” she snorted. “Grown-ups always say that.”

She squinted up at him. “Does it have to do with, you know, ‘sex’?”

His eyes rotated erratically, as if her gaze had struck his. “Bah, bah, bah!” He covered up both of his ears with his hands while making random sounds. “I’m too young for this conversation. You should ask a real grown-up, like Lexi.”

Renalia giggled at his antics. “It’s not like I haven’t seen what the dogs and cats do when they’re in heat.”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s- You know what, I’m gonna shut my big mouth. You’ve already gotten me into so much trouble.”

“Me? What did I do?” She drooped her eyebrows and gave him her best innocent expression.

“You literally made me say… Nothing. I said nothing.” He clasped his hands in front of his chest and drooped his own eyebrows. “Please, please don’t tell her I said anything.”

Renalia laughed. “Alright. I suppose for sharing your secret of this bouncing bog, I’ll keep the secret of you not saying Lexi likes girls.”

“A fair bargain!” He spat in his right hand and held it out to her. “Put it there!”

“Ew, do we have to? I’m eating.”

“Of course you need to. That’s how I’ll know you’re serious.” He used his left hand to support his right elbow and pushed his right hand further out at her.

“Fine,” she sighed. Or at least, she tried to, but it came out as more of a chortle. She made a show of transferring her jerky to her left hand before spitting in her right and clasping his.

“Mwah, haha,” he fake laughed while shaking her hand enthusiastically. “You’ve fallen for my brilliant plan. Now half of your luck with boglings has been transferred to me!”

She snatched her hand back. “That’s not how luck works.”

“Sure it is. It’s like magic.”

 

They made the return trip back to the village after lunch. Donaldson informed Renalia that Malchim would probably need help with processing the takes from hunters. For Manor Day, instead of hunters and processors negotiating a percentage of the sale, everyone received a small commission. Since Malchim used to be one of them, a lot of the hunters let him earn it while hanging around to socialize after.

As they walked with the dogs beside them, they chatted about everything and nothing. The only topic Donaldson disapproved of was hunting, which he derisively labeled as work and unsuitable for his “day off”. It worked well since the part of Renalia that would usually point out he was her hunting mentor had also taken some time off.

It was a pleasant hike, without any attacks. Even the lack of a new bogling card failed to bother her much. It helped that her recent acquisition, [Bogling Speed], was applicable toward peat harvesting too, greatly easing her concerns around the usefulness of her Deck.

They heard the droning of voices as they approached the Ongock residence, frequently punctuated by bouts of laughter or the barking of dogs. Up against the side of the house were propped various spears, bows, and other hunting instruments. Rounding the corner of the house toward the workshop, Renalia spotted almost two dozen people milling about, hunters plus their families and dogs.

From among the crowd, Lexi was the first to spot them, even though she stood shorter than most. She met them halfway. “Renalia, how did the hunt go? No massive bogling today, huh?”

“No, we walked around the bog, but didn’t find any boglings today.”

Glancing at Donaldson to her left, Lexi whispered out the right side of her mouth, loud enough for both of them to hear, “Color me surprised.”

Donaldson pretended not to hear. “We talked about cats and dogs. And Renalia has a question for you, about the birds and the bees.”

Lexi looked at her brother quizzically before her eyes widened. “Ah, er, well–”

“Renalia!” yelled Malchim over the crowd. “Good, you’re back. Can you help Marcy load the cleansed hides onto the wagon?” From within the workshop, he waved in Marcy’s general direction.

“Okay!” she replied. To the siblings, she said, “I have to go. Talk later?”

“Sure, kid,” said Lexi. “But if we don’t get the chance, say hi to your Mama for me.”

“Catch you later, little one.” He waved her off. “I hope there’s still beer left. It was a hard day of work.”

Renalia ran past a group of hunters, huddled around Sammy. Or, more precisely, gathered around the big jar that the children had made into Penny’s home the night before. It now featured a pool of bog water at the bottom, along with artfully placed river rock platforms, smooth sticks, and colorful flowers.

But she paused as Sammy lowered a stick past the mouth of the jar, with a good-sized spider hanging down from it on a strand of web. The audience collectively held their breath as the spider lengthened its web to its doom. The crowd burst into cheers as Penny chomped down on the offering.

Satisfied that everything went smoothly, she continued on. She was not so worried about Sammy, since Penny had gradually grown accustomed to the Ongock kids the night before. The tiny bogling even let them handle her. She had been more worried about the hunters who made their livelihoods from killing boglings. But it seemed like hunters would celebrate a good hunt, no matter who the predator was.

She passed another group gathered around a beer barrel. A bearded hunter finished filling up his tankard and raised it high.

“Sixth toast,” he announced.

Whispers of sixth toast traveled like fire through the throng, and people held their tankards and mugs at the ready. Renalia stopped to observe, unfamiliar with this ritual among the hunters.

“Sixth toast,” the man declared again. “To Liliane.”

“To Liliane,” the people echoed, loud in resonance.

“She’s making Heaven a better place.”

A chorus of soft “ayes” answered him as they all took a sip of their drinks.

Malchim and Shim stood in the workshop with their heads bowed and eyes closed. At the far end of the workshop, Marcy had open streams running down her cheeks, a dead bogling forgotten in her hands.

Reaching the workshop, she gave Marcy a half-hug, allowing Marcy to wipe away the tears and snot onto her clothes. The crowd resumed their previous activities as she donned the other set of aprons and climbed onto the wagon bed. 

Grabbing the fox carcass that Marcy handed up to her, she made her way to an empty spot to lay it down. As she did so, she snatched the glowing Card from its opened underside and placed it into her core.

Like before, her Core readily accepted the Card, which had a cute little black nose imprinted on the front. Covering her nose with her right hand in case her nose would appear different, she tested a quick activation of [Bogling Nose].

She gagged and coughed as the nasty grossness in her and Donaldson’s dried saliva flooded her senses. It was so much worse than merely smelling stronger. There were levels and edges to the scent that she had no words for and very much did not want to linger on.

“Renalia!” Marcy cried from behind her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” And she would be, for through the unbidden tears in her eyes, she spotted twinkling lights from within the dark remains strewn around her.