Astrid spends the rest of the day resting and talking to her family while the others pack. The hunt for the vampire didn’t do her wounds any favors, so she’s glad to have a bit of time to let them heal. It’s good to gather strength for the journey ahead. Still, she feels restless, and the fact that the only foods available seem to be fruits and vegetables doesn't help. She still remembers the moment she woke up in her new body. That feeling of strength and energy is now leaving her and the culprit is clear. The vegetarian diet of the last two days is good enough to stave off the burning hunger, but it never really fills her. These akfruits, while large, don’t provide much in the way of nourishment and Astrid can feel it. Her mind is dulled. Even though she’s awake, thinking is difficult.

Her older brother doesn't seem to have a problem eating nothing but fruits and vegetables. It seems that none of the giants do. As a matter of fact, Kilian doesn’t want to eat meat anymore at all. While Astrid was on Fynn’s revenge trip, he helped the others gather food in the fields surrounding the farm. He told Astrid that these akfruit things grow on small trees that are barely as big as a human. Her brother also told her that he figured out he can eat leaves and that they actually don’t taste that bad – all while stuffing an akfruit into his mouth after every sentence.

Astrid, on the other hand, is annoyed by the fact that there isn’t a single bit of meat here. She wonders why. They have hunters and they have guns. Why not just shoot some of these animals and be done with it?

As much as she feels for the creatures, her stomach is stronger than her empathy.

According to her brother, the Mayor told the hunters to save their ammunition. He explained to her that they tried to hunt the bison-like beasts, which they now call ornns, but they made some sort of droning noise that caused incredible pain. After one of the hunters got beaten black and blue by this magical sonic attack, none of them dared to get close to the things again.

Kilian stuffs another akfruit into his mouth, as Fynn calls Astrid’s name.

He, the Sheriff, the Mayor, and a kobold Astrid doesn't know are walking towards a barn.

Astrid limps over to them and asks, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. We're just discussing the details of our plan. Maybe you can help.”

Astrid shrugs. She has no idea what she's supposed to contribute, but says, “Sure.”

“Great. This is Tom.” Fynn gestures towards the kobold. “He oversaw the construction of the fortifications.”

“Nice to meet you.” The kobold extends a hand to Astrid. His fur is almost pitch black, with white rings around his eyes and a bit of white at the tip of his tail. She leans down and shakes his hand.

They walk across the courtyard and Fynn pulls open a sliding door. The inside of the barn is filled with farming implements and a large green flatbed trailer.

Fynn gestures at it. “That's what we used to transport hay from the fields. It's the biggest thing we have.”

Brushing over her imaginary beard, the Sheriff inspects the vehicle. “This thing is going to need serious modification if we want to travel with it. Tom, you think you can get it ready by tomorrow?”

“That depends on what you want me and my boys to do.”

The Sheriff pulls down the steel grille used as a ramp for loading the flatbed, and climbs on top. “We need to add paneling to the sides to prevent things from falling off and to give us cover. It's gonna be tight, but we should be able to fit everyone on this thing and still have enough room for supplies. We’re able to weld things, right?”

Tom nods and says, “We have a gas welder and that wizard can use his finger like a plasma cutter. We’re good on that end, but—”

Astrid’s eyes widen.

The Sheriff stops mid-stride and snaps her head towards Tom. “Did you just say, wizard who can use his finger as a plasma torch?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know? That weird kobold that doesn’t speak our language? Turns out he can make fire and melt steel with his bare hands. I have no idea how that English teacher talks to him, but she managed to get him to weld stuff for us.”

The Sheriff sighs. “A wizard that can melt metal with his bare hands. Another thing to worry about. I can’t believe I’m not even surprised.”

Tom continues the conversation as though this revelation is the most normal thing in the world. “Anyway, as I was saying, wouldn't it be easier to just go get a normal semi-truck-trailer and modify that, than to build something on this thing?"

The Sheriff just shrugs, but Fynn says, “No. The roads are blocked and a normal semi-truck can't drive off-road. This thing can drive on a normal road, a dirt road and through a field if need be. There should be a few metal support thingies behind the trailer that go into those holes in the sides. Welding, or even gluing a few pieces of sheet metal onto those should be way easier than modifying a semi-truck. But I would like to add that a few steel panels probably won't stop a persistent monster – and definitely won't stop a bullet.”

The Mayor raises an eyebrow. “Why would we need to stop bullets? Most people don't have guns and the whole point of this is to not fight the soldiers.”

The Sheriff says, “The panels should be enough against the monsters, but the soldiers might try to stop us from leaving. We need to plan for that.” The elf starts pacing around on top of the flatbed. “Fynn. Do you have any sandbags around here?”

“No... But we do have bags of grain to feed the animals. Why?”

“That should work too. We can use those things as cover. We need to take that stuff with us anyway and if we get into a firefight, it might save our lives.”

The Mayor doesn't look like she agrees. “Bags of grain are gonna stop bullets?”

The Sheriff glares at her. “Back in the day, our Drill Sergeant told us that sand is really effective at stopping projectiles. I can't remember why, but anything similar should do the trick.”

“Great,” Fynn says. “So we put our grain and water barrels on the edges of the flatbed and add holes in the paneling to shoot out of. I mean, I hate wasting good grain, but it's better it gets shot than us. You think you can do that, Tom?”

“I can weld and cut whatever you want into that thing. Since we're going to burn this place down anyway, we can use the panels from the barn’s roof for the walls. If we work through the night we should be able to get it done by tomorrow morning.”

Astrid, who’s wondering why she's even here, asks, “What about the tractor itself? Shouldn't that be protected too?”

The Sheriff glances at her and says, “Right. Tom, any idea how we could do that?”

The kobold scowls. “You're talking about turning that thing into a tank. We could add plating over the engine block and then put some bags on top of that, cos you said we need to transport that anyway. Of course, we also have to protect the driver's cabin. I don't know anything about bullets, but do you think three millimeters of sheet metal is enough?”

Fynn scoffs. “Maybe for a .22, but three millimeters wouldn’t even stop a 9mm, much less the 5.56 full metal jacket rounds the soldiers are probably using.”

The Sheriff adds, “I don't know the exact numbers, but we need at least ten millimeters if we want to stop anything serious.”

Tom moves the fur around his mouth. “That's a lot of work and weight. Don't you guys think it might be smarter to just get out of here quickly, rather than turn this thing into something out of Mad Max?”

Fynn and the Sheriff look at the Mayor. The woman looks back at them and shrugs. “Why are you looking at me like that? I mean, we need some paneling in the back anyway, so people don't fall off, and then we might as well load everything in a way that it protects us, but Tom is probably right. Turning the whole thing into a tank might be a bit too much.”

Tom scratches the side of his head and looks at the Sheriff. “So some paneling and I think a tarp would make a good enough roof. We can get that done by tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good,” the elf agrees and jumps off the trailer.

“Then I'll go get the boys and we'll get to work right away.”

As the others leave, Fynn says, “Astrid, could I talk to you real quick?”

“Sure.”

The Sheriff glances back at them as she leaves the barn.

A momentary look of discomfort crosses Fynn’s face but it disappears as quickly as it came. “I wanted to say that the past few days have been really tough, but it’s been great to have you along. It’s only been a few days, and this might be weird, but I think I like you. Like, a lot. You know what I mean?”

Astrid is stunned. She did notice that he seems to enjoy having her around, but she didn’t realize that he actually liked her like that. At least, she didn’t consciously think about it. She wants to say she feels the same way, but hesitates. She feels overwhelmed. ‘Is right now a good time for something like this?’ The soldiers might drive up to the farm and gun them all down at any minute. This time tomorrow, they might all be dead. What would be the point of telling Fynn she's not ready? Astrid realizes just how stupid that notion is. She can feel her cheeks radiate heat as she replies, “I like you too.”

Fynn beams, but just stares at her. Astrid searches for something else to say, while she awkwardly pushes a bit of white hair out of her face. As she grabs the pale-blonde strands, she looks at them for a second. “You know what would be hilarious? Imagine if I was like a hundred years old and you just declared your love to a grandma.”

A half-smile stretches his lips and he chuckles. “That would be a little weird, but… how old were you when you were transformed?”

“Eight.”

Fynn's jaw drops and his eyes widen. “What?!”

“-teen,” Astrid adds with a wicked smile. She laughs. “I was eighteen and just finished school. You should've seen your face.”

Fynn tilts his head and glares at Astrid, though his lips show the shadow of a smile. He lets out a sharp breath. “For a second there, I thought I really had just told an eight-year-old I was into her.”

Another wicked smile spreads across Astrid’s lips. “Well, I could be lying.”

The phantom smile disappears. “Crap, now I can't get that thought out of my head. Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Astrid instantly realizes that she has taken the joke a little too far. “No! I was just joking. It's a joke.”

“Telling someone you like them is hard enough. You have no idea how much courage that took.”

She quickly steps towards him and takes his hand. “I'm sorry.” She pauses for the blink of an eye. It might have taken Fynn a great deal of courage to tell her how he felt, but doing something else takes almost as much from Astrid. Her entire body feels charged with electricity as she says, “Let me make it up to you.”

She pulls him closer and presses her lips against his. For a moment, he looks startled and his lips feel stiff, but then he relaxes and leans in. The nervous tingling disappears from Astrid's body as their lips press against each other’s. While her body relaxes and enjoys the warm touch of another being, her mind races. How long should she hold it? Should she open her mouth?

Someone clears their throat to their right. They both open their eyes again.

Tom is standing in the doorway with two human men, a female elf, and a giant. They’re carrying gas tanks, welding equipment, and all sorts of other tools. Following close behind them is the kobold Astrid met in the Sheriff’s house and another kobold wearing a dress that must once have belonged to a small child.

Tom says, “I see you two are busy, but we need to get to work, so… could you take your make-out session to the other barn? Unless you don’t care if someone watches.”

The man, who is in his early thirties, with black hair and brown skin says, “We wouldn't mind. You two just do what you gotta do,” and winks.

Astrid feels her cheeks heating up and Fynn quickly pulls away. “I should probably get to packing the horses' things.” He turns to Astrid. “And you should give your wounds a little rest.” He quickly leans closer and whispers in Astrid's ear, “We’ll continue this… later.”

Astrid is about to go back to the pond, but pauses. She turns to Tom and asks, “That… kobold. Is he the magician? What can he do?”

The female kobold escorting the magician answers, “As far as I know, he can make heat.”

Astrid watches as Tom’s crew starts removing parts of the barn's roof. Once they have a few panels of sheet metal, they place them next to the trailer and put the support beams onto the sheets. Tom hooks two gas tanks up to a welding torch. “Don’t look at the flame,” he says as he puts on a pair of welding goggles and hands the kobold another pair. The magician watches intently as Tom turns a knob on the side of the torch and ignites the gas mixture. A burst of orange flame explodes out of the tip of the welding tool with a hiss. As Tom continues to adjust the small wheel, the flame becomes brighter and soon turns a light blue so bright it might as well be white.

To Astrid, the flame is a cone of bright red that streams out of the front of the welding torch and rises into the air.

Tom grabs a thin rod of metal and starts welding the sheet metal together, and then onto the support beam. The kobold wizard watches his every move.

Once Tom is about halfway through attaching a metal piece to the support beam, he turns off the gas and the radiant flame disappears with a sucking sound. He offers the partially melted metal rod and a glove to the magician and points at the material.

The other kobold mumbles something Astrid can’t understand and walks up to the partially attached pieces of metal.

She half expects the kobold to say some sort of magical incantation, but he remains completely silent as he opens a small, furry palm. Red energy radiates from underneath his fur and the air shimmers with heat above his hand. He quickly moves his fingers together and orange air shoots out of their tips. Astrid sees a cone of red firing out from between his fingers, while the others see a thin, tear-shaped bit of air so hot it glows bright white. Even though the sheer amount of infrared light blinds the red part of Astrid’s vision, she doesn't want to look away.

As the magician moves his hand and the metal rod closer to the support beam, in Astrid’s eyes, the red stream swirls around the material and expands. Red turns into a blackish gray where her infravision is blinded by the sheer intensity of the heat. The weird parallel nature with which Astrid sees the infrared light radiated by warm objects, and the normal light reflecting off of them, becomes more obvious than ever. If that swirling mass of red were normal light, it would completely obscure the metal underneath, but that’s not the case for Astrid. No matter how bright the red light becomes, or even if it turns into that random mess of swirling dark colors that tells her that spot is blinded, she can still see the white flame and melting metal underneath as clearly as if the storm of red didn't exist. Astrid marvels, both at the display of magic and at the incredible capabilities of her own eyes.

Even though the others have seen the magician do something like this before, they can’t help but look at him in wonder. The kobold’s fingers almost touch the metal, and as he moves them along the support beam, the thin rod liquefies and the steel turns bright orange.

The kobold’s breathing starts to increase. With his mouth open and small tongue extended, he wheezes like a Shih Tzu dog in the summer sun. As soon as his fingers reach the end of the support beam, he pulls away.

“Water,” he croaks with a heavy accent.

Astrid is surprised to hear that word from him. She thought he only spoke that weird alien language. The others are not as surprised, and one of the human men quickly hands him a bucket. The kobold pushes his face into it and slurps the clear liquid. Then he sticks his furry arms into it. “Thank,” he squeaks.

“No. Thank you. We wouldn’t have enough gas to do all of this without you,” Tom says.

The magician suddenly contracts his furry face. Astrid can’t really read his emotions, but he says, “No?” and quickly pulls his hands out of the bucket. “Sorry.”

The female kobold quickly says, “Everything is all right. It’s just an expression.”

Astrid has no idea what’s going on.

The magician’s eyes flick to all of them in turn and it’s clear he did not fully understand what they said.

The female kobold contorts her face in concentration, and after a few seconds says, in a very choppy manner, “Al sufhum jadtu la kilashtan.”

The kobold responds with what looks like a smile and puts his hands back into the water.

Astrid’s eyes snap onto the small woman. “What’s going on? How do you speak his language?”

“I have no idea.” The kobold shrugs. “Some of the words just come to me when I hear them from him. Almost like I’m remembering something I’m supposed to know.”

After a few seconds, the kobold takes his hands out of the bucket and continues welding. Astrid notices that, even though his hands produce enough heat to melt steel, they remain wet. Occasionally a small drop falls away, vaporizing as soon as it leaves his fur. The kobold repeats this process several times. He welds a section, then cools his hands, and continues, until he eventually says, “Sorry,” and slumps against a wall. He is breathing so quickly, the single breaths almost become a single, continual noise.

“What’s wrong with him?” Astrid asks.

“He’s tired,” the female kobold replies, as though it’s obvious.

While the crew continues disassembling the roof and Tom starts using the gas welder again, Astrid goes back to the pond. Elijah and Kilian are there too and they pass the time talking. Astrid loves her mother and brothers, but just talking to them gets boring quickly. The elf despises that feeling. She has just managed to get them back and now she can't even sit still for an hour and listen to them. At first, she tries to ignore that restlessness, but just like every morning, it only grows stronger with time. Moving her fingers and toes makes it better and allows her to listen to her mother, but as soon as the merman finishes talking about their latest game of chess, Astrid excuses herself.

This is the first time since the fog that she hasn’t had anything to do. She can't help with anything physical, because her bite wounds need rest. She spots the Mayor standing in front of a group of people packing things into boxes and blue barrels. She's writing something on a clipboard. Astrid might not be able to do anything physical but can probably help the Mayor with whatever she's doing.

She walks up to the woman, quickly pausing to remember her name. “Ms. Pilinger. Can I help you with something? I can’t do anything physical because of my wounds, but maybe I can help you with… whatever you're doing here.”

“I'm using our inventory to figure out how much food we need for the journey, how to best pack it, and how to load it onto the truck. You can help by… wait, don’t you elves have that weird thing where you can’t read?”

Astrid scowls. “I can still read… It's just really hard.”

“Just find something to do. I'm really busy.” The woman turns back to her clipboard.

Anger flares up in Astrid, but she subdues it as fast as she can. Cursing her illiterate eyes, the elf walks away.

 

It takes everyone more than a day to prepare for their journey. A whole day of doing nothing for Astrid.

Even though Fynn has confessed his love for her, they can't get a single moment alone as he prepares the horses for the journey. Before the fog, Astrid could easily spend an entire weekend in bed watching random movies or shows, but now every minute she spends sitting around feels like torture. She wants to eat, but not those weird akfruits, and definitely not dry corn, something that the giant policeman, Jakob, has started doing.

The crew works through the night to prepare the trailer. It’s also the first night Astrid has trouble falling asleep, as her restless body keeps her awake. What seems like an eternity goes by before she finally drifts off to sleep.