In the middle, a faint popping sound, and a suddenly appearing girl. Ignore the fact that she looks like a twenty-year-old boy with messy, black hair right now.

What.

<We were just stepping out the door for groceries, and now we're... here? Wherever here is,> Hailey, one of her headmates, says in her mind.

She nods, hums, and starts checking her pockets and bag. (It's not a purse. She wishes it was a purse, but she hasn't transitioned enough to pull off a purse yet. It sucks.) Inventory: smartphone, backup battery, spare charger and cables, notebook, pocketknife, pen, pencil, and unexpected pink gem. Well, could be worse. She checks for reception, finds none, and turns her phone off, disconnecting the battery as well. She dismisses analyzing the gem until she gets shelter sorted out.

<Sunrise gives us cardinal directions, and that glimmer of water will be important for survival,> Maya notes.

Sable nods and starts walking west. No choice but to preserve stamina and get there as soon as she can.

And that's when she's suddenly kicked in the head by a visceral awareness of twelve enormous constellations, wheeling through the sky of their mindspace. Two smaller stars of the set fall down out of the sky, power crackling through their mind. It feels like molten star-metal being poured through the channels of their mind, cast into shape. It feels like a thousand strokes of a hammer in a forge, all crammed into a single timeless moment. It doesn't hurt per se, but it feels like new grooves are being carved into their brain, making room for new knowledge.

When it stops, they've fallen over from the utterly bizarre and unfamilliar sensation. Sable picks herself up off the ground, dusts herself off, and pokes at the awareness of the two things that have attached themselves to her and her headmates' minds.

Build That Wall (Bastion) 100

You know the basics of Caelondian technology. You understand how to harness the semimystical power of Cores and turn it into usable Mantic energy, to power basic machinery, shortrange flying machines, computers, and a variety of other uses. More interestingly, you can use Core power to reinforce existing structures, running a Matic current through it to enhance whatever physical properties it possesses usually durability, though other uses are possible. This is what allowed structures like the Rippling Wall and the Bastion to survive the Calamity as well as they did. You also gain basic skill for mundane construction.

Phonograph (Bastion) Free

An old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph. Very sturdy, gives much higher-quality sound than you’d expect. Has a single record with the full OST for the Bastion game, as well as several additional Caelondian and Ura folk songs.

<What,> comes Hailey's stunned mental voice. <Those are Jumpchain perks. Whatever dropped us here is giving us Jumpchain perks.>

Well. Looks like their time in this place is going to be an interesting one.

Sable starts walking again, watching her surroundings.

She passes a few of those low hills on her way toward the water. As she approaches, it gets clearer that she's headed for a pretty big lake, its shore patchy with long grass and scrubby little bushes.

To the south, the grass gets denser and taller, though it still keeps clear of the sandy shore; to the north, the green smudge on the horizon begins to resolve into a treeline.

All told, the walk to the lakeshore proper takes about an hour. The sun is firmly over the horizon now, her long shadow shortening before her as she walks.

She mentally reviews the the tech perk while she walks. It seems to be oriented around building and powering extremely resilient devices using an alternate energy source? That'll be handy once she has tools, at least.

Once she gets to the shore, she looks around carefully. Are there any signs of animal life, knappable stones, reeds, or civilization?

There's some reeds growing in the shallows, and something that might be an animal trail leading into the grass, and the flash of a fish's scales in the water. Here and there along the sandy shoreline there's a trace of a human-sized bootprint. The shore has plenty of stones; it might take some effort to locate one that looks knappable.

Bootprints!

Ruby cheers in mindspace. <Means there's a civilization around here that got out of the stoneage! There's a techbase here!>

Sable gives her a mental hug and promptly abandons the plans to bootstrap stone tools. Instead she tries to identify which way the bootprints went, which she should go to find a village, then starts off in that direction if she can.

Looks like these bootprints head south! Though there's at least a couple going in the opposite direction.

The trail is pretty inconsistent but luckily there's really not many places they could've gone. If she walks for half an hour or so, there'll be a clear path leading off the shore into the long grass. Up to her if she takes it or keeps heading south.

She follows the clear path. That suggests more people, which suggests maybe a village.

The path zigs and zags a little at first, but broadens and straightens as it goes on, until Sable finds herself looking between two neatly planted fields at a cozy little farmhouse with a thatched roof.

The boundary of the farm isn't explicitly marked, but the path becomes even straighter and flatter as it enters, and there is a tangible sense of weight gathered at the invisible threshold. This is someone's home, and that matters.

What a cute little farm! Well, time to see if she speaks the local language. She's certainly not going to do anything to knowingly harm the people who live here, not unless they unequivocally start it.

She walks up and knocks on the door.

A furry answers it.

Specifically, a woman with the face of a grey-red wolf, her long dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Another long tail swishes behind her rear, its fur matching the fur of her face.

"What's your business here, stranger?" she asks, amicably enough but with a hint of wariness in her amber eyes.

She smiles gratefully at woman and explains. "I seem to have gotten myself very very lost. Found myself in a strange land that I don't recognize at all, with rather more interesting sorts of people than I knew existed, and nothing but the clothes on my back and a small knife. I'd really appreciate directions to a town, if you can, or anywhere else I can put some basic construction and repair skills to use and get food, shelter, and tools of my own in return."

Holy shit. Honest to goodness animal people. This is amazing. And maybe kind of hot? Probability estimate of magic increased.

The wolf-woman shakes her head. "The nearest town's a ways into the desert; you'd need water and something to carry it in if you wanted to make it there. I can always use a hand with the harvest, if you want to earn some food and the chance to sleep in my barn tonight."

She does smile back, though, reserved but warm. "I'm Lily."

"Sounds like a great idea, Lily. I've never worked on a farm before, but I'm decent with my hands and I can take direction. It's good to meet you. I'm Sable."

"This morning's crop is peppers, so don't sneak a bite unless you fancy a face like mine," Lily warns. "Especially not the black ones—those'll make you a hellhound." She snags a pair of roomy baskets from just inside the door and hands one to Sable. "C'mon, I'll show you where they grow."

"Oh wow, transformative foods? That's amazing. I... there are definitely some particular transformations I'm looking for, though wolf isn't one of them. Looks good on you, but wouldn't suit me," she finishes with a smile and a chuckle, downplaying her earlier shock.

She takes the basket and follows Lily.

"If you're looking for something obscure, try heading up around the lake to the north end of the western shore," Lily recommends. "Most days you can find Hazel there, and I don't know a better alchemist. They can likely help you out, or point you in the right direction if they don't have it on hand."

As she leads Sable around the farmhouse to a small field planted with rows of peppers, she continues, "The only transformatives I grow here are assorted peppers, whiskered peaches, ringtail figs, and ferret fruit. That's canines, cats, raccoons, and ferrets, respectively. Any of those more your thing?"

"Mostly what I'm looking for," she replies as she kneels down to start picking peppers and placing them in the basket, "isn't an animal transformation. I wouldn't say no to fox if I found it — especially if it was sort of in between basic human and a fully furry form like you've got, maybe just ears and tail and otherwise baseline — but what I'm really after is replacing this bleh masculine body with the pretty girl I know I'm supposed to be."

Picking vegetables is nice and easy. She thought for a moment it might've been something less familiar, like plowing, or a really unfamiliar crop.

<Refuge in audacity,> Hailey teases.

<Yeah,> Sable replies. <This is a world with transformations. I can smell the genre conventions already.>

<Fair point.>

"You definitely want to talk to Hazel, then," says Lily, cheerful as can be. "I don't know where they get their eggs but I swear they must go through six a week, swapping back and forth. I'm sure they'll spare you a few, especially if you bring them some of yesterday's onions to trade."

Peppers go into baskets. The first two rows are all bright red; the black peppers won't come until later.

"Genderfluid then? Count on the genderfluid folks to know all the best sex-swap tricks. How many veggies do I need to pick to earn some onions to ply Hazel with? And how many more to thank you properly for all this invaluable info?"

Sable picks a peck of potent peppers~

<Dork,> Hailey says with an affectionate snicker.

<You know you love me for it.>

"Tell you what, let's see how far we get before it's time to break for lunch, and if we're past the Double Pepper row I'll send you off with a bag of mixed vegetables when we're done eating and you can still come back to sleep in my barn tonight if you'd like. Otherwise I'll keep you for the afternoon and you can go see Hazel with your bag of vegetables tomorrow."

The Double Peppers, if that's the ones growing in pairs two to a stem, are two rows down from the black peppers (with a row of oversized orange-red peppers in between). They can likely make it there by noon if they hustle a bit.

She throws Lily a daring grin, nods, and sets to it. <Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,> she thinks. Steady, smooth, careful, and swift. She makes sure first and foremost not to damage a single pepper, and keeps picking.

In this manner the work goes swiftly. With Lily providing new baskets and labeling each one as they fill it, they make it to the end of the Double Pepper row just as the sun is cresting overhead. Lily wipes her hands on her blue overalls and nods approvingly.

"That'll do. Let's have lunch."

Lunch turns out to be a delicious vegetable stew, hearty and thick. Lily serves it with tall glasses of chilled lemonade, which she at least seems to find very welcome after the morning's labours.

She smells the stew and grins wide. "It smells delicious!" She takes a big spoonful and — pauses.

"Quick question, just have to ask. Based on everything I've seen of you today you would've said something if it was, but this stew isn't transformative, is it?"

"Absolutely not," Lily assures her. "I like my body just the way it is." She swishes her tail and takes her own spoonful of stew.

"Thank you very much. I thought that would be the case, but I'd feel very silly if I forgot to ask, you know?"

And then she takes a bite and sighs happily. "Oh, that tastes even better than it smells."

"I grow very good vegetables," she says, a little smugly.

"I can tell! Goodness. I'm going to have to learn your secrets and recipes, if I can sweet-talk them out of you." She keeps eating. It's damned good stew.

She chuckles. "I keep pretty firm hold of my secrets. If you want to help make dinner, though, I wouldn't mind."

"You've got yourself a volunteer then." She sips the lemonade with a smile.

The lemonade is tart and not overly sweet, but pleasantly cold and not too strong. Overall pretty good unless you are a Sourness Disliker.

Lily smiles back. "Swing by again at dusk, then, if you're not caught up with something else. You're good for one night in my barn, but I don't mind if it's a while before you take me up on it."

Good lemonade indeed. She sips happily.

"I'll keep that in mind. Thank you." She takes a few more bites of soup, then asks, "What sorts of things might one get swept up in, if they try?"

"Maybe you'll hit it off with Hazel and spend all night talking alchemy, or find a bee-girl in the forest to spend the night with, if you're into that sort of thing. —more seriously, I should warn you not to head south when you leave my farm. Past the ruined village it's all demon territory and you don't want to mess with that. If you see the water looking cloudy like someone's been pouring milk in it, you're too close to the factory and you should turn around."

"Good to know. What's going on at the factory? Just demons, or something else unpleasant?"

"Demons trying to corrupt the fabric of the world itself using their captives as fuel." She makes a face and hefts her spoon. "I'd rather not get into it over lunch."

"Goodness. That won't do. And yes, not a lunch topic at all."

"Well, if you want to get caught up in that, I guess I can't stop you, but—don't underestimate the demons. Imps may look small and weak, but they're not the only thing out there, and even they can be a problem when they're running in packs."

She's been working steadily on her stew, but she focuses extra hard on it now, to get the subject of demons off her mind.

"Not anytime soon I don't. I have a lot of building up and preparing to do before I expect to be remotely close to good in a fight. Anyway." She shakes her head, takes another bite, and smiles. "Staying up all night talking alchemy does sound like something I might do. I don't know what sort of thing — other than perhaps a casual fling — one might get up to with a random bee-girl in the forest. Different anatomy, perhaps? I'm certainly curious, but I've found I prefer building friendships, and then building romances out of some of those friendships, rather than two ships passing in the night."

<Cute,> teases the shipgirl headmate. <Very cute.>

<Love you, Maya,> Sable replies.

"The bee-girls are usually only after one thing, and it's hypnotizing people and filling them with eggs," she says. "They're friendly enough about it, but if you're not interested you should probably steer clear."

"Oh my." Her expression gets a bit complicated — interested, put off, and thoughtful all at once. "Hypnosis could be quite lovely to experiment with in a very trusting relationship, but not casually, and not if it turns into getting filled up with eggs. No thank you."

She shakes her head and eats more stew. "Delicious stew, on the other hand, is always a good idea, as are kind wolf-girls who cook such stew."

She laughs. "Flatterer," she says, amused. "I haven't been called a girl in a long time."

She grins. "Pity no one has eyes then, but guilty as charged, I suppose." Another happy bite of soup.

"I guess you'll just have to see where your flattery gets you."

She finishes her last bite of stew and gets up to clear her dishes, coming back from the kitchen with a big canvas sack. It does at least have a drawstring.

"I had a spare backpack, but another outworlder bought it a few weeks back," she says. "You might see him around. Tall, human, name of Torok. He's..." She considers her words for a moment. "...he's got a good heart, but not much clue how to use it."

"We'll have to see indeed," and then she finishes off her stew as well, then stands to take her dishes to the same spot Lily did. "Thank you for this. It was delicious, and you've been delightful  and informative. I'd gladly help out again if I'm in the area, especially if I get another taste of your cooking and your company."

She accepts the bag with a warm smile. "I'll keep an eye out for him, too. He sounds like an interesting sort, and maybe us outworlders can help each other."

The bag is hefty but not staggering. "Mostly onions in there, but I snuck in a couple of oranges—Palla loves those, she'll trade you fresh fish for them if you want it. She's got a hut on the shore a little ways north of here."

"Awww, thank you! I'll make sure to pay her a visit too." She gives Lily an earnest smile. "Thank you again, for everything. Couldn't ask for a better first person to find on my first day in a new world."

She smiles back. "Hey, you did fair work for those vegetables. Come back anytime. Though I'll warn you now, I don't let anyone sleep in my barn more than a few nights in a row. I like my space."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind. I'm planning to build a house of my own as soon as I can get some tools together, though."

She steps over to the door, then throws a last wave and smile over her shoulder. "Take care, Lily."

"You too. Safe travels."

She waves, and closes the door behind Sable as she leaves.

Today is a great day so far.

<It really has been,> Maya replies with a warm smile. <Off to Hazel then?>

<Yeah, I'll save the oranges for now. Get the fish if it looks like I'm staying for dinner somewhere.>

And she walks steadily back to the lake, and toward Hazel's likely location on the western shore, transferring the oranges to her normal bag as she goes.

Although Lily said Palla's hut could be found on the shore just to the north of the farm, it seems Sable must have missed it somehow, because as she heads north along the shoreline she reaches the north shore of the lake without seeing it.

Another half hour around the north shore and a few minutes south along the western side, and a curious little dwelling comes into view. It's made of wood and brightly painted in teal and lilac and green, and there's a cozy little campfire set up just outside, its coals currently cold. Sounds of bustling emanate from within.

Bustling sounds like an alchemist. And this is delightfully quirky. She steps up and knocks at the door.

"Just a moment!" calls an androgynous voice; the bustling concludes, and someone opens the door. Their face is a study in ambiguity: indeterminate gender, age, species, and expression. A snake's tongue flickers between slightly parted lips as they regard Sable with a steady gaze.

"You aren't who I was expecting," they say. "But I see you brought Lily's vegetables, which are always welcome however surprising. Hello. What brings you here?"

"Hi," she greets with a smile. "Lily informed me that you'd be the best source of the specific transformation I'm trying to achieve, and gave me onions to trade after I spent the morning helping around her farm. I'm an outworlder from somewhere without magic, hoping to get turned into a girl on the outside to match who I am at heart. There are minor details I could add if there's room to customize things, but that's the main point of it."

Then she tilts her head for a moment and adds, "Also, alchemy is cool and you seem cool."

"By all means tell me of your customizations!" they say, smiling broadly. "Aspects of masculine and feminine transformation are one of my most deeply studied areas. My name is Hazel, as you've no doubt guessed. May I know yours?"

"Sable, and I prefer she/her pronouns. As for customizations... ideally I'd like to wind up with purple hair and eyes, medium breasts," she gestures indicatively for size, blushing a bit, "if possible I'd like to be able to swap between... configurations," she adds with an indicative gesture at her hips, "but I can probably flex on that if that's not possible."

"Hmmmm," Hazel says thoughtfully. "I can certainly offer you transformatives that will grant one or the other configuration, as you call it, or both if that's suitable; volitional control is much trickier. Even I haven't cracked that one yet. The closest I can come is the ability to produce both masculine and feminine transformatives, which I do have and can grant you, though the method is a little inconvenient—I lay a large clutch of candy eggs once a week. As for purple hair and eyes, you've come to the right alchemist. I have a selection of shades available for either and should be able to blend them very finely if you have a specific result in mind. Shall I bring out samples?"

She grins widely. "That should be perfect. I just have to find something I can trade you regularly to keep enough on hand to swap back and forth, as that does sound like quite the inconvenient method for you. In that case, I would opt to default to a feminine-standard arrangement, except for special occasions, I think.

"And by all means let's look at color samples."

"Have a seat by the firepit if you like." There's a little folding chair there, and a few big rocks. Hazel closes their door; clinking sounds and the slide of wood on wood ensue; they emerge a few moments later with a large jar tucked under one arm and a fistful of assorted plant matter in the other hand, dried flowers in a wide assortment of purples. There's a bell-shaped flower in a nearly-black indigo, a round-petaled little thing in deep vibrant magenta, a sprig of lavender, several different lilacs ranging from dark to icy-pale, and what appears to be a violently violet rose.

Hazel hands Sable the flowers. "Pick any one you like, or any two you think will combine well in some proportion." They begin unscrewing the jar. "These are my standard feminine transformative, slightly refined from the initial, ah, output. Try one and let me know what you think of the result; if it undershoots your desired bust size you can have another." With the jar open, they pluck out a small pink egg with a glossy surface and offer it up. It seems about the size of a Starburst, with a similar texture when squeezed or nibbled.

She takes a violet rose, and maybe one of the lilacs if it looks like it would adjust it closer to her desired color (#9932CC if anyone's curious), and the offered egg. She examines them for a moment, then looks up at Hazel. "Just eat them?"

And, if she gets confirmation, down they all go, one after another.

"The egg, yes—the flowers I'll need to spend a few minutes refining to get at the relevant essence."

The egg proves to be really remarkably Starburst-like, and tastes sweet and ineffably pink. After a few chews it starts dissolving much faster, and then Sable might find her clothes fitting less well on an altered frame with altered components. It's given her hips to match her bust, which did in fact undershoot her desired size by a noticeable margin; Hazel, observing the results with an artisan's critical eye, offers a second egg.

She checks herself out briefly and nods, then eats the second egg.

This one lands her right where she wants to be, with the hips once again coming along for the ride but this time lagging noticeably behind.

"I have more targeted transformatives if you want to refine your silhouette further," Hazel mentions, closing the jar. "I'll get those flowers sorted out for you—would you like a mirror? You can come in and use my dressing room."

"I'd love to, thank you!" She steps in and checks herself out in the mirror, feeling out her new frame as much as looking at it, sighing in relief.

Things to note besides the mirror:

The interior of Hazel's cottage is pretty unequivocally bigger than the exterior.

The room immediately inside the front door is full of tables laden with mysterious glassware, to which Hazel happily bustles as soon as they finish showing Sable to the dressing room. The grinding sound of a mortar and pestle accompanies Sable's self-examination.

The dressing room appears to be a sort of walk-in closet, and has a large, clear full-length mirror in a tilt-frame next to a rack of assorted clothing, with luminous crystals embedded in the ceiling giving a clear, strong light to admire oneself by. There's also a sturdy door with a hook-and-eye latch on the inside, if Sable wants to be assured of some privacy in which to examine herself more closely.

"Wow. I look amazing. I'm going to have to buy so many clothes for this new body, but I look amazing."

She closes the door and strips out of her clothes, checking herself out more thoroughly, checking out the feel and heft of her breasts, caressing her hips, and grinning happily.

Her new body has great skin. Possibly a deliberate effect of the transformative; it's the sort of thing it would make sense to include on purpose if that was possible.

Hazel bustles for another minute, with various sounds of clinking and blooping, then knocks lightly on the dressing room door. "I have your colorant ready!"

She opens the door a crack and reaches through.

It's a little glass vial filled with a liquid almost precisely the desired colour.

"Best to drink it all at once; if you take slow sips the colour comes out patchy," Hazel warns. "If I've mixed you too high a dose, it'll start tinting your fingernails, but I have something you can dab them with to reverse that if it's a problem."

"Honestly I wouldn't mind that." Bottoms up, whole thing at once.

It's not the world's most pleasant drink, a little viscous, a little oily, tasting nonspecifically floral, but once she's got it all down the colour starts spreading through her hair from root to tip and her irises from pupil to sclera. Her fingernails do end up slightly tinted, though it's faint enough to miss on a casual inspection. Meanwhile, Hazel is still out there bustling.

She gets dressed again and heads back out to Hazel. "Thank you so much," she says as she hands them the vial. "Any tips for a lost outworlder on finding better-fitting clothes?"

"If you'd like to trade me those, I imagine you can find something in my dressing room that'll suit your frame, though I make no promises about it suiting your style," says Hazel, who is currently wearing a vibrantly multicoloured lace shawl over a drapey white top and indigo pants. "Otherwise you can try Lily, who accumulates spare work clothes much faster than she can use them, or venture into the desert to the city of Tel'Adre which may be this world's last bastion of ambitious tailors. Or defeat someone in battle and take their clothing with the spoils of your victory, I suppose, though I've never cared for that practice."

She frowns slightly at the last idea. "Agreed. I certainly wouldn't mind trading you these, though. Is the city likely to be my best bet on finding some construction and engineering tools?"

She turns and starts looking through the clothes. What are her options that fit her?

The racks hold a wide assortment of garments made to fit a wide assortment of body types. If she goes for the absolute best fit disregarding all else, she'll end up in a pale green tunic-length shirt over a pair of soft grey pants. There's a little more colour selection available among the looser tops and the skirts that tie on with a sash or drawstring, but a lot of it is really bold, sapphire blues and buttercup yellows. One of those wrap skirts seems to be tie-dyed, midnight blue and magenta over white.

Y'know, this tunic and pants combo is great. That's a hell of a lot better than she had. She closes the door briefly, changes, and steps back out, smiling. "Thank you. Anywhere you'd like me to leave these?", she asks, holding up her old clothes.

"I'll take them." Hazel accepts the armful. "You look lovely. As for construction and engineering tools... what sort of tools did you have in mind? I'm not sure the city will have everything you're looking for, but if you're looking for something most people don't have, the city is often a good place to start."

"The typical sorts of things for large contruction and repair, to start: hammer, saw, chisel, screwdriver, drill, planes, and so on. Possibly also the tools for finer work, things like pliers, wire cutters, and the like. That's just an initial guess, though. I'll probably dabble in lots of things as time goes on."

She holds up the bag of onions. "Where would you like these? Also, any chance I can hold onto the bag?"

"Let me check the state of my pantry—just a moment." They vanish through a door, emit some drawer-sliding and cupboard-opening noises, and then return through the same door a few moments later minus the armful of clothes. "Yes, I can put those away and give you the bag back. Another moment." Door, rustle rustle clunk clunk, and they're back with the bag, de-onioned although it still contains a few round lumps which are presumably the oranges. "I think your best bet is probably the city. I have a few of those things myself, but I couldn't afford to lend them out; I need them in case of unexpected house repairs."

"Entirely reasonable," she nods and puts the canvas bag in her main satchel. "I'll just have to sort myself out for dinner and someplace to stay the night, then figure out enough snacks for that long of a walk. Do you think the city is likely to have work for a handywoman?"

"I imagine it might. I haven't been there in years, though, so it's not wise to rely on my understanding in detail. I recommend staying with Lily if your intent is to stock up on supplies; she's very generous with her produce if you help her harvest it."

"Sounds like a plan, then. I may come back very curious about alchemy at some point, but I think for now my last question is what I can do to convince you to part with a few of whatever would swap out my lower equipment, along with what sorts of things you tend to want on the regular so we could keep trading in the future?"

"I am always on the lookout for obscure or interesting transformation items. Particularly honey from the bee girls, at the moment, though I do have another source of that. If you'll be traveling through the desert, I also have a particular interest in the desert witches' transformation spells, and would happily pay you for clippings of your hair after they transform it—and of course I could restore this colour for you, free of charge, though if you want to restore its length after donating some to me you will need to find the goblin hair salon in the foothills of the mountains. And pay them in semen, the only currency they accept. Speaking of which, yes, I can offer you some targeted transformatives for that purpose."

They rummage in a few drawers and come up with two handfuls of eggs, smaller and harder than the Starburst-like pink ones. One is pale pink with darker pink swirls; the other, pale blue with darker blue swirls.

"These will provide the transformation you desire. They won't spoil but they're very sugary so I recommend keeping them dry; if some of each kind run together they may produce... mixed results. So to speak."

"Thank you! I'll keep those options in mind, and try to have one or more of those on hand next time I pass by."

She accepts the eggs and rifles through her bag, eventually finding a few small plastic bags. She separates the eggs into two of them, and then stores them away, before taking out her notebook and pen and jotting a quick note about Hazel's interests and future tradables. That done, she puts it all away.

"You've quite literally changed my life, Hazel. Thank you."

"Happy to help!" they say cheerfully. "Those bags are fascinating; are they from your world? I've never seen the like. What are they made of? May I have—no, I imagine you don't want to give up a small sample for alchemical analysis—"

"Plastic, an absurdly versatile material that can be produced with many different properties, but whose production takes an enormous industrial base and tends to produce rather a lot of environmental pollution. They're derived from petroleum, an oil found deep undergroud. You can take a small sample off the open end, as long as you're careful not to damage the rest of the bag."

She holds up one bag, open end extended toward them.

They nod eagerly and rummage in some drawers to come up with a small pair of sewing scissors, with which they clip a neat little folded triangle out of the top of the bag, careful not to pull or tear the fragile material. "Thank you very much. Depending on the results of my analysis, I might want to buy these bags from you later, or trade them for other storage items. Deep underground, you say? I'm not sure whether to expect to find any in Mareth. It's never been clear to me exactly which natural resources are common between worlds and which are not."

"I'd be glad to trade them for other storage items. They're just my only waterproof storage option at the moment, so I'm rather glad I had a few. Don't want to ruin these eggs, y'know?"

"Of course! Very sensible. I will see what I can spare in that regard once I've determined the basic properties of their material essence."

"Sounds great. Now I've got three reasons to come back and visit. I guess you're doomed to see me again, then. Off I head for now, and thanks again!"

"Farewell! I look forward to seeing you again!"

And with a happy smile on her face, and a bone-deep feeling of relief pervading her entire body, Sable sets out back around the lake to find Palla.

<Goodness. This feels ridiculously amazing, finally being in a proper body.>

<It really does, beloved. You deserve it,> Maya replies, with a chorus of agreement from the other Pirates.

<Maybe if this perk thing keeps going, we'll find something that lets us give y'all bodies too. I'm certainly going to try, at least.>

<Hope springs eternal. I'm just glad we've finally gotten out of that tired old masculine body,> Hailey adds with a smile.

And, chatting happily amongst themselves, they make their way and admire the scenery.

There's no trouble finding Palla's hut this time; it's right where Lily said it should be, on the northeast shore of the lake within ten sandy feet of the water, virtually impossible to miss. It's small and round, with a thatched roof over walls that look like wicker, neatly woven. Next to it is a blanket, and on the blanket is a muscular otter-girl, her brown fur short and sleek, her brown hair short and spiky. She appears to be taking a nap, stretched out with her head pillowed on her arms and her long sleek tail sweeping gently back and forth in time with her snores. She isn't wearing any clothes.

Next to her blanket is a crude sign, a piece of driftwood set upright in the sand with another piece of driftwood tied to it and painted with a simple message. The letters are too faded to make out at a glance, but could probably be deciphered with some careful attention.

Well. That's an enjoyable sight. Let's examine that sign real quick.

The sign, closely examined, turns out to say FISH & FUCK.

The otter-girl yawns, stretching out her whole body as she does. "I smell oranges," she says sleepily.

"You do smell oranges! I was hoping to trade some oranges for some fresh fish," Sable replies with a smile. "Had a nice nap?"

"Mhm! Give 'em here," she says, sitting up and holding out her hands. "You staying to eat, or just taking the fish and running?"

"Tempting, so tempting, but I really have to run. Hopefully I can stay next time, though?"

Pretty ottergirl is pretty, news at eleven. Do not stare, just keep it to a single appreciative glance. Instead, she pulls the oranges out of her bag and tosses them over to Palla.

She sets them down on her blanket, yawns and stretches again, and then nods. "'kay. Back in a few."

She slips into the water with barely a ripple and is soon out of sight, a dark shape moving under the surface.

<Well. Is it just me, or is everyone here hot?>, Hailey asks.

<Pretty sure it's not just you.>

She waits patiently, smiling.

A few minutes later, she's back, with her fingers hooked in the gills of a pretty silver-scaled fish nearly as long as her arm. She hauls it up out of the water and presents it to Sable with a flourish. "Pleasure doing business. Have a drink of water before you go, if you need, the barrel's clean and I have cups." (There's a covered barrel next to her hut.)

"Thank you!" She grabs a cup, takes a drink of water, accepts the fish, and then puts it into the canvas bag she'd saved. "Lovely to meet you, Palla. Have a nice day!"

"You too!" She lifts a hand in an amicable wave.

And off she goes, strolling back to Lily's farmhouse.

Neo waggles her eyebrows in mindspace.

<Yes, I know I passed up an opportunity there,> Sable replies.

The silent girl blows a kiss.

<Thank you for forgiving me for having strategic priorities. Love you too.>

And amicable teasing fills the walk back.

Soon enough, she's knocking on Lily's door again.

Lily opens the door.

"Sable?" she guesses.

"The very same! Don't I look great? Also, how do you feel about fish for supper?" She holds up the bag, opening it to reveal the fish.

"You look fantastic, and I would love fish for supper. Come in, come in." She stands back from the door.

Sable steps in and looks for where to put the fish. "Those eggs of Hazel's are quite something, aren't they? As are their flowers."

"I don't think I've heard about the flowers, but yes, it doesn't surprise me that Hazel has figured out how to do incredible things with a candy egg. Bring the fish in here—"

The kitchen is small and cozy but has enough room on the countertop for the fish. Lily gestures at the bag. "Do you want to wash that to get the fish smell out? I can show you to the water pump and then start preparing the fish."

"Sounds like a plan." She goes where directed to wash out the bag.

There's a water pump right behind the house, with a bit of soap to wash with; Lily assures her the water is also drinkable before heading back inside to get started on that fish.

She washes the bag out carefully with soap and water, rinses it clean, wrings it out, and then finds a convenient hook to hang it on where it looks like it won't drip on anything important. Then she has a big drink of water cupped in her hands from the pump, and then heads back in with a smile. "So, how can I help?"

The fish has been reduced to more manageable pieces by now. "Would you mind chopping some onions for me? They're over there," she nods at a big sack, much bigger than the one Sable just hung up to dry. "One should do if you get a big one, or two if they're smaller. I'm thinking fried fish and onions for dinner, maybe with ginger-glazed carrots on the side."

"Sounds delicious." She grabs whatever's near the top, two if they're small, one if it's big, and then finds a cutting board and a knife and sets to work. Chopping onions is nice and simple.

The first onion to come to hand is fairly enormous. Lily soon finishes tidying up her fish-cutting station and switches to chopping carrots. She comes up with a jar of honey, for glazing the carrots with later, and mentions offhandedly that it's "real honey, not the bee-girl stuff, of course."

"Oh? Hazel mentioned bee-girl honey too. What's different about it?" Chop chop chop goes the onion.

"Bee-girl honey is one of the few things in the world that can cure demonic corruption, but unless you eat it straight out of the bee-girl, it's also a transformative. So I get my honey from regular bees that aren't people."

"Aha. I would rather not become... a bee-girl, I suppose? No thank you. I have plans, and becoming a bee-girl is not one of them."

"If you do get into a fix with a transformative you didn't want, I bet Hazel will know where you can find one that'll turn you back to human," Lily mentions. "They're pretty rare, but Hazel's all over that sort of thing. When you can afford to, though, I recommend just not eating anything if you don't know where it came from or trust the person who's feeding it to you."

"Good idea. Speaking of which, based on everything I've heard so far, it seems like I'll need to go into the city, so I'd love to help out around the farm however much it takes to earn food and water in some portable form for that trip."

"Sure. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of days to have plenty. It's a dangerous trip to make alone, though. The lakeshore is mostly safe most of the time, but the desert..." She shakes her head. "I've never been, mind you, only heard secondhand, but what I hear isn't good. If I were you, I'd wait for the centaur caravan to come through so you can hitch a ride with them. Spend a few nights sleeping rough on the lakeshore if you have to, when my hospitality runs out. You might get harassed by imps and goblins but that's still better than what you'd get alone in the desert."

"You're quite the font of useful wisdom. What sort of things will they want to barter for the ride?"

"They might let you ride along just for your help loading and unloading, or they might want hard gems as payment. Probably not too much, though. They're friendly folk and nobody wants to see an innocent person cross the desert alone."

She smiles warmly. "Thank you for all this." She's since done chopping the onion, so she looks for anything else she can help with for the food prep.

"Here," says Lily, trading a bowl full of carrots for the cutting board full of onions and nudging the honey jar and a little knob of ginger along the countertop toward her. "I'll have your cutting board back to you in a moment and you can cut up the ginger as fine as you can get it and mix it into those with a little honey. Don't use more than half that ginger, but you can use less if you'd rather it be mild." She sweeps the onions into a frying pan set up on the stove and passes the cutting board back along the counter. "There you go."

That can definitely be done. Cut the ginger in half, set the other half aside. Slice slice slice, then come back and chop finer, then finer still, until it's barely bigger than powder. Mix it in with the carrots, then add a bit of honey, looking to Lily to check how much. Mix thoroughly, and then there we go.

Hailey snuggles up to Sable in co-con through the whole process, enjoying food prep together.

And by that point the onions are coming along nicely, and Lily can get the carrots into a pot in the oven and roast them that way while starting on the fish, and then fish and onions come out onto plates and she takes the extra time to clean up after everything else while the fish and onions cool slightly and the carrots finish cooking, and then ta-daa, dinner. No lemonade this time, but she does send Sable to fill a pitcher of water from the pump behind the house, right at the end as she's getting the plates onto the table and awaiting the carrots.

And Sable sits down, pours herself a cup of water from the pitcher, and digs in. "Oh, this is absolutely delicious."

"It came out very well!" she agrees. "Palla always gets the best fish. And she'll never serve you a corrupted one, either, if she gets one by mistake she throws it back."

"Yeah, she seems pretty great. Your recommendations have all turned out excellently for me. Knocking on your door was a really lucky decision."

"You'd probably be having about the same kind of day if you'd run into Hazel or Palla first," she says, smiling slightly. "Us folks who live on the lakeshore are an all-right bunch. But I'm glad you knocked on my door too. I'd hate to think of you getting lost in the desert or enthralled in the forest or ambushed in the mountains just because you didn't know where was safe to go."

"And to think it all happened because I figured walking to the water was my best shot at either finding civilization or being safe in its absence, and then spotted bootprints at the lake that led me here."

She takes a few more bites of the great food. "Any tips on figuring out trustworthy food in the city?"

"Anywhere that's got a lot of traffic, a restaurant or a busy food cart, you can watch other people eat and see if anything happens to them. The city's pretty good about not letting corruption in, so at least you don't have to worry about that, corruption's much harder to spot than a brand new pair of rabbit ears. But if someone's just offering you a snack one on one, or their cafe isn't very popular, or their food cart's too out of the way to get much traffic... you'll probably still be fine, but some of the time it'll be somebody's idea of a harmless prank or a nice little favour to hand out transformatives without saying so."

She nods. "That's about what I figured, but it's nice to hear it from the voice of experience."

"I am going to have to pick so many vegetables to pay you back for how much you've helped me here. And after I get myself set up, you let me know if you need anything at all, okay?"

She shakes her head a bit, smiling fondly.

<You've got a crush,> Hailey teases.

<Can you blame me?>

"Will do," she says, amused. "But it really doesn't cost me much to give you a few pointers. Don't make it out like you owe me the sun, moon, and stars just because I'm willing to have a friendly conversation."

"Maybe I'm biased from enjoying your company, then. That could explain it," she says with a chuckle.

Lily smiles. "Fair enough." Om nom fish. "Planning to stay the night in my barn, then?"

"That's the idea. Stay a few nights with you helping out however I can, maybe Hazel or Palla a night or three if I can convince them and find some way to help out, on the shore for a night or two if I have to, until the caravan shows up and it's time to head to the city."

Om nom fish. This really is great.

"How'd you get started farming?"

"I've always gotten along with plants, ever since I was a pup. Starting my own farm was the obvious thing to do. And it's a nice life, very quiet. Peaceful."

"Sounds nice. I'd probably do something similar, but for the fact that I'm a compulsive meddler once I'm set up well enough to be safe doing so. Can't stand to let suffering go on once I'm in a position to help."

Lily winces slightly. "Now isn't that familiar. A word of advice? Choose your friends very carefully. People you're helping is one thing, but if people you're helping become people you're trusting without you thinking about it, you can find yourself trusting the wrong person sooner than you'd think."

She nods firmly. "I can definitely see how I'd get into a bind like that. Worth avoiding. Thank you for the reminder."

Fish nom nom.

The fish is still delicious.

Lily finishes hers, and gets up to clear her plate. She comes back from the kitchen with two bright red apples and offers one to Sable. "Dessert?"

She accepts with a smile, having just finished her own fish as well. "Lovely, thank you."

Lily leans against a wall and munches contentedly on her spectacularly delicious apple. (It's light and sweet and crisp and just a little tart, and more strongly apple-flavoured than most apples ever manage.)

"I have literally never had an apple this good before in my life. I thought I knew what a good apple tasted like, but nope. Apples from my world have nothing on this."

Apple nom nom. Wow.

Lily laughs. "I'm flattered! Really? I knew I grew good apples but I've never been accused of outdoing a whole world before."

Sable laughs and nods. "Apples are my second-favorite kind of fruit, after the whole orange family of fruits, so I've eaten quite a few. None compared to this."

Munch munch nom.

"Well, then, I'm glad you came just after apple day so they're nice and fresh."

"Me too."

Monch nom.

"Hm. I've noticed you say things like yesterday's onions or today's peppers or apple day. How fast do crops grow here?"

"My farm runs on an eight-day cycle from the start of spring to the end of fall, everything coming ripe on its own day every eight days, and then slows way down for winter. Most people can't make plants do that, and they'll grow things slower and harvest them less often."

"Okay, that's impressive. I'm used to most crops being once per growing season, which usually comes out to once a year, aside from a few crops that produce multiple yields in a growing season."

"That's what you get from most plants growing wild," she says, nodding. "A skilled gardener can do a little better, or increase the yield. I can do even better than that."

"Okay, so gardening here is magic, and Lily is extra-magic. Duly noted."

"I guess you could put it that way," she says, a little surprised. "It's not like I'm casting a spell or doing alchemy."

She shakes her head and grins. "No, but you're getting a result that isn't naturally possible. Crops on my old world can't get to your yield frequency under any circumstances, and the fact that plants here behave like that absent a gardener or farmer's intervention suggest roughly the same principles are in play without that intervention. So it may not be spells or alchemy, but it's clearly magic of some sort. You are not just a great farmer, you are a magically great farmer. Maybe it's a product of the love you put into the process, maybe it's just your skill, I don't know. Something you're doing is supernatural."

She shrugs and smiles at Lily.

"'Naturally possible'?" She shakes her head. "I don't know about that. It seems to me that if plants respond to love, that's just as natural as them responding to weather, and it's not their fault if the weather can't love them enough."

"'Mundanely possible', then? Huh. Now I'm getting ideas about having a machine mimic what you do, to try to isolate the magical element."

<No, Sable, don't nerd out on this right now,> Hailey teases with a snicker.

Sable rolls her eyes internally, and shakes her head externally. "Not remotely feasible right now. Still, what you do is very impressive."

She smiles. "Now that I can agree with."

Her apple's done; she lifts the lid of a wooden bucket to drop it in.

"Shall I show you to the barn?"

Apple core into bucket, dishes cleared away just like Lily's, and then she nods. "Okay!"

So Lily shows her to the barn. It's big and spacious and looks like it might once have had stalls for animals, but now what it has is a truly preposterous quantity of neatly labelled sacks of produce, somewhat overflowing the few former stalls whose walls are still up. There's space on the floor to lay out bedding, though, and the floor is clean and the bedding is cleaner, and all in all it seems to be a basically decent place to sleep.

"This looks great, thank you. Goodnight, Lily."

"Night, Sable. Sleep well."

She gives a little wave as she heads back to the house.

Wow. What a day.

<What should we do as we wind down, loves?>

Neo throws out a mental image of Lily.

What, no, she is not going to indulge lewd fantasies about the woman who is so graciously hosting them. Vetoed. Come up with a better suggestion, Neo.

How about a mental image of that mysterious gem?

Okay, that's worth poking at. She pulls the gem out of her bag and cups it in her hands. If she pokes at it mentally, does it do anything or feel like anything?

Wait, does she know how to poke at an external object mentally yet?

She sighs.

Okay. Meditation time. Sit comfy, and start with a mental exercise to step her awareness gradually down her arms to her fingertips.

Wait, she lost it. Start again.

Slower. Steadier. Again.

Agai—

She's out of practice, isn't she?

After probably half an hour of slipping out of meditation repeatedly, she can tolerably hold a meditative focus with her awareness in her fingertips. Now for the completely unknown part.

How does she cross that boundary between self and other? She focuses on the feeling of the gem against her fingertips. She focuses on the smoothness of the facets, the crisp edges. She tries to quiet those sensations as well, just like she quieted her awareness of the rest of her body. Touch doesn't matter, isn't present.

But something else is, isn't there?

Isn't there?

Yes, there's something ther—

And she's lost it again.

Back to meditating. Get her awareness down into her fingertips again.

Okay. Across the gap. She remembers feeling it last time, so she's prepared for it this time, and the sudden feeling of something where she's used to nothing doesn't quite throw her out of her focus.

Gently now. What does it feel like?

Sort of... packed? Compressed? Folded?

Maybe like origam—

Lost it.

Again.

Okay. Maybe someone else will have a better shot at it the first time?

How about someone... calmer?

As Sable often quotes, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

She gently eases back into the meditative state.

Slowly, smoothly, her awareness settles in her fingertips.

And there it is, just across the gap, a feeling of intricately folded origami.

She runs her mental fingertips along the metaphorical surface, feeling where the folds are. Aha.

And if she tugs here?

No, she lost it again.

<Sable, we may be too worn from a long day of having our whole reality upended. What do you say to trying again in the morning?>

<Fair enough, love.>

And with a last round of "goodnight"s and "I love you"s to each other, sleep is prepared for and then had.

The inexorably wheeling constellations move, and for a brief moment, something in mindspace reaches out to try to grab hold of one of the stars. The star is too big, however, and their grip too weak, and the reaching thing slips off and flails through nothingness for a moment.

The sensation snaps Sable awake.

<Was that... another attempt at the thing that happened when we arrived? When we got a perk?>

<Sure felt similar. Just like a swing and a miss.>

Well, that's not something she can go back to sleep after, so how about trying that gem again?

<I suppose I can.>

She gets up, stretches, and fishes the gem out of their satchel, then returns to her comfortable position to try meditating again.

It's getting a little bit easier to bring her awareness down to her fingertips.

She breathes steadily, evenly.

She reaches across that minuscule — but oh so massive — gap.

Folds, Origami. Feel it all so carefully. The previous spot was wrong. This one? No. That one? No.

...Here.

She grips it gently, but firmly. Waits until her grip is sure and steady. And...

Tugs.

The gem locks in place. Out of it folds a pocket of space, mostly empty, containing only an antique wooden pedestal, atop which sits a functional but archaic-looking gramophone, with a record on the turntable.

That felt like it did something. She slowly opens her eyes, and smiles as she observes the gramophone on its pedestal. This looks like what was promised in the bonus perk they received on arrival.

She grins and reaches for the crank—

—Only for her hand to suddenly still.

<Neo,> Ruby exclaims, <we don't wanna wake Lily!>

Sable shakes her head, smiles, and hugs both, then gives Maya a big kiss in mindspace for figuring it out.

<Well done, love.>

She examines the gramophone carefully, nods, and then sits back down in front of the gem.

<Ready to figure out how to put it away?>

She nods, wraps her hands around the gem, and resumes the meditative state.

If this is origami, then putting it away is like folding it back up. But a gem like this would not demand the wielder to know the entire process of folding it from flat to store it again.

So there's a trick to it.

She feels for it.

The more she does this, the more solidly her mental model takes this origami form, and the more it seems to reveal aspects of the gem directly.

Oh. Do all these folds run in the same direction? Diagonally toward her, kata, and counter-clockwise? So if she grips here and there, and then twists counter-clockwise along the diagonal of the front/back and ana/kata axes...

Pop.

The pedestal and gramophone vanish from sight, but the faintly glowing pink border and the sourceless illumination of the whole space remain.

She chuckles. Whoops. She must have gripped a little too close together, twisted up only part of the gem.

After a moment, she calms herself and slips back into meditation.

Okay. Feel here, slide her grasp away from herself and on a slightly ana angle, where's the right spot to grip?

No... no... maybe... no... could work, but... definitely not... here.

Twist.

The rest of the pocket dimension folds back up, slipping away into the gem, which comes loose in her hands, no longer locked to the reference frame.

She admires the gem for a long moment, and tucks it away into the satchel.

<How about we go wash our face, have a drink of water, and generally get ready for the day, hm?>

And after a chorus of agreement, she rises to go do that, heading out to the water pump once she's dressed the rest of the way.

The water is fresh and sparkling in the morning sun; the fields gleam with dew. The house is quiet at first, but soon there are faint sounds as of someone moving around, and then Lily emerges with a pitcher.

She finds Maya having finished washing her face, taking a sip of water from her cupped hands, admiring the scenery.

"Good morning, Lily!"

Her voice is subtly but noticeably different from Sable's: a smoothly slow melody in place of Sable's bouncing lilt, a calm serenity in place of Sable's swiftness and playful eagerness. The slightest touch lower, in both pitch and timbre, almost like an ASMR host.

"Morning." A half-covered yawn flashes fangs and a curl of wolflike tongue. "Scoot over so I can use the pump?"

"Gladly," she says, stepping aside and stretching.

She takes a drink of water first, then fills the pitcher.

"Sleep well?" she asks, rubbing her eyes with one hand as she turns to head back into the house. "Also, how do you feel about lemonade?"

"Yes to both," she replies with a smile. "You?"

"Oh, I always sleep well," she says with inscrutable irony. "C'mon, let's make breakfast."

Breakfast turns out to be potatoes fried in butter; Lily is happy to delegate chopping them, but prefers to keep the stove all to herself.

She's quite content to chop the potatoes. her cuts precise and even.

Lily serves them each a big plate of potatoes with a tall glass of lemonade.

"This morning's vegetable is turnips; the afternoon's fruit is ringtail figs. Are you planning to stick around the whole day?"

"If you'll have me," she replies between bites of potatoes. "My agenda at this point is just earning enough food and supplies to get me from now through the first day in the city, so I'm here to be as useful as I can: help you with the picking, run trades around the lake for you, or anything else."

"I definitely wouldn't mind sending you to Palla with a couple of oranges every day to get fish for lunch or dinner. I don't leave the farm much; it does poorly without me."

"I would be delighted to, Lily," she says with a smile. Her words continue to be a bit drawn out compared to Sable's.

"Good! What do you think, fish for lunch today, or dinner? I buried yesterday's leavings but if we're going to be seeing a lot of fish in the next few days I could start boiling it to make stock."

She hums thoughtfully. "Count my vote for dinner, I think, but it's not a particularly strong preference. Time enough to get everything done and then hike off to visit Palla after."

She takes a sip of lemonade with a smile. "I have noticed another difference from my world. It's not a particularly large sample size, but I have yet to observe anyone eat any meat other than fish. Are there simply fewer non-sapient animals here?"

"...there... are animals, and there's people who eat them, but..." She shakes her head, looking disconcerted. "It's a little weird, you know? Eating something that could be your cousin. Obviously a far removed cousin, but these transformations do come from somewhere. Before there were peppers there were dogs, and all."

She nods, a look of comprehension on her face. "Entirely understandable, and simply something to adjust to. My step-mother, back home, is a vegetarian, so it's not an unfamiliar dietary shift, just an unfamiliar reason."

She takes another bite of potatoes and nods. "Oh, that reminds me of another question, though perhaps one for Hazel. Do you know if there are partial transformations? Human face and skin, but animal ears and tail?"

<Awwww, Maya! You didn't have to,> Sable interjects with a smile.

<Yes, I did, love. None of us would mind, but you were holding back on that out of some idea that it would be too selfish,> Maya replies.

"Oh, definitely!" she says readily. "And Hazel's who you'd ask if you want to make sure of a specific result. I hardly begin to know how it all works, but they're right on top of that sort of thing."

"Marvelous. They can likely color all that to match the hair and eyes, as well, I'm sure. Perhaps I should pay them another visit one of these days when I'm off to trade for fish, if there's spare time."

Slight smile. "You'll have spare time aplenty; I usually do all this work myself, after all."

"While you are the generous host whose time I hope to save," she replies with an answering smile, "but I see your point."

"Anyway." She finishes her lemonade. "Let's go dig turnips."

She finishes hers as well, clears her plate away, and nods. "Indeed."

She follows Lily outside.

Turnips! They come out of the ground. Turned up, you might say. Lily actually makes a stop in the barn before they start work, to pick up tools and suggest changing into some of her spare work clothes— "what you have on is lovely but it doesn't look meant to hold up to dirt. Did you get it from Hazel?"

"I did," she nods. "The previous set just fit so poorly on this new body."

She gladly changes into work clothes.

And then they can dig up turnips for half the morning! The work definitely does go faster with two of them.

Work, work work. Digging turnips is peaceful. "Do these cause a transformation too?", she asks.

She shakes her head. "Nope. The figs do, though; we'll be picking those this afternoon."

"Fascinating. And those are for racoon transformations, correct? Do non-transformative variants of transformative foods exist?"

"Mhmm, but some of them are a bit rare. Non-transformative figs grow wild in the desert, and whiskerless peaches are pretty easy to come by, but I don't even know what the non-transformative version of a ferret fruit is, and while I've heard there are people who know where to get non-transformative peppers, I can't even say whether that's any more than a rumour. But on the other hand you've had my honey, and you'll notice you're not even slightly a bee right now."

"True. No non-human traits except the usual bizarre mindset!" Her voice has returned to yesterday's bouncier, more playful rhythm and melody, and her posture has shifted slightly to reflect that. She looks around at the finished baskets of turnips. "Anything else I can help you with before lunch and figs?"

"Hmm..." She thinks for a moment. "I'll probably be turning over one of the unused fields and that's something I prefer to do by myself. I think you're on your own until noon."

She grins. "Okay, then! I think I'll sit out and enjoy the nice weather while sketching some designs for a future house I'll build."

"Enjoy!"

She steps back into the barn, grabs her satchel, and steps outside to a nice patch of grass, with either a tree or building at her back, and sits down.

She pulls Neo into her lap mentally, gets out her notebook and pencil, and...

They sketch.

It starts with a few basic aesthetic things, sample facades in a few styles. Gradually she starts working in Gothic Revival elements, a bit of Eastlake as well. It's a big thing, with two stories, a tower going up a third, a balcony or two, and a bay window in one spot. It's just a loose idea, at this point, but it looks lovely.

From there, she starts laying out rooms. The ground floor gets an enormous kitchen with a table, a nice dining room, a lounge, and a workshop. A basement below that has room for all sorts of storage, another workshop, and an empty-ish room for sparring or training or meditating. The upper floor gets an office, another workshop, a master suite with its own bathroom, two guest bedrooms, and another bathroom. The tower gets another workshop. Sizes and arrangements get tweaked a lot. The bay window gets attached to the lounge. One balcony gets put on the master suite, the other gets moved around between the workshop on that floor or the office or one of the guest bedrooms, before finally settling on the office. She vacillates on adding a skylight for a while before deciding against it, and just marking down lots of windows.

Probably at least an hour passes over the course of her sketching and refining.

Lily doesn't reappear until the sun has reached its zenith and started descending over the lake, at which point she finds them where they've settled at the corner of the orange orchard and waves.

"Hey, how's it going?"

She puts her pencil away, hops to her feet, and skips over with a grin, holding out the finished sketches proudly.

"Ooh," she says, studying the drawings. "That's downright lovely. Where would you put it?"

She smiles and tilts her head for a moment...

Before her body language shifts. "Depends on how much I like the city and the people in it, as opposed to relative privacy and distance here in the vicinity of the lake. Also depends on what the process of acquiring land for oneself is in either area. I quite like everyone I've met out here so far. If y'all aren't opposed, I'd certainly love to build in this general vicinity."

"If you want to build a house on the lakeshore, I think the question is whether you get along with me and Palla and to some extent Hazel, and whether you mind running into nymphs and imps and the occasional goblin while you're out of the house. If you want to build a house in the city the question is how fast you can make a whole lot of money."

"Well, I certainly like all three of you well enough," she replies with a grin. "I can... probably make money at a tolerably steady rate, but not fast enough to build something like this quickly unless a few things go more dramatically my way than I expect them to. If y'all like me in return well enough to put up with having me around indefinitely, then that augurs in favor of out here, after I've done my stint in the city and gotten all the tools I'll need for a while."

"I wouldn't mind having another friendly face around. And that house does look like it'll be beautiful."

"Thank you! W—I put a lot of thought into the design," she says. "Guess we'll eventually be neighbors. Or at least as much neighbors as you consider Hazel and Palla."

It's hard to say whether she notices the slip; she definitely doesn't comment.

"Guess so! At least if everything goes well for you, and I hope it does. C'mon, let's make lunch."

She puts her notebook away, washes her hands at the pump, and strolls into the house behind Lily to get to work. "What're we making?", she asks once they're both in the kitchen.

"I'm thinking yams. What do you think about yams? And since I have your help for the afternoon, I can make a bit of a production out of lunch, so maybe I'll cook down some onions into onion jam."

"Oooh," she grins. "That sounds lovely."

"Excellent."

Into the kitchen they go. "Get out, oh, three of those big onions? Onion jam always melts down more than you think. And chop them longways so they make strings instead of bits—should I show you how or do you know what I mean?"

"Big slices like you're making onion rings," she asks as she pulls them out, "and then just cut each big slice in half or maybe quarters and then separate?"

"That'll work fine," she says agreeably, obtaining yams. "Hmm, what do you think for these, roasted or boiled and mashed?"

"Hmmm. Leaning mashed, I think, but not picky."

She chops the very very tip off the ends of each onion, peels the dry outer layer off, and then sets to slicing big discs of onion.

"I'll do mashed, then." She prepares the yams accordingly. "What's an onion ring, anyway?"

She holds up one of the onion discs that she hasn't cut in half or separated yet. "Cut an onion into these, separate into rings, coat in batter, deep-fry in oil."

"Hmm! Now there's a thought. I've never deep-fried anything but I've heard of it; I think they do it in the city?" She piles all her yams in a pot. "Hold that thought, I need to go fill this with water." Out back to the water pump she goes.

Cheerfully she chops the onion discs. Chop chop chop. And then she starts separating, breaking each half- or quarter-disc into its individual layers.

Lily is soon back, lugging the full pot, which she then puts on to boil. "Are deep-fried foods popular where you're from?"

"Very," she says as she separates onion layers. "I've seen everything from deep-fried seafood, meat, or poultry, to deep-fried vegetables, or even chocolate bars or ice cream. There are precious few things people won't deep-fry, where I come from."

She finishes separating the onions, resulting in a large pile of slightly curved strips. "Where do you want these?"

"Over here," she says, stepping to the side to make room for Sable to get the onions into the pan. "Deep-fried ice cream? How do you even manage that?"

She sweeps all the onion strips off the cutting board and into the pan. "Very quickly, and with very thoroughly frozen ice cream," she replies.

"Huh! Well, if they don't already have it in the city, you'll make somebody's day by giving them the idea."

"Sounds like a fun way to make friends with a chef over there."

"I bet it will be!"

"There are a lot of things I'm looking forward to about the city: better work opportunities, a chance to get my tools, maybe some books, things like that. I think I'll miss the lake, though." She shakes her head and grins. "Good thing I'm planning to come back. So, what's your favorite recipe? Both in general, and your favorite with hard-to-get materials."

"In general? Can't go wrong with a good vegetable stew. Hard-to-get materials? Back when I had a source for non-transformative eggs, I picked up a taste for egg drop soup."

"Ooooooooh. First of all, yes, your vegetable stew is delicious. But second, oooooh. I haven't had a good egg drop soup in months. Maybe years. Okay. That's going on the list. What makes non-transformative eggs hard to get here?"

"Nearly any egg you find that's the right kind to cook with will have come out of someone who has a transformation that makes eggs, and nearly anyone with that transformation has it so they can make transformative eggs. I used to have contacts who could get me the other kind, but I haven't heard from them in years."

"Hmm. I'll have to ask around, see if I can find someone who actually raises properly mundane poultry. Either that, or see if I can sweet-talk someone who's looking for an egg-laying transformation into taking one that doesn't lay transformative eggs, and bribe Hazel to brew a transformative that leaves the user's eggs non-transformative. Sounds like a fun little quest."

She hums thoughtfully. "What sort of dropping out of touch was it? Possibly the sort where I could venture out to find them, maybe?"

She lets out a bit of a sigh, shaking her head slightly.

"I wouldn't want to see you get hurt looking for someone who's probably not around anymore one way or another. That's not to say you definitely can't do it, just—the world is a dangerous place."

"I really appreciate the concern, Lily. A lot." She sighs, and smiles bittersweetly. "I promise I won't go looking for them without having a Significant upgrade in my combat capability first, and probably not even then, not unless I've got a good lead and a good chunk of time to go exploring in."

"Well, then, maybe someday you can ask and I'll tell you what I know about where to find them."

She smiles softly and nods. "I've had friends disappear before. It's not fun. And you've been really good to me, so I'd like to do what I can about such things if the opportunity comes up."

"I appreciate it," she says, though she looks more closed-off than usual when she says it.

Well, Sable can just appreciate the quiet for a bit, and watch how Lily cooks this meal.

The onions simmer slowly down into something that does seem to deserve the name 'onion jam', and the yams finish boiling and get drained into a basin and mashed with a knob of butter for creaminess. Then it's onto the plates and out to the table!

She steps out quickly and brings in a pitcher of water just as the food goes onto plates, and sits down with a smile. "This looks delicious, Lily. Thank you."

"I try." She takes a bite. "Yeah, this was a good combination."

She takes a bite of her own, and nods. "It really is."

Another bite, and then a hum. "Sorry about pushing, earlier."

She shrugs. "Don't worry about it. I know I'm not a very forthcoming person."

"That's extremely valid. You've only known me for two days. I just care about people a lot very quickly."

She takes another bite and smiles. "This really is quite good. I've never had onion jam before, but I'm quite enjoying it with the yams."

"It takes long enough to make that I don't usually bother but it's so delicious, isn't it?"

She grins and nods, mouth full of tasty lunch.

Lily smiles back.

After swallowing her next bite and having a sip of water, Sable asks, "Hey Lily, have you ever known anyone who was... actually multiple people?" A somewhat shy, slightly mysterious smile crosses her face.

"Hmm! I can't say that I have," she says, surprised and intrigued. "Is that what was going on this morning?"

"Good catch," she replies with a grin. "One of us was active — fronting, we call it — at the start, then we switched to me, then another did most of the sketching, and then I switched in again because she can't talk aloud. That bed in the barn is playing host to five girls crammed into one cramped brain."

"Sounds crowded," she remarks, blinking. "But I guess it seems like it's working out all right for you."

"We make it work well enough. Would you like everyone's names?"

"I would, yes. Who was I speaking to earlier?"

"First thing this morning, from meeting at the pump before breakfast until my 'usual bizarre mindset' joke was Maya. She's the serene one, the most patient of us. Then me, until we went off to go sketching. I'm the 'host', the default one in front, and the 'original' occupant. Once we started sketching, Neopolitan took over. She goes by Neo for short, and she's the playful and silent one. She really appreciated the praise for the designs. As for the two you haven't met yet, there's Hailey, who is snarky and a bit cynical, but has a soft side. She has a thing about being touched. We'll make sure to let you know if she's fronting, just to avoid misunderstandings. Finally, there's Ruby, who's cheerful and sweet and a bit shy."

Lily nods slowly. "All right. I apologize in advance if I mistake one of you for another."

"Thanks, Lily. Oh, hm. Actually, that reminds me of an idea we had. We were planning to make bracelets in our individual color schemes that we'd swap out to indicate who's fronting. We were just planning the project before we landed here, though, and none of our braiding cord came with us."

"Well, I don't know offhand where you'd find coloured cord, but I wish you the best of luck with it. I wonder if Hazel...? They have to get all those brightly-coloured clothes from somewhere. Probably just the city."

"Huh! Good idea. Maybe we'll ask them next time we're over there. If there's enough time, maybe we could even visit them briefly before grabbing tonight's fish from Palla."

She has another couple bites of the delicious meal, smiling warmly.

"Could be," Lily says agreeably. "If not, you might have time tomorrow morning, I usually go easy on potato day because they're just as happy to stay in the ground."

"Sounds good!" She finishes off the last of her lunch, and gets up to clear the dishes — and Lily's as well if she's done. "This really was delicious."

"I'm glad. Oh—" she moves her hand out of the way so Sable can get her plate, laughing a little. "Sure, thanks. Okay, let's go pick some figs."

Neo switches in, and she grins, winks, and skips outside toward the fig trees.

"Hmm!" says Lily, but she doesn't venture a guess out loud about who that might be, instead just bringing a pair of big baskets out to the fig trees and showing Neo how to tell which ones are ripe and then pick them. "I've got a ladder to reach the tall branches; do you want to be high or low?"

She points upward with a smile.

"Sounds good to me," she says. "Back in a jiffy."

The ladder isn't far; she sets it up by the first tree, gives it a little shake to be sure it's firmly seated, then gestures invitingly to it.

She grins and climbs up it deftly, carefully selecting the fully ripe figs and plucking them daintily from the tree. Into the basket they go!

It's a pleasant afternoon quietly picking figs together. Lily helps move the ladder whenever they finish a tree.

It's peaceful and kinda fun. Soon enough, all the ripe figs are picked.

"All right, let's get these put away and I can grab you some oranges to take to Palla." Figs go into longer-term storage in the barn, and oranges go into another sack.

She smiles and accepts the sack, after helping to put the figs away, then tucks the sack under her arm for a moment to hold her hands up in a heart shape briefly, before winking at Lily and waving.

Lily grins and waves back. "See you soon!"

She strolls happily (and swiftly) through the lovely weather off toward the lake. She wants to make good time so Sable can ask Hazel some questions.

It's a lovely afternoon!

Something looks weird about the ripples in the water, up ahead.

Ooh? What's that? She peers closely while she keeps strolling swiftly toward Hazel's place.

Iiiiit's...

...launching itself out of the water directly at her!!

A roughly human-sized blob of something only slightly too cohesive to be water sails through the air with the speed of a leaping predator.

Oh shit! She throws herself into a roll perpendicular to the lunge, and further along the path toward Hazel's!

The blob splashes violently against the ground. A few globs of slightly-thick-water splatter against the backs of her legs, but they seem inert once separated from the main mass, which spends only a few seconds puddling effortfully towards her before retreating into the lake.

She blinks at this. Did she just get attacked by a slime? Wow.

Go her for that dodge, though! She checks herself, makes sure she has the satchel and the sack of oranges, and then starts jogging to Hazel's place.

The rest of the walk is quiet, and she makes great time, though once again Palla's fairly hard-to-miss cottage turns out to be somehow missable in her rush to get to Hazel's.

Anyway, there's the cute little house with its colourful trim! Hazel is out front, stirring a pot over the campfire.

Sable switches in as they approach, and she waves cheerfully. "Hi there, Hazel!"

Hazel looks up from her pot and smiles. She's wearing one of the roomier shirts from her closet, and has installed cleavage to match. "Sable! Lovely to see you again." A flicker of forked tongue. "I see you met a nymph on the way."

"Ah, is that what that was? Managed to dodge well enough, at least. Got two questions for you, if you have the time, and I'd love to hear if you've learned anything from that sample so far."

"Your sample has been fascinating but I have not yet concluded my analysis. Please, ask away."

"First, do you have or know where to find thin cords that one could braid a bracelet with, in a variety of colors?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you anything more specific than 'try the city'—though I'm at least fairly confident that trying the city will work; I've seen that sort of thing for sale there before."

She nods. "That makes sense. Do you have spare scraps of cloth from outfits that are getting worn out, perhaps? As a stopgap? There are five colors I'd be looking for, if you do."

"Hmm... which colours would you like?"

"Purple, orange, pink, green, and red? Aiming for long enough that one could be tied around a wrist."

She tilts her head consideringly. "I'd have to search thoroughly, but if you come back in a few days I might be able to offer something suitable."

"That would be lovely," she replies with a grin. "The reason is odd and somewhat personal, but I'd be willing to share if you find odd psychological quirks interesting."

Hazel smiles. "I am interested in all manner of odd quirks, psychological and otherwise."

"Have you ever known someone who's actually multiple people?"

"Let me think about that..." She tilts her head and gets a faraway look in her eyes. "...I don't believe so. Not such that I was graced with the knowledge, at any rate. I did once know a pair of twins who were the same person but that seems like a distinct phenomenon."

"Fascinating. That sounds like the inverse of the situation I'm talking about though. Well... you do now. I'm one of five different girls stuffed into this one body. We're looking to use color-coding to indicate which of us is active, or fronting, at any given time."

"Hmm!" she says, letting go of her spoon to lean forward with an alert look of interest in her eyes. "The implications of such an arrangement are fascinating. Do you know whether you have one soul or five? Or some sort of intermediate situation, with a permeable boundary between you? Are there physical changes—I assume they must be very subtle or you would not need a visible signal, but I've wondered before, if you could swap out one mind neatly for another, whether the alteration in the shape of the will would be reflected in the body—"

"No clue about the souls," she says with a shrug, "and we wish there were physical changes. Nothing except body language and how we use — or don't use — the body's voice. The world we came from had no verifiable clue about whether souls even exist, so we'd have no way to know anything about our own."

"Hmm!" she says again. "I wouldn't mind doing some experiments—noninvasive ones, of course, and compensating you for your participation—to determine the answers to these questions."

"Sounds great! Probably not today, we've got another errand to run after this, but we'd love to learn more about our own weird nature. Second question: do you know of any good options for fox transformations, and ideally ones with just the ears and tails, not the rest of the fur? Back in our old, transformationless world, I used to fantasize about being a three-tailed foxgirl like that."

"I do, as a matter of fact! If you would like a mundane partial fox transformation, the transformative you're looking for is fox berries, sold commercially in the city or gatherable in the deep woods. I could easily render a few berries into a concoction that would grant you ears and a tail. For three tails, you will need to seek a rarer rumour: in the deep woods it is said that fox spirits gather, with many tails apiece, and they may be willing to part with the secrets of their own transformatives, at a whim or for a price. I would be enthralled to learn whatever you could tell me about the results, if you do undertake such a quest."

"Goodness. I would gladly take you up on such a transformation if you have time today or tomorrow, and if you don't mind helping to color them to match my hair, but I will absolutely have to investigate the deep woods once I'm better prepared for danger. Would there be any harm in going with the standard version for now and trying to sweet-talk the kitsune in such a state, you think?"

"I don't have any fox berries on hand," Hazel clarifies. "It's not a transformation I've experimented with recently. You would need to procure the berries yourself before I could refine them for you. As for the likely attitude of the fox spirits, who can say? They might be flattered or offended. I've never met one and don't consider myself particularly advantaged at guessing how someone might react to a proposed course of action. If you wanted to transform yourself into a partial fox-morph and then remove that transformation before seeking out the fox spirits, you would need to procure both fox berries for the initial transformation and mandrake root, the human transfomative, for the reversal. I can't say where exactly it might be found but the last supplier I spoke to, many years ago now, operated mainly out of the city and could perhaps be asked after there."

"I'll have to think about that carefully then. Hm. You've been marvelously informative, Hazel, and we look forward to your experiments some other time!"

"Happy to be of assistance!" she says cheerfully. "I look forward to investigating the nature of your soul at your convenience!"

And after a last cheerful wave, she starts jogging off to Palla's hut. At some point she's going to have to figure out why it's so easy to miss the hut going one way, but not the other. That's very odd.

Regardless, time to get the fish for supper!

There's Palla's hut! There's Palla's blanket!

There's a strange man lying on it.

At least, unlike Palla, he wears clothes.

And all the jogging has produced a Ruby by the time they reach Palla's hut. Oh wow, strange man! Well. She's glad he's wearing clothes.

"Hi! Sorry to disturb your nap, I'm looking for Palla, is she here?" All of this is said somewhat quickly.

"She's fishing, she'll be back in a minute," he says, sitting up. "Hi." He looks like he is trying not to smile and failing.

"Well that's great! I wanted to trade her for a fish! I'm Ruby! It's nice to meet you!"

Why would he try not to smile? Smiling's great?

"You'll have to wait your turn, I already paid for mine. Guess I wouldn't mind sharing, though. I'm Torok." The battle has been thoroughly lost. "Can I ask what might be a rude question?"

“Waiting's fine too! And sure!"

"Are you human? It's just, if you are, I think you're the first one I've met since I came to Mareth."

She gasps. "Oooh! Yeah! Are you the other outworlder Lily told us about?"

"Seems very likely! I got here just a few weeks ago. It's been..."

His smile falters.

"...well, my problems are mainly my own stupid fault," he concludes.

"Awwww! I'm sorry you're dealing with that! Is there anything w—"