Chop! Chop! Chop!

The still woods reverberated with each harsh blow of the ax. His were the only noises so deep in the otherwise silent wilderness, the crack of each ax fall, his grunts of exertion and the pounding of blood in his ears as he swung over and over again.

Alex had thought it would be therapeutic. Go out into the woods and just hit something as hard as he wanted, over and over again, until he felt better. It wasn't. Each swing of his ax had his Status Book complaining, even though the extra-dimensional portal that was his satchel. Too hard. Too slow. Wrong angle. A buzzing critique of his form, and a persistent reminder of where he was at a time when he wanted anything but.

The end of the conversation with Marie had not gone well. He'd thrown a lot of words at her in the moment that he now wished he could retract. Cult Leader had been chief among them, but really, what else do you call the spokesperson for a town that drags you away from your life, from everyone and everything you know, all so that they can set you up as some sort of... Farming Messiah.

Chop! Chop! Chop!

She didn't deserve his insults, at least, he didn't think she did. Belle had made that clear enough when he'd spoken to her in town. Whatever this place was, it was normal to the people who lived here. Screaming at an old woman for trying to help her town, even if it had come at his expense, was not the highlight of his day.

Besides, the possibility that he was dreaming, or that he was having a particularly bad stroke wasn't exactly out of the question. It had all the hallmarks, a long lost relative to fill that absence he'd felt for so much of his life, a videogame-esque reality, complete with him as the obvious player character stand in. Hell, he'd even had an awkward moment where he wasn't wearing any pants, a dead giveaway for a wicked nightmare.

Really, all he needed was a pretty redhead, and he was going to start pinching again.

Chop! Chop! Crack!

The sharp noise was accompanied by a sudden lack of resistance to the blade of his ax as it bit into the side of the birch tree once again. For all the book's complaints about his form, he'd still done the job.

Fifty swings. Alex thought to himself as he backpedaled away from the toppling tree. He'd been counting as he worked, and it had taken exactly fifty swings of the ax to fell the tree. Under other circumstances, he'd have chalked the neatly round number up to a cute coincidence, but in Blue Hills, he wasn't so sure. Before he could test any further, however he ought to chop up the fallen-

Or not.

Ahead of him, the felled tree that he had planned on further dissecting into manageable chunks began to glow around its edges with an all too familiar blue light. As the seconds passed, bits of the fallen tree began to pop off, bouncing no more than a few feet away in a fashion disturbingly reminiscent of popcorn.

All told the transformation took slightly longer than the similar process for hoeing, planting or watering, and unlike the previous three, not all of the material was left over when he was finished. Of a thirty-foot tall birch tree, only twenty 2x4 planks remained scattered over a few dozen feet in all directions, with the remainder of the wood vanishing along with the blue energy that had highlighted it as well as the stump of the fallen tree.

"Energy usage is a bit much." Alexander mused as he, at last, drew out his Status Book to check what the exertion had cost him. 0.3 Energy per swing, with a few outlying 0.2's for the few instances where he'd Goldilocksed his way into just the right amount of force to use. Felling a single tree would cost him somewhere between 10-15 energy, depending on his form.

He wasn't going to be clearing out the forest anytime soon, that was for sure.

Costly or not, chopping down a single tree hadn't satisfied his urge to hit things. He still had a little bit over 50 energy left, and if nothing else it would make for a good experiment. What would happen to him after he ran out of energy? Would he still be able to use his tools? Would he pass out? Better to find out sooner rather than later.

It took Alexander a few minutes to gather up the scattered bits of the first tree before he set his eyes on a second, a large pine tree that'd had the temerity to slightly scrape one of his forearms when he'd dug under it in search of one of his lost pieces. This one was taller than his first 'victim' and a little wider in the trunk. It would make a wonderful second test case.

"One," Alexander grunted, swinging the ax into the bark of the tree just above waist level. Splinters flew in every direction under the sharp blade of the ax, even the thick skin of the tree parting before the forceful edge. "Two." The count continued, striking again at a slight incline to hack out a triangular wedge of material. He was fairly sure he was supposed to do that, to open up a sort of 'target' for his follow-up blows. At least, he thought that was why they did that. The only time Alexander could actually recall seeing a lumberjack at work had been a few minutes of the Lumberjack World Championships that had been playing in his barber's lobby.

But that was almost like being an expert, wasn't it?

"Ten" The handle of the ax reverberated in his hands as it clipped off a particularly hard knot inside its target. Would that make any sort of difference? Should he chop around such an obstacle, or just power his way through it? So far the town's eldritch rules hadn't seemed to make much of a distinction, but he angled his blows away from it all the same. It might take the same number of blows, but the way his hands throbbed as he struck the knot was anything but comfortable.

Strike by strike, Alexander counted towards his goal. Twenty, twenty-eight, thirty-two. If he'd been back home, where things made sense, he'd have been drenched in sweat, his arms rubber, his back soon to be a mass of unbearable aches and pains. Here he felt nothing more than a trickle along his brow line and the tension of his own muscles as he chopped. It was invigorating and frightening.

"Forty-Eight. Forty-Nine... Fifty!" He cried with a self-satisfied finality. Reality, however, did not bear out his excitement. A few chips of pale wood had gone flying under the dull blade, but beyond that the tree stood, proud and almost defiant. "I said fifty," Alexander grumbled, taking a few steps away from the insufferable pine. The cool evening breeze caught some of its branches, and soon enough the whole thing was shaking as if laughing at his failure.

Did he miscount? Did the blow to the knot not count, or was there some other factor at work, a randomness factor maybe? Something to do with the width of the tree? He gave the side of the abused trunk a swift kick from one booted foot, to no avail, then circled around to the side. He'd barely made it even a third of a way through the mighty girth of the thing, no wonder it wasn't ready to acquiesce to his might quite yet.

"Fifty-one," Alexander announced, his blade striking the unblemished bark of the tree's far side.

All at once there was a mighty snap, a distinctive cry as the tree gave way under one final blow. Delight surged through Alexander, followed an instant later by something closer to sheer, unbridled terror. The tree wasn't falling away from him, it was falling towards him.

"No, no, no!" He cried in alarm, skittering to the side as fast as his legs could carry him. They weren't nearly fast enough. Branches crashed down around him as he sunk to a knee, the ax handle held protectively above his head in a futile attempt to shield him from the worst of the collapse.

Pine needles raked across his bare arms and face as an ocean of branches washed over him, but it was the sudden onrush of a pair of branches, each the width of his forearm, that truly stunned him. The first clipped the top of the ax handle, wrenching his shoulder down and driving the tool from his grip. The second struck him clean across the crown of his head with enough force that it should have knocked him unconscious on the spot, or caved his skull in outright.

Instead, to his total bafflement, it was the wood that gave way. The branch splintered as it collided with his head, the better half of it slumping to the ground next to him while the jagged edge scraped across his left shoulder before coming to a stop with the rest of the tree, the energy of its collapse finally spent.

He should be dead. Instead, he had a ringing in his ears and a few bloodless scrapes. Even the pain was muted, little more than a dull ache like someone had bopped him on the head with a tightly wound newspaper, not a few thousand pounds of wood and force.

After a few terrified heartbeats, Alexander stood, pushing his way through twisted and snapped branches. He marched his way out of the collapsed tree as it began to disintegrate behind him, popping apart one 2x4 at a time while needles and slim branches glowed with blue light before vanishing into the ether as if they'd never existed in the first place.

His clothes were ripped and torn in places. His flesh was not. Despite the scrapes and impacts, there was nothing more than a handful of swollen red lines and a mild ache just above his hairline. No blood, certainly none of the ghastly wounds he should have expected.

I should be dead. Alex thought, his heart in his throat as he reached for the bag at his side and withdrew his leather-bound Status Book. He opened it and was not entirely surprised to find a series of new notifications:

Minor Injury (Tree) -3 HP.

Minor Injury (Tree) -2 HP.

Moderate Injury (Tree) -15 HP.

A tree had just fallen on him. And he'd barely lost a tenth of his HP.

"That looked like it hurt."

The soft feminine voice, barely more than a whisper in the cool spring air, nearly made Alexander leap out of his skin.

He whirled on the voice in an instant, already frayed nerves pushed to their limits. Adrenaline had his chest rising and falling in quick, desperate breaths as he searched through the darkness of the woods until at last, he found her, a waif of a girl standing amidst the nearby trees, her soft violet painted lips upturned into just the slightest hint of a smirk.

Though his time spent in Blue Hills could be measured in hours, and the number of residents he'd met hadn't even yet crossed a half dozen, something about this woman seemed... off. Like the absurdly ostentatious home in the middle of town, she didn't feel like she belonged.

Her hair was black and shoulder length, straightened so that it fell in two dark curtains that served to highlight the pale face that shined ever more brightly in the moonlight. Her skin looked flawless, reminding him more of a young Morticia Addams than any woman he'd ever seen, a connection only compounded by her dry expression. Even at the considerable distance between the two of them, he could see the signs of her makeup, the darkening around her eyes, the deep purple of her glistening lipstick.

She wore a long-sleeved red coat that fell below her knees, concealing everything of her body save that she was slim and that, even walking through the woods at night, the girl had chosen to wear heels.

He felt underdressed.

"I... yeah, I guess it did," Alexander replied, touching at his forehead before laughing. "Well, not as much as I would have expected, actually."

"Mmm. Thick skull I suppose."

"I suppose so," Alexander replied. He felt like he was staring, and looked away briefly to compose his thoughts before he spoke again. "I'm Alexander. Just moved into-"

"You're Pip's nephew." The girl interjected.

"That obvious?"

"There is some resemblance." She took a few tentative steps towards him, and as she turned, he noticed a small basket held under the arm that had been concealed by her body.

"So I've been told." He laughed unconvincingly. "And that you don't get many visitors."

"That does help."

Alexander didn't know how to reply, his mouth opening and closing a handful of times as he sought some new line of conversation. For her part, the girl seemed almost happy to ignore him. Her eyes were on the ground and trees as she walked, her circuitous route carrying her around rough terrain as she moved ever closer to a series of small mushrooms growing out of the stump of a fallen tree.

"Don't stop on my account." She said, at last, turning her head just far enough to catch sight of him in her peripheral vision before she began to pluck the mushrooms one by one.

"I hadn't. I mean... I wasn't." He replied, laughing at his own ineptitude. "Sorry, I'm not exactly great at meeting people, and this day has been a bit of a catastrophe."

"You don't say." Came her reply, without any suggestion as to which of his claims she was referring.

"Yeah. Anyways, I'm Alexander-"

"You've said that already." She pointed out, setting him aglow with the realization.

"I suppose I did." He admitted, briefly chewing on his lip as he chose his words more carefully. "I'm trying to get the names of everybody since I'm expecting to stay here for a while at least."

"And has that line been working well for you?"

"It wasn't really a-"

This time she laughed, just a small titter of bemusement as she snatched up the last of the mushrooms. "It's Evelyn if you must know." She glanced over her shoulder at something unseen before she answered. "I'm your closest neighbor, actually."

"Ah. Well, a pleasure to meet you then, neighbor."

She didn't seem quite so sure. Her eyes studied him cautiously for several moments, before she at last advanced on him, a single diminutive hand outstretched. "Here is hoping you aren't quite your Uncle's nephew."

That took him aback. "I'm sorry?" He asked, accepting her hand almost absently as he looked down to study her face. "I think you're the only person I've met who hasn't been singing his praises from the rooftops."

"Well, you know how rosy the past can be." Evelyn shrugged. Next, to him, she looked positively tiny. Nearly a foot shorter, even in heels, she took petite to a whole new level. "A lot of people here get caught up in what was, what should have been, or what they wanted him to be, rather than what the man actually was."

"Well, I'm glad you're willing to give me a fair shake then, at least."

"Make it count." She winked, the soft sent of mint surrounding him as she leaned in.

"I'll try." Alexander chuckled. "Can I ask what he did?"

"You can ask, certainly." When Alexander's face tightened in annoyance, Evelyn smiled. "You're still pretty new here. Perhaps you should wait until you have a better handle on the people, yes?"

He frowned. "Do I have a choice?"

"Not particularly, no." Evelyn's smile turned into a playful grin. "Look, this has been fun, but..." Her words trailed off as she gestured to her basket.

"Dinner time?"

"What?" She asked in confusion, then revulsion, as she understood his meaning. "No! Eww. They make for medicinal herbs. I'm the town doctor."

"Aren't you a little young to-"

"Older than you." She insisted though Alexander wasn't entirely convinced the statement was truthful. "Think carefully about your next words if you expect medical treatment in the future." Her eyes flicked to the smattering of 2x4's at his back where the tree had once stood. "And keep in mind you just had a tree fall on you."

Alexander started to speak, then thought better of it. "I take your point."

"Thought you would." She snickered. "Feel free to stop by if you're ever under the weather. It was nice meeting you, Alex."

His eyes followed Evelyn as she departed, staring at first, then wide-eyed as a glance over her shoulder caught him gawking. A tiny, gothic town doctor was probably on the bottom end of the weirdness he'd encountered that day, but in the moment it was at the top of his list.

Not quite a pretty redhead, but he pinched himself one more time, all the same.