Setting up a tent in the rain was not the most fun thing to do. Getting all the poles in place, moving the tarp around, not getting tangled in the lines, it was all the frustrating end of a frustrating day. My blankets--which I had left on the floor of the wagon--were both sodden and wet. My cleaning spell took care of some of it, but it wasn’t a drying spell; they were still wet.

I stepped out of my tent, rain pinging off my hat with a constant rap-tap-tap beat and took in our tiny camp. Milread had driven the wagon all the way up to a small cliff area that was higher off the ground than the rest of the forest. It meant that we got to sleep next to a wall of stones that did a decent job of keeping off the rain.

There was a bit of a divot sliced into the rock, probably by some previous travellers. It served as a good spot to set up a little fire pit with all our tents in a circle around. The wagon was pushed into the trees to one side and Missy was left to graze opposite it.

Basically, the camp was tight, cramped even, but it made sense to set it up that way. Our fire wouldn’t be visible from afar and if we had to fight something we would have a wall by our backs.

I wished that such considerations didn’t matter. That we could all just enjoy a nice fire and a warm meal before snuggling into a warm bed.

The others were all huddled around the anemic fire in the pit. It wasn’t much, just a few tiny licks of flame from some twigs and a small block of rune-covered wood that Milread had tossed in. It was growing though, and even with the tiny bit of warmth pouring out of it, the fire was welcome.

“I...” I started to say before three pairs of eyes looked towards me.

The others had not been happy with me after the thing with the pixies, Milread most of all. It had worked out, in the end, and no one had died. That didn’t matter to her. It had been silly and foolish and I could have been hurt with one wrong word. She wasn’t wrong, not entirely, but I didn’t think I had been all that wrong in the way I acted either.

I tried again. “I can make tea. Chamomile, if you want?”

“Fire’s not hot enough yet,” Noemi said.

I pulled out my tea kettle, tucked under my arm since I had left my tent. “Enchanted tea set,” I said. “Can’t do much more than boil water, but, well...” I sat down on a log that had been there long before we arrived.

“Sure,” Severin said. He had a set of camping utensils next to him, one a tin mug that he handed over to me.

I added the herbs I had and let it fill with rain water as we waited.

“Rainwater’s not good for drinking around here,” Milread said as she tossed in a log and sent up a small plume of embers that quickly died.

“Cleaning spell,” I explained.

“Ah.”

I sat around and waited for enough water to fill the kettle. At the rate it was raining it wouldn’t take long. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Milread looked up from the fire. “You’ve said that already,” she said.

“I mean it this time.”

Noemi scoffed and got up. “I’ll get the food,” she said.

Milread eyed me for a good long while, until I felt like squirming under her hawkish gaze. “Next time you listen. Or you at least tell me of your fool plan before trying anything. I’m responsible for the lot of you. Severin and Noemi know what they’re about, they’re past their first rank, but you’re no better than a kid. Plus Juliette would turn my head into a mantlepiece if you died under my watch.”

“I’m... sorry,” I repeated. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I just really don’t like fighting.”

“Then find a nice city with big walls and stay in it,” Milread said. “Out here you fight or you die.”

It was quiet for a good long while after that. No, not quiet. There was the croak of hundreds of frogs, the occasional cry of a distant coyote, and that incessant pitter patter of rain on leaves. I brought my feet up onto the log so that I could hug my knees close to my chest for a bit of warmth.

Noemi returned with a sack that she dropped next to the growing fire. She placed a pot next to her, the lid scrapping and pinging with every motion. “I’m cooking,” she said.

“Got the skill?” Milread asked.

“At apprentice. Got better?” Noemi asked.

“Don’t even have it,” Milread said.

Severin just shook his head.

The grenoil woman started opening cans and adding spices to the pot. It stirred it all together then added it to the top of the fire. “Going to take a bit,” she said. “Could use a hotter fire too.”

“Right,” Milread asked. She poked the fire one last time and then tossed the stick she was using onto the flames. “We need more wood if we’ll keep this going all night. And we need to set up a watch. Severin, can you do mage lights?”

“For the sombrals? Of course,” the mage said. He huffed as he got to his feet. I noticed that he had tossed his boots at some point, but he didn’t seem to mind having his feet in the mud. He moved over to Milread and they both ambled off into the woods around our camp until I could just barely hear them from the crackle of branches and the shift of cloth.

“So, um, Noemi, right?” I asked.

“Do you really have to?” Noemi asked right back.

“Have to what?”

“Do this whole thing where you try to chat me up. If you were a grenoil boy I’d think you were a flirt.”

I shook my head, bits of rain slipping off my hat. “No. I just want to make friends.”

Noemi sighed. “Yeah, that’s nice. Make friends with someone else.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I fumbled through a few openers, but none seemed to fit, and a direct response would just be so rude. I wondered if my Friendmaking skill could be of any use, but it felt more like a passive sort of thing. “So, why are you heading to Port Royal?” I asked.

Noemi paused in the stirring of our supper. Her knuckles tightened around the spoon but she never looked away from her work. “I have family who died. I’m going to their funeral. Are you happy, now that you know?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Good. You can apologize by keeping quiet.”

I swallowed and looked away. The kettle was halfway full, leaves floating in lukewarm water. I fired an absent cleaning spell, then sighed when it made the flower buds I had left in the water poof away. It wasn’t my night.

The tea was boiling and my mana was slowly dropping when the others returned. They settled down and I poured a cup for Severin then myself. The others begged off, but I left the kettle close, just in case.

“This isn’t bad,” Severin said as he took a sip.

“Thanks,” I said.

Milread shook some water off of her hood. “We’re setting up rotations. Broccoli, you’re up first. I have some watch candles. You wake me when the wax hits the ring and the flame changes colour a little. Severin, you’re taking the late middle, Noemi, the last. We can change things around tomorrow.” She pulled a small fat candle from a pocket and, with the tip of a talon, made three marks around it before setting it to the side.

“You trust her not to sleep?” Noemi asked.

I stiffened.

“Yeah. I’ll wake up for my watch either way,” Milread said.

“Hrm,” was Noemi’s response. “Food’s ready.”

We were each given a decent bowlful of some sort of stew. No actual meat, just different cuts of veggies in a sort of gravy with some spices. It was a little light on solids, but tasted good all the same. I was one of the first to finish eating. “I’ll clean up,” I said. “I’ve got cleaning at, um, disciple rank.”

“Thanks,” Milread said. “I’m going to get some shut-eye. Good night.” She left her bowl on the log she had been perched on and walked off to her tent. Noemi soon did the same.

“Do you think I can practice magic?” I asked Severin as I gathered all the utensils and pots.

The older grenoil gave me his empty bowl, then refilled his mug with the last of the tea. “I don’t see why not. Don’t cast anyzing and you should be fine. Your light is no brighter zan the fire.”

“Neat,” I said.

Soon I was wishing him a good night and settling in as best I could next to the fire. I took a moment to fetch my spear, just in case. The candle Milread had left was lit with a twig and burned merrily despite the occasional raindrop that landed on it. Magic, maybe, or some clever alchemy?

I focused on a hand. My right, because that was my dominant hand for day to day stuff. Magic moved into my limb until it tingled, then I pushed a little more. It was like shoving some of that dough stuff kids played with through a strainer. It didn’t flow out of the body easily, and pushing too much made my chest feel a little empty in a way that spending all of my mana didn’t.

My mana didn’t dip down though, not unless I lost control of the mana and it slipped out of my grasp. So, the number in my status was the amount of mana I could control, not the amount I had in my body? No, that didn’t feel exactly right.

Eventually I grew a little bored with just making my hand glow. Even shutting it off and bringing it back as quickly as I could grew tiresome, and it felt as if I was straining something inside of my hand when I did so. Like a new muscle, maybe.

I formed the mana into a ball, then, when that didn’t work at all, I satisfied myself by cupping a blob of mana in my hand. Severin had said that my magic was cleaning aspect. That sounded... strange. I had grown up on stories with the usual magical elements. Fire, water, earth, air and so on. Cleaning was definitely not one of those.

Maybe magic didn’t care about what I thought was usual and I would just have to deal with it.

I tried to make my mana turn into fire mana. Severin had made it look easy, but it was far from it.

At first I tried to make my mana look like fire, but that only made it bob around like jello. Thinking hot thoughts didn’t work, and getting angry was hard because I wasn’t an angry person. The hottest my emotions ever ran was mildly miffed. Maybe I’d manage to unlock mildly miffed aspect mana, but a mildly miffedball didn’t sound as awesome as a fireball.

I looked at the fire before me, then jumped when I saw that it was dying.

Getting to my hands and knees, I blew at the embers until they were nice and hot again, then added more sticks and branches to the fire until it was crackling merrily away.

Maybe that was it. I had to treat my mana as a tiny fire?

I spend an hour or so--occasionally looking around to the woods--trying to nurture a small fire in the palm of my hand.

By the time Milread woke up I had almost seen a flicker.

“You’re still awake?” Milread asked. She looked around, then scowled. “It’s still raining.”

“It is, and I am,” I said. “Is it time for me to sleep now?”

“Yeah, get some shut-eye. You’ll need it.”

I slid into my tent and, after wasting some mana cleaning myself off, fell asleep under my moist blankets. It was a long night.

***