Beth found herself being shook awake rather roughly from her peaceful slumber. She leapt up half-staff in hand; ready to strike whoever had dared disturb her sleep. Nate chuckled at her actions clearly having no fear about this potential attacker. This wound her up no end, but it wasn’t exactly like she could do anything to prove her capabilities beyond actually attacking the child and that wasn’t something she was willing to do. At least not yet. Though if anybody could get her close to beating up a kid Nate would be the one to do it. There was something liberating about tossing the bedding or leaves away and not worrying about where they landed or putting them away property. A skill that had been drilled into Beth by her mother for as long as she could remember. Susanne’s strict desire for order wasn’t something that had faded even with her shift in personality. A desire that Beth had found herself falling more and more victim to.

They didn’t travel all that far before Nate stopped them stating it had been a suitable length of time since he’d last seen a berry plant.

“Right up to the sky again then” Nate said before scurrying up a tree.

Beth was rather confused but followed the boy unwilling to lose track of him and his suggested route towards both the mountains and his village. Reaching the top of the tree she saw Nate was waiting for her, bouncing on a leaf that swayed under his weight.

“What’s the plan Nate? We going to run across the leaves?” She said with a chuckle.

The laugh died in her throat as she saw the grin of Nate’s face expanding and he turned away from her and set off, fasted than they had travelled over the ground.

Beth didn’t have time to hesitate and set off herself, trying to keep her feet flat and light on the leaves, uses many of the tricks she’d picked up watching Nate travel over the ground. The first couple of steps were done easily and the leaves below her feet barely bent at her weight.

“I’m going to catch up in a second” Beth shouted at Nate and increased her speed even further.

Nate turned around to see how close she had gotten and go a front row view to watch as she placed her foot further away from the base than was wise and plunged through the leaves towards the ground. Fortunately the top of the trees had fairly thick foliage and so rather than falling all the way to the ground she landed on a couple of leaves that were thick enough to support her weight slightly further down. Unharmed other than her pride. She lay there for a moment catching her breath and looking up at the gap she had left behind in her descent. A gap that was fairly shortly filled with the head of Nate wearing a shit eating grin. He had the decency to not outright laugh though. At least not to her face. He even helped Beth find a route back up to the top of the trees. Used the point where the leaves connected to the trees as a staircase or ladder to climb back up. Taking Nate’s hand to help pull her the rest of the way she was back up top and collapsed once more staring into the sky. Not moving despite the less that subtle way that Nate tried to encourage her to get going.

“How much further is your home?” Beth asked still not looking at Nate but instead watching a small cloud drift by on a breeze she couldn’t feel. Nate gave up and lay down next to her.

“We haven’t gone all that far so it’s still another day and a half to two days? Depends on out pace on our pace among other things.”

Nate let out a sigh after answering and looked up alongside Beth. She pointed to a cloud shaped vaguely like a rabbit.

“That looks like creature from my home.”

“Some kind of pampered pet i imagine” Nate said with a scoff.

This actually got Beth to move and she got up onto one elbow to look at the boy.

“Do you really think I’m just some rich holidaying snob? Have I actually given you any reason to think that?”

Nate similarly got up on his elbow and met her eyes.

“I guess not, you have kept up too well and didn’t complain nearly enough to be a really sheltered tourist. We’ve got to be careful though you know. Use the gifts Wisdonna gave us. One of our neighbours had a tourist or two. People who bought their stuff for well over their production value and they came back with friends. And those friends brought friends and before long the whole village was built around catering to their whims, their hunters because tour guides; they started importing food rather than growing and making it themselves. It didn’t take them long to become fully dependant and as quickly as it all started it all ended and they were left with nothing. Their livestock was now for rides and photos rather than food or labour. The craftsmen could only produce cheap but decorative trinkets. Even their telling of the story of the 3 sisters had shifted. Becoming more punchy and less about learning than a grand tale.”

Nate paused for a second and stabbed his blade into the leaf, towards the edge where it didn’t affect the structure.

“They’re all gone now. Some left for other worlds, hoping to become tour guides on them and to provide the ‘authentic’ experience of some other culture. Others joined surrounding towns. Begging their way into them and working hard to regain the skills and independence they had lost. Most died though. Waiting for the tourists to return, hoping if they just stayed afloat for long enough they would come back. They didn’t.”

“You know the worst thing?” Nate tone had changed now Beth could hear the catch in his throat as a cry threatened to escape from him. “They were happy and well off. They ate new things, their horizons were expanded and they met loads of new people. The scary thing is it might happen again. Despite the story of their destruction I think our village would do it if somebody turned up. Slowly of course but it would end the same.” He was actually crying now, having fully worked himself up into a state. “I don’t want our village to go. I love how it is now. I can’t allow things to change.” Then in an almost imperceptive whisper he said “I won’t.”

Safe to say Beth felt overwhelmed at the outburst. She wasn’t use to dealing with such things especially from this boy who seemed to resent her up to that point. She hadn’t dealt with somebody’s tears in a while. A long while. She sat up next to the boy who had also sat up mid tirade. Placed her arm around him the boy leaned into her and started to cry directly into her shirt, occasionally drawing in large gasps of air as the tears overwhelmed his ability to draw breath.

Eventually the frequency of his sobs decreased until he had stopped completely. He lifted his head off of Beth’s chest and turned away from her. Facing away he wiped his whole arm across his nose and eyes in an attempt to hide the previous even that Beth had very much been a witness to.

Still with a slight catch in his voice he said “You ready to set off again?” and seeing a nod from Beth they set off again. Noticeably he allowed Bet to set the rate and even occasionally tossed out tips to help her remain light on her feet and to ensure that even if she accidentally stood on a less than stable section of leaf she would still be able to quickly recover, without the spectacular fall Beth had demonstrated was a potential consequence of such a misplaced foot. She still wasn’t as good as Nate, who had a lifetime of practise but she was getting faster and eventually they settled on a good pace with Nate jogging and skipping forward and Beth walking with speed controlling her speed carefully with her skill to ensure she always kept fairly level with Nate.

This took some time to get use time, sometimes she would over activate the skill and her stride would be significantly longer than expected resulting in at least one almost complete disaster. It was like flexing a muscle she rarely used, like lifting a single eyebrow or wiggling your ears, but with practise she was getting the hang of it.

This practise was particularly helped by the fact that Nate was out of his slump and kept adjusting their speed hoping to catch Beth out again and cause her to fall once again. These games kept to pair entertained and travelling over the top of the trees allow them to make fairly rapid progress and having stopped only to forage for food and to sleep they were getting closer to the mountains every hour. Eventually, after another night spent among the trees, Nate, who had been frequently comparing his thumb to the closest mountain, slowed them down. “We need to descend now, we are almost there.”

They climbed down carefully and continued to walk towards the mountains having slowed down once again to roughly the same rate they had walked when Nate was looking for the berries. The wandered for a while when fairly suddenly Nate changed direction, always vaguely towards the mountains but much less directly. This happened a couple of times as he reacted to an indicator Beth hadn’t managed to spot. Not for lack of trying but when you aren’t familiar with the dense forest, and she very much wasn’t one scratch looks like another and the different between a symbol and nature was impossible to identify. She did however notice Nate occasionally looking at his fingers and muttering numbers under his breath as they went. Eventually they reached a point where Beth did notice a difference somehow the foliage seemed even thicker than it had been previously, and less light was coming in. Looking up she saw the place they had been looking for, a string a tree houses connected by ropes maybe halfway up the various trees. Nate’s home.