“So you started out as a Forager, you said. You’re something else now?” Milo asked as the three made the return trip to the cottage, laden with their spoils.

“Frontierswoman,” Julie said with a hint of pride. “I know it’s not the most glamorous-sounding thing, but I’ve never felt so strong and confident in myself as I have since I’ve had to survive out here all alone, you know?”

“I’m here too, Mom,” Devin reminded her.

Julie laughed. “I know, sweetie. But without grocery stores and society and all that.”

“Oh. Grocery stores are the places where you trade paper for food, right?”

She laughed again, and Milo got a chuckle out of that too. “That’s right, good memory. Funny when you put it that way. I didn’t know how good I had it,” she lamented.

“It sounds amazing, all that food just sitting around,” Devin continued. “We don’t have any paper; it’s pretty hard to make. Should we make more, so that if we ever find a grocery store we can trade for chocolate? She’s always talking about chocolate,” he explained to Milo.

“Not always,” Julie protested, rolling her eyes.

“Chocolate is pretty amazing,” Milo said. “But just making paper won’t do it. It has to be a very special kind of paper. Has to have pictures on it and be just the right size.”

“I can draw pictures,” boasted Devin.

“I bet you can,” said Milo. “But every single piece of paper—money, is what it’s called—has to have exactly the same shape, size, and picture on it. A person alone can’t do it. You need a special machine.”

“Can we make the machine?”

“I don’t know how. I doubt your mom does either. But it doesn’t matter; if we ever make it back to Earth, we’ll be able to get some money and buy some chocolate. It shouldn’t be too hard. I have some money already, and, even if it's gone by the time I return, I have family there who would help me out. That’s what family’s for.”

“To buy you chocolate?”

Milo and Julie laughed again. “Yep, family’s there to buy you chocolate when you can’t get it yourself,” Milo said.

The three of them stopped by a stream to wash all the dirt off the roots they’d gathered. It didn’t take long. Julie explained that the outer skin of the roots needed to come off still, so they didn’t need to be too picky about getting every speck of dirt. It was really just to keep things a little cleaner while they stripped the roots later.

“So what kind of skills does Frontierswoman come with?” asked Milo.

Julie blew a strand of hair away from her mouth before answering. “Um, nothing too amazing, mostly just things to help me survive when things get tough, and things to save time. I have one called Hardy Constitution that keeps me healthy, keeps disease away, lets me recover faster if I get hurt. Makes me a little stronger, too. I still have Forage, even though it’s not so useful since I already pretty much know everything that’s good to eat and where to find it. Lean Times lets me eat less. That one’s a real time saver; eating less means less food prep, less hunting. My favorite is probably Homestead; that one keeps predators away from my property, so I don’t have to worry so much about leaving Devin alone, and it gives me sort of a sixth sense about what’s going on near my home. And then there’s A Stitch In Time. You know, like a ‘a stitch in time saves nine’?”

“I’ve heard that before, yeah,” said Milo. “My mom sews sometimes. It’s like, avoiding mistakes now will save you the time it takes to go back and fix it.”

“That’s it! So yeah. That one lets me go back in time and fix mistakes I made in the last minute.”

“...what?”

“Yeah, it’s really handy. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve cut my hand or accidentally punctured animal guts when dressing it or—”

“You can time travel?!”

“Whoa there,” she laughed. “It’s not like that. I mean, a little, but—”

“That’s crazy. How does it work? Do you go back and redo it, or does it just fix automatically? And what counts as a mistake? Do you decide, or does the skill decide, or—”

“Holy cow, calm down there Milo, jeez. You really get excited about this stuff, don’t you? Give me a second...how to explain? Umm...it’s sort of like time freezes I guess? Everything around me goes still, and I sort of get absorbed into a memory of what happened. And then I just sort of...remember it going differently, you know? I’ve only got a few seconds to make the change. And then everything goes back to normal, except the thing I remembered differently is different.”

“Can you—I mean, what’s the limit? I would imagine you can only change things that you were doing, right? And, does it always get fixed? Can you make a mistake the second time around?”

“Yeah, I can only change what I was doing—but that can affect what others do and say. And yeah, I can fail. Sometimes I go back two or three times until I get it right. It’s weird, though; it still feels like remembering it when I go back, instead of trying again. And it can be disorienting, because sometimes after I fix the mistake, it will make other stuff happen between the original future and the fixed mistake, so it can give me gaps in my memory the longer I wait to fix it after making the mistake in the first place. Like I said, it’s hard to explain.”

“Interesting. Huh. Not perfect, but still kind of ridiculous. I would trade most of my skills for that one.” Milo shook his head in amazement.

“It does save a lot of hassle,” she said, shrugging.

She doesn’t get it. That would be a seriously awesome skill to have in combat. Redo anything short of death, sounds like.

The three made it back to the cottage and began stripping the roots. Milo was surprised to learn that they had knives to work with; Eric had made them. Apparently, he’d Improvised a primitive forge, melted down their bed’s springs, and made knives out of them, among other things. Truly remarkable. Milo didn’t think he would have had the resourcefulness to do such a thing. Not without a lot of trial and error, anyway.

He found that stripping the roots was even more frustrating with one hand than was pulling them out of the ground in the first place. He gave up in disgust after only a short time, asking Julie if there was some other way he could be of use. She gave him a pot and had him go fetch water at the stream, not far from the house. After that, she told him to go try his luck hunting for crabs at the beach. She handed him what looked like a primitive version of a butterfly net along with a lidded basket and pointed him to the trail that he had followed to reach the cottage.

He set off, determined to make himself useful.

It was several minutes’ walk to the ocean. On arrival, he was pleased to find that the shore here was very flat and wide. There were also lots of driftwood logs and a few big boulders lying around, which was where he’d been advised by Julie to look for the crabs. He could see a small rowboat on the shore as well, in much the same style as the ruined one he’d seen previously.

He was also very startled to realize that there was quite a large boat under construction at the edge of the forest, far off to the right of where the trail let onto the beach.

Milo walked up to it in awe. The ship was set atop some scaffolding to keep it level and off the ground. It was completely framed out, but the hull was only half-finished and it didn’t have a deck. Milo judged that, when finished, he would be able to stand up inside of it belowdecks. He might have to hunch a little, but still. It was a massive undertaking for one small family with limited tools. Eric must have been very determined to get off the island.

After spending a couple of minutes inspecting and admiring it, he set to work hunting crabs.

It was slow going at first. He was able to spot a couple with the aid of Skim, but that was only so much help. The difficulty wasn’t so much spotting the crabs that were out in the open as it was finding their hiding spots, which Skim was unable to divulge. He finally got smart and Skimmed for ‘sand disturbed by crabs’. That let him see where the most crab activity was, leading him to one log in particular where a lot of them were hiding.

The log was too big and heavy for him to move on his own, but when he used Fetch Book while lifting at the same time, he was able to move it to the side. He was disappointed to find only a single crab hidden underneath. They weren’t terribly fast, so he was able to catch it easily with the net Julie had provided him. He deposited it into the basket with the other two he’d managed to capture so far. They were fairly small, no bigger than his hand, and that was including the legs. Milo knew that there was sure to be very little meat on each one; he would need to do a lot better if he was going to contribute meaningfully to dinner.

He repeated the technique with several more logs, finding little success, until he hit a turning point in his struggles. Upon lifting one of the logs out of the way, Milo saw a patch of wiggling sand. He grabbed a stick and stirred it, finding, as he suspected, a disturbed crab squirming around just under the surface.

Pleased with his discovery, Milo nabbed the unfortunate creature and began digging more of them up with his stick.

He stopped when he had twenty or so, unsure how time-consuming the critters would be to prepare for eating. Feeling rather pleased with himself, he made his way back to the cottage with his basket of crabs.

The door was slightly ajar when he approached, but he knocked on it and waited for a reply before entering. He found Julie alone, still processing the roots.

“Thanks for knocking, but you don’t have to do that,” said Julie. “You’ll be living here, so you can pretty much just treat it like your own home.”

“Oh. Thanks. Not that I’m complaining, but I think you’re maybe a bit too trusting of strangers.”

Julie smiled. “I’m a pretty good judge of character, I think, and I’ve met some real assholes. You’re not one of them.” She said it with supreme confidence.

“I could just be a good actor.”

She laughed. “Why are you trying so hard to make me suspicious of you?”

“Reverse psychology,” he deadpanned. “I’ll get you to trust me by telling you not to trust me, then strike when you least expect it. Muahahaha.”

“Devious. Get many crabs? They can be hard to find.”

“You tell me,” he said, lifting the lid to show her the contents of the basket.

Her eyes widened. “Wow. Looks like we finally found something you’re good at.” She winced, glancing up at him. “Um, not that you weren’t helpful before. You were, it’s just—”

“It’s fine,” Milo laughed. “What do I do with these? I’ve never made crab before.”

“Take them out back. Devin’s getting a fire going. We’ll need to boil them.”

“Roger that.”

Milo left Julie and went back behind the cottage to find Devin.