I summoned and drank some water. I figured it would be important to make sure I was well-hydrated after losing blood and fluids. After that, I removed the bag from my back and laid myself down, trying to ignore the remaining pain.

Cellestra sat down in front of my head and softly petted the hair between my eyes. “Please tell me what happened,” She said softly.

“Your spell,” I started. “You summoned a boulder, just as you had at your home that one time, but it exploded and sent fragments everywhere. I couldn’t get my wall up in time to block everything. One of the spikes almost pierced your heart,” I recapped the events with a crack in my voice as I saw everything happen in my mind again.

“I managed to take it out and used everything I had to heal you.”

“Thank you…” The brunette said, still running her hand over my head. She looked at my damaged eye and shook her head slightly as she appeared to feel my pain.

“I don’t know what to say…” I let out.

“Just speak honestly,” Cellestra whispered. “It’s what you do best.”

“I want to be honest,” I said. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You saved my life,” She said. “You can say anything you want.”

“I think you already know what I want to say, anyway.”

“I do.”

“Really?”

“That I shouldn’t use my spells anymore after that? Yes, it’s abundantly clear.” She paused for a second before continuing with a whisper. “And you’re right. I shouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“It’s fine. I’ll learn your spells… eventually, so I don’t stand to lose much.” She sighed. “Goddess, I wish I knew how to use your healing spell right now.”

I chuckled. “I’m glad that’s how you look at things, and yes, that would be handy, but I don’t know if there’s much that can be done for the time being. My healing light didn’t seem to do much anymore.”

I paused for a bit while looking at the sky. “I just feel terrible about this. I wanted to do this with you. Now… you know?”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re doing it together anymore?”

I nodded with my pedipalps so Cellestra could see it.

“It is what it is,” She said. “I’m sad that you feel that way, but it makes me happy that you care about it.” She patted my head again. “We’ll get there. We just need some time… again, but we’ll be fine. What happened with the trial, by the way?”

“I asked about it, and we’ve put it on hold, I believe. We’ll continue it some other day.”

“So we can use the time for practice?” Cellestra said optimistically. “That doesn’t sound too bad then. What are we worried about?”

I chuckled. “You’re right.”

I sighed before shaking my head. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Make my doubts vanish, like snow before the sun.”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?” She said, smiling.

“Maybe it doesn’t…”

“By the way,” The brunette continued, her voice assuming an absent-minded softness. “What you said earlier. You said you didn’t want to be left behind…”

“Please don’t go there,” I begged, a tear already forming in my eye. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“I won’t,” Cellestra said, shaking her head. “But…” She took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say I feel the same way. I wouldn’t know what to do…”

“We better make sure we never get in such a situation then,” I said, trying to think of ways to protect Cellestra. “I should probably start by making you a new shirt.”

“I have some with me. Don’t worry too much.”

“It’s not about that,” I said. “The silk absorbed a good deal of the spike, I feel like. I think things would have been much worse if it wasn’t for that.”

“Oh.”

“Perhaps we should get you some proper armor someday. If you’re going to be on my back, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, seeing as you won’t need the mobility.”

“We should.”

“Let’s see if we can sell that scroll tomorrow or so and then get you something. Maybe our items will be finished too.”

“That would be nice. I’m looking forward to that amulet, the design was amazing.”

“It was.”

I yawned as I continued to stare at the heavens above. Maybe using all that mana had made me tired in more ways than one. Not to speak of the hunger gnawing away inside me.

“By Elysa, I’m confident I could eat one of those bisons in its entirety right now.”

“I’d love to see you try,” the purple-eyed elf said, grinning slightly.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Perhaps?”

I grinned, too, before relaxing again. I felt my mana slowly fill up and my regeneration working on my damaged eye. Fortunately for me, my vision wasn’t impaired in the slightest.

“I can’t wait to get some tomorrow. It’s a damn shame you couldn’t taste some. It was delicious.”

Cellestra giggled softly. “Shame indeed.”

I placed my pedipalps around her shoulders, hugging her from behind. I then let my mind go blank for a good while.

The sound of a small bird chirping next to my elven head brought me back to reality. I opened my eyes to see it pluck a few loose hairs with its beak. When it acknowledged me, it quickly flew off, making me smile.

“Apparently I make for good nest material.”

Cellestra giggled as she watched the bird fly off as well.

“I’m sure you do.”

“Also, one of the pelts has a hole on it. I hope that’s not an issue.”

“It’s fine,” She said. “I only need one anyway.”

“So,” I continued. “Shall we go see my parents? I still want to ask my father something before Elira gets home.”

“If you think you’ll be fine, then sure.”

“Of course I’ll be fine. There’s nothing I can do about this right now.”

She nodded as she reached for a shirt before putting her backpack on, and climbing on my back. At the same time, I moved the now almost empty brown backpack behind me and covered my rear with the two wolf pelts. After recovering my halberd from the grass, we set out to see my parents again.

“You think tomatoes will sate some of that hunger of yours?” Cellestra asked as we passed the fields where beautiful, ripe tomatoes grew.

“Would it surprise you if I said I crave meat more than anything right now?”

“Not really. I’ve never heard of vegetarian spiders.”

I chuckled. “I know I sure as hell am no vegetarian. Don’t know if that would be healthy for me, either.”

We found my parents working in the same field as the day before. They were currently watering the field… manually… with watering cans. The sight made me feel sorry for them. This looked like an extremely inefficient way of doing it.

“Hey,” I said as I approached. “How’s it going here?”

They both stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me. My mother’s eyes were instantly drawn to my wound.

“By Elysa, what happened?”

“Dungeon accident,” I simply said. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, obviously worried sick. “It looks terrible.”

“It’s painful, but it will heal.”

She didn’t seem at all eased by my words.

“Really, it’s fine. It’s healing as we speak. More importantly, what’s going on here?”

“It hasn’t rained in a while,” My father said. “We’re well ahead of schedule so technically we could have waited, but we figured we might as well seed and water the field.”

I extended a hand forward and allowed water to flow from it in multiple small streams.

Keelarin smiled widely. “That is one useful ability."

“I’d happily help out, but I’m afraid I’m pretty low on mana for the time being. Where do you get your water, anyway?”

“There’s a well behind the house, and it’s fine, we just need a bit for the seeds to start growing. We’ll probably have some rain soon. ”

“If it’s not, I can try to conserve some mana to help out. Anyhow…” I decided to just ask the question straight-up. I was terrible at dancing around things. “What was that yesterday? When Elira mentioned she’d love to learn magic, you seemed to… I don’t know.”

He inhaled deeply and sighed. “It’s…” He shook his head. “She has an affinity for multiple elements, which is rare, but the problem is that they are pretty weak, and for her to learn magic is going to be expensive. We just can’t afford it.”

“I’m… sorry to hear that.”

I sighed and turned my head to Cellestra. “You know exactly what I‘m going to say, don’t you?”

She smiled back at me. “Pretty much.”

I turned back to my parents. “Seems we’ll be doing dungeons soon enough. If you’re okay with it, I’ll set some money apart to help her.” I chuckled. “She’s my little sister, after all.”