There was a sort of game that mom and I played. It started when she took me to the woods on my sixth birthday, and I was scared because mom was crying but I thought there was at least a chance she was crying out of happiness - hadn't she been crying while she laughed and smiled and hugged me and told me she would never let me go again? Hadn't that been right there in those same woods? She told me to go and find a blue flower, and not come back until I had one. She said she'd wait right there.

And then when I walked away she ran back to the car and drove off.

We played the game at the mall, at the grocery store, at the park. At first I would wait for her, and she would sometimes come back crying and drive me home again but it wasn't like that first time where she was happy to see me. She just looked more sad than ever. Sometimes she wouldn't come back at all, and eventually a police officer would collect me.

I went to my first foster home because of that game, but it was a low empathy day when I was dropped off with my garbage bag of clothes and I overdid it when I tried to compensate. I was all smiles and calling them mom and dad right away and it freaked them out, setting the tone for my time there. It didn't matter, I wasn't at that house too long. The state of New Jersey sent me back home and my mom was better, for a while. Or she pretended to be better. I decided later that playing that game was a sort of emergency stress relief valve for her, which is why after forcing herself to not abandon me for months she finally snapped.

I was eight, still much too small to fight back. She pinned me against a wall while ranting and raving, waving around the antique pair of scissors that had belonged to my great grandmother. They weren't pretty or valuable but it was the only thing that we had left of my mom's family so it normally had a place of honor on the wall in my mom's room along with some old plates and photographs of me when I was little. The scissors had always worried me because my mom slammed her door sometimes and I was convinced that sooner or later they would fall from their spot and stab right down into her head.

"You're a monster," she said as she raised the open blades of the scissors to my neck, "and I should slit your throat right now. I shouldn't have to put up with this! I shouldn't have to look at you, every day! Every day that... that face! It's not fair!"

She pressed the scissors into my skin as she spoke, harder and harder. The blood running down and staining my shirt was hot, but I felt suddenly cold as I felt the yawning abyss of death looming before me. Then the phone rang.

She stepped back and stared at the phone which had only rang the once, then looked down at the scissors in her hand and at my bleeding throat and just shook her head. She picked up the phone to confirm there was nobody there, then walked across the living room to her bedroom where she carefully hung the scissors back in their spot where they could hang over my head like a warning if I dared to enter. For good measure she made eye contact with me and said, again, "Don't come in to my room. Ever." and slammed the door. In that moment, I was mainly just worried that the scissors would fall on her.

The cut got infected, or I had an allergic reaction, or something. God knows what might have been on those old rust-spotted blades. That meant that even though I cleaned it up myself and threw away the bloody shirt someone eventually noticed and despite - or possibly because of - my fantastical story about tripping while running in the kitchen and knocking down the knife block as I fell, I ended up in foster care again.

That was the only time she attacked me, and the two times she abandoned me after that she didn't try and pretend she was forgetting me. When she dropped me off at the Long Haul Hotel she let me know what she was doing and halfheartedly told me to be good for my uncle Roy. When we went on that big exciting road trip to Arizona - the happiest I'd seen my mom since I was little - she explained the whole thing to me over lunch before we reached Phoenix.

The nightmares were predictable, mostly just Connie with great-grandma's scissors. Stalking towards me and calling me a monster, killing everyone in the house one by one, getting arrested dragged away for execution by one of my old case workers. There were a few that made less sense, like the one where she was watching me from a tree outside the window and yelling that I stole her life or the part where I was trying to stop her from going into a secret door in the basement of our apartment - which was on the second floor and couldn't have possibly had a basement.

When I woke up I felt fine, despite the nightmares. So an alternate timeline version of myself had slit a man's throat. So what? He was fine, there was literally no harm done. I'd just overreacted. I came out and greeted Katrin, who was sitting on the floor in the corner reading her spellbook. She was still only really competent at three spells, but had managed to cast a dozen more if she was reading them off the page. So long as she didn't need to cast them in combat it seemed like that would be good enough for most purposes.

I'd slept in, and it was almost lunchtime so I headed out to buy something from the market. They had some places that were basically fast food, and I'd been meaning to try the one that served deep fried skewers of something Connie had described as a gigantic duck. On the way, Betrad fell into step next to me.

"Sorry again about the other day, there was a genuine security concern of some sort. I know you and your sister dislike being told what to do."

I wasn't actually sure how much he knew. Did he think we really were sisters? I shrugged and told him it was fine, then half listened as he made small talk.

Connie was supposed to sit us down and talk to us about the planned expedition in more detail, and I was looking forward to it. She'd implied it would involve planar travel, although I wasn't clear on the details. I ordered two skewers and a side of whatever the hell the side was - some sort of greasy-looking balls of dough - but when I went to pay Betrad reached past me and handed some coins across the counter. So he was for sure hitting on me.

I hadn't ever been really into dating. I tried it some, off and on, but most of the time I found myself faking it. I'd get attached somewhat on my more emotional days but when a low empathy day hit I'd have to pretend and in general people weren't understanding of that. Plus I didn't really want to pin myself down to anything yet in this new world, and certainly not to a military guy during a war. Still, I had to admit it could be useful to have one of our minders compromised. I could take him on a date, make out a little if I needed to, and then when we needed him to look the other way so we could ditch them...

There was something I was forgetting. Something was wrong.

It clicked a moment later as we were walking. Betrad said something about his parents, I said that the skewers were delicious, and he got all quiet and started to say he should head back to his normal patrol. That was enough to make me do a little self-audit, and I realized what was off. I was suddenly not bothered about the throat-slitting. I was considering dating Bert with no hint of worry about manipulating his feelings. And what he had said, before I commented on the flavor of the duck skewers, was that his parents had died in a fire when he was young.

Typically I'm a little more aware of my low empathy days and keep a closer eye on myself. I stopped Bert and apologized, I told him that I get awkward and say dumb things when I think about sad stuff. It wasn't the truth, but it wasn't totally false either. He didn't look convinced, but it was at least a start and I decided I could probably apologize better once I meant it more. I'd been having fairly balanced days, so it seemed likely I'd be more empathetic soon.

I kept to myself the whole afternoon so that I wouldn't fuck up and piss anyone off. I spent most of the time looking at the loot I'd taken from the soldiers up in the mountains and wondering who I would have to talk to to see if any of it was magic. Eventually it was evening, and Connie called the three of us in to talk about the expedition over dinner - a stew of some sort that nearly lit my mouth on fire.

"Okay cool, let's do this. So. I've got some very spotty notes from an expedition that located a lost Duminere in my timeline. That expedition won't exist for another year, so we have a head start on them and can reap the rewards ourselves. Errod, I see that look on your face and I know you're all about being honorable and stuff but my friend, my good buddy, the people that did this in the previous version of things were assholes anyway. Even if they weren't we owe them nothing, but I am telling you they were awful people. That's not bullshit. Harranin, the lead dude? Not a joke, he used his cut of the profits to buy slaves. It's fine. Fuck those guys.

"So the first part, we need a key. It's in the necropolis, but it's low enough down that it doesn't count as grave robbing. Uh, Callie, this is a thing I'll need to explain to you. Short version is that there's an eternally sinking city that they keep building new layers onto as the old ones go down, and it's filled to bursting with catacombs and stuff. Just oodles of dead people. But the cultural norms around grave robbing only apply for a certain amount of time, a hundred years plus the lifetime of their kids or other next of kin. And this thing, it's way far down. Hundreds and hundreds of years old, so we're not going to be dealing with ethical concerns, just undead.

"No. No, that wasn't a joke. Zombies, skeletons, whatever. They're not that bad, from what I hear. It will be fine. I have fairly good directions to the key, then we need to get to the actual location of the Duminere. It's buried pretty deep underground in an abandoned palace from some old kingdom, and the best way to get there is through Nusos, it's a plane with a sort of ever-shifting maze. Again, I have pretty good notes on how to get to where we're going from there so it's just a matter of kinda wandering around until we get to the right spot.

"Once there, we'll have to break into the palace vault. Most of the magical security should be dried up by now since the place is so old, magic items don't last forever. We navigate the halls, bust through, and we're there. It should be pretty easy, from the notes I got it sounds like most of the problems they ran into were because they didn't really have any clue what they were doing. We're better informed so it should be a walk in the park."

Katrin and Errod both looked nervous, and I didn't blame them. Connie sounded a little manic, and her assurances that it would be easy felt like she was jinxing it. Still, this is what we wanted. She said she had the funds needed to pay for everything, including some miscellaneous support crew and three more qualified... well, adventurers.

"I've stuck to people with two gifts, the ones with three are too rare and we couldn't afford them anyway. Also, I had to look for people that I feel pretty sure we can trust which narrowed it down some. We're going to vote on this, just the four of us. I break ties, because I'm paying. Here's the list, I don't have a lot of information but like I said they all meet the minimum requirements for trustworthiness:

"Aethed Deheath is a healer, most healers with two gifts do a mix of growth, life, or enhancement. But Aethed went with growth and fabrication which lets her not only heal people quickly but it means it doesn't tire you out like rapid healing can otherwise. She's limited to normal injuries though, no good for stuff like poison.

"Withe Wamoor has growth too, but she isn't a healer. She can probably do it a little, it's just that her main focus is growing plants. I know, it doesn't sound super useful. But I hear she's great, and she has affinity for wood which lets her use growth on dead wood even though it normally wouldn't be possible.

"Ealdthryth Tatun has gravity and transmutation, no crazy combos I know of but she's just really cool. Gravity could be good for getting around in tough areas, and transmutation could let us break through walls.

"Aestrid Aldfeld, she's a tank. Between the force shields and density control she's just super hard to hurt, and she knows it so she pretty much wades into battle and taunts people. For the undead part, she can probably draw them all away without getting injured so we can attack them from a distance.

"Wutha Deford has dimensional magic, which she mostly uses to help her summon spirits from different planes. But anyone with dimensional magic can probably help us get through the barrier, and the spirits can be cool too. Scouting, distracting any monsters, things like that.

"Cyne Steley is another one with dimensional magic, and he uses growth for healing. He specifically uses dimensional magic to get into other planes, so I'm certain he can help us get into Nusos quickly and it may mean we can do it right from the necropolis. He absolutely won't fight though, he's completely a pacifist.

"Eorund Ethleah is next. He has gravity and light, neither is anything crazy but both are good to have. He's got a reputation for blinding people and then slamming them into the ceiling which is cool. If we don't end up having to fight any monsters then, you know, it's still a reliable source of light and some gravity assists if we have to climb up something.

"Ered Haleah is a caster, so that's always good for versatility. He does focus on necromancy, which means he tends to have some undead servants. Creepy, but it's multiple people for the price of one. Not sure if he'll be able to use those powers to shut down or take over the undead at the necropolis, but if nothing else he'll be able to stock up on bodies.

"Sige Laleah is the third and final one I was able to find with dimensional magic. On top of that he's a fighter, from what I hear he's a wrestler or something which I guess is great if you want to take people alive? I was leaning towards the utility people rather than fighters but I dunno, he's got some glowing recommendations so there's probably something really cool about him I just don't know.

"Vlede is kinda a one trick pony but I had to include her because I think her one trick is super badass. She's got heat and transmutation, and she is really really good at transmuting things into their molten form. So she can basically turn stone to lava and stuff. Useful in combat, also useful for breaking into places.

"Wilhye Baford is the last one, he's got heat as well but he actually summons fire spirits. I'm not sure if that's a thing we need, but it's a thing I want to see. Fire spirits sound badass.

"So that's it. Talk it over, think about it, argue, whatever. I'm going to keep quiet since I get to be the tie breaker anyway. But we need to decide now, because I want to get these people ready. Hammersmith's big test to get into Brynnklar without me is in three days, and I want to leave as soon as possible after that - these are all people within a few days travel, but even with messengers it will take a week for them to get here. Choose wisely."

None of us wanted the same people at first, which meant arguing and speculating about what might come up. With so little information it was mostly guesswork, but eventually we were able to narrow it down to the three we wanted the most - Connie did have to use her tie breaking authority, but that wasn't surprising. Afterwards the two of us climbed onto the roof to look up at the moon. It was so strange, seeing oceans and forests up there.

"Low empathy day, right?"

"You can tell?"

"Of course I can tell. It's good, I've been waiting for one to come around so I could talk to you about something and know I'm getting your... unencumbered opinion."

I just waited, watching the moon. She took her time deciding to continue, and when she did her voice was a little shaky. "Sometimes I worry about whether or not this is really happening, and... I wanted to warn you that something made me get worse. I don't know if it'll happen to you. We're different, and I think the stress has been worse for me than it will be for you. That's why I want to get you out of here on an adventure. It's been an extra four years for me, you know? Four years of being penned up training, and being counted on to help save the world, and seeing people die. And I stopped feeling anything at some point, and my memories... have you been having strange dreams?"

I shrugged as best I could while laying on my back. "Not that strange. Maybe a little."

"Well I have. Dreams about other lives I never lived. Lots of them involve just living out in the woods, I think it's like... I don't know, like what could have happened if mom never found us after we got lost when we were five."

"Or if she never came back for us after ditching us when we were six?"

"Yeah, maybe. And then I have these dreams about Bill, remember him? We barely knew him, he was just another case worker, but I have these dreams like... what if he had been my foster dad instead? And they're both impossible, you can't really just grow up in the woods and there's no way Bill would have taken a random one of his kids home with him. They're crazy. But... they feel real, and it makes me worry that this isn't real either."

I snuggled in close to her and kept looking up at that moon overhead. "It's all real. The good shit and the bad. Don't worry about the dreams, they're just garbage. Dreams don't mean anything."

She was quiet, and after a moment I could tell she had fallen asleep. I wondered, briefly, what she might be dreaming about - but decided that I probably was better off not knowing.