Bec had lunch with Anillo. She had a lot of casual fun talking to her about nothing in particular. Ani liked to gush about her hopes and dreams, and Bec just happily let her spill her guts. Bec was no social maven, but even she could tell that Ani was starved for companionship. A warm smile was on Bec’s face, but her mind kept wandering back to the breakfast bombshell she received from O’Malley. She looked at Ani who apparently needed to act out her conquest of a flame lion with her whole body as they sat in the sunny, fresh Avalon air.

“Ani.” Bec pulled the girl—she thought girl despite the fact that Ani was likely significantly older than her—out of her wild and graphic recounting of lion decapitation to ask her a question. “What do you want to gain from the Hass?”

“Me? I guess… I want to figure out a bit more about me! Sure, my family wants me to make loads of LC and be some kind of ‘legend’ but I just want to grow. If what I grow into is legend worthy, so be it.”

Bec nodded. “I have been recently told that I am a magnet for trouble. Are you fine partnering up with someone like that?”

Ani looked Bec in the eyes with fire burning in her soul. “You’re worried about me? Bec, I can handle trouble. I am not the kind of woman that shies away from trouble.”

She spun an empty cup on her extended finger in a way that made Bec extremely anxious. “In fact, I take pride in running headfirst into trouble.”

Ani flipped the cup up into the air. Bec wanted to look away as it plummeted. She prepared herself to watch it dashed against the wrought iron table they sat on but, the instant before it came crashing down, it righted itself, slowed, and landed in its saucer neatly without a scratch. “You say trouble? I say bring it on.”

~~~

Bec had to come up with her list of classes to take soon. Very soon. Reading the rulebook told her that she would be in the same classes for the whole year and that she would likely have to deal with four whole new teachers, and even more classmates. Bec was feeling nauseated at the prospect of meeting even more people. Before Dust, there were a very finite amount of people she’d allow in her social circle. This was getting a bit overwhelming, but she didn’t know how to avoid it. She had a feeling that if her Word truly was a driver for chaos, then she’d have to learn names better. She was relying on Al a bit too much for that.

Bec gripped the phone in her hand as she looked at the contacts that were likely to balloon rapidly. Scarlet had scared the living daylights out of Bec when she stopped by, blinking in out of nowhere. Literally. Bec practically flash bombed so hard from fright that she nearly set her new apartment’s couch on fire. The smell of singed cushion was still lingering in the air. Apparently, she wanted to give Bec her first real, Dustite phone.

Bec felt a pang of loneliness as she came to terms with the fact that both Scarlet and Black needed to return to the Border. When the time came to say goodbye, Bec gave them both a teary hug and told them to stay in touch. They both laughed and said that was what the phone was for. Scarlet gave Bec a second and even tighter hug as she promised to visit frequently. Black said he’d be watching her progress in the Hass and that he heard that a betting pool was already forming amongst the Border members about how well she’d do.

“I’ll be sending you a gift in the mail, keep an eye out,” he said.

“I told them you’d be topping the charts by the end of the year and they gave me fantastic odds against you,” he said, trying to rally me as though he felt my sadness. “I’m sure I’ll win. You know what they say… always bet on Black…’s little sister.” He gave his usual snort. That made Bec cry even harder.

Bec squeezed the sleek device and thanked Scarlet for getting her a sturdy case. After they had left, she dialed up the only other people she had left in the city. Dorian invited her to come watch him perform a showing of the Man of the Silver Tower in a ritzy theatre in Metro, but when Bec realized that it was about her step-father, she declined. Dorian was disappointed but said that he’d gladly share with her the story some other time when she was ready to hear it.

Ludo invited her to join a pen and paper RPG night. Bec was so close to turning him down when she realized that she was already falling back into her old habits of closing herself off. She spent the majority of her teens avoiding people, and she was not going to allow that to happen again. So, she went, and she played, and she even had fun. She met new people there including a professional Wordsmith, which Bec learned meant that he would try to help put Words into a physical medium of some sort. He explained during a snack break that Words were temperamental and only through trial and error could a person discover the ways a Word liked to manifest in a device.

Bec remembered a specific line that aptly summed up his profession, “A Word would like to live in a leather strap or a hunk of metal, or, sometimes, it would only work within a computer or a book. Sometimes they agree with many things, sometimes they agree with only one.” Bec remembered how he emphasized that, in his opinion, there was always at least one medium that would work, and, if a smith couldn’t find it, it was because they lacked the creativity.

The game itself was fun. It themed around playing forest animals rebelling against an encroaching human civilization, but it ended as a one-off because Bec, through a remarkably unlucky set of rolls, accidentally managed to set a munitions factory ablaze leading to a party wipe. She took very little solace in the fact that, according to Ludo, her actions set back the humans for years, and the whole party, including her armored metalmancy bear, would be remembered as heroes to the Sylvan Insurrection movement.

Bec thanked Ludo and the rest of the players and walked to O’Malley’s place. She picked up some vegetables for the stir-fry she promised him since she was already in Avalon. Bec had really enjoyed cooking with him, as he was always an impeccable sous chef, and always seemed genuinely appreciative of her cooking even when it was of questionable quality. They talked about her classes and the incoming deadline all night and settled on a set of potential courses. She slept on his recliner that night, mind abuzz with her choices.