(Warning, mild gore ahead. Skip until the next parentheses if you’re squeamish!)

“Braining?” said Noel.

I nodded. “It’s a way to make hide and skin tougher and easier to work with. I woke up a little earlier today and put out the hide to dry. You can try to dry it off a little faster with fire magic while I work on the braining.”

“You still haven’t explained what braining is,” she said.

“That’s because I don’t want to think about it,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go check out the traps and I’ll explain.”

We caught a couple of small monsters in our snares. After preparing them for cooking, I separated their skulls and had Noel help me take out the brains. She was way more comfortable doing that than I was, probably because she’d grown up working with or being near carcasses. I had her help me gather the brains, put them in water, and cook them for a little while. Noel went off to dry the pelt while I mashed the brains up. We then applied the mixture to the pelt and began helping it dry off with some light fire magic. After a few more rounds of braining pelts, we were done.

(Continue reading here to skip gore.)

Noel knocked on the treated pelts. “This feels different. It’s hard but soft at the same time. Strange.”

“It’s called leather, and I wish I had better things to make it with but it will have to do for now,” I said. “It’s a decently large piece so we should be able to make a couple pairs.”

“A couple pairs of what?” she said.

“Moccasins!” I said.

“Moccas—you mean shoes?” she said. “All this for a couple pairs of shoes?”

“I mean, there was the soap too. Anyways, shoes are important. We’ll be able to go faster and further with less risk of hurting our feet. Just give it a try. Here.” I put the leather on the ground and grabbed a piece of charcoal. I stood on top of the leather and made a rough outline a little larger than my feet. Then I drew some flaps further out on a tapering curve from my feet.

After stepping off, I cut the outermost outlines with a sharp piece of flint. I used a bone needle and some sinew to stitch together the front and sides, before cutting out a little notch from the middle and using it to connect the sides in a way that left a whole for my feet to get through. I tried to sew as tightly as I could and by overlapping the leather tightly. Leather was generally waterproof, but shoddy craftsmanship might let water through. I finished it off with some holes in the back, through which I threaded a piece of leather that could act like a shoelace. I tied the laces, made sure the shoe was a good fit, and worked on my second shoe. After finishing it up, I walked in my new shoes, roughed them up a little by dancing, and looked at Noel with a smile.

She wasn’t too impressed but that was okay. There was more leather to go around. I laid it on the ground and patted it. “Step on that and I’ll draw a pair for you.”

Noel stood on the leather and I prepared an outline for her too. I worked on one shoe for her, and then another. Once she had them on, I told her to take a walk and tell me how they feel.

“They feel…” said Noel as she twisted them around. “They feel nice!”

I saved the rest of the leather since it would definitely come in handy. I was tempted to change our animal skin tunics for leather ones, but it would take too long and I didn’t think it would help with the heat. I made sure to wash my shoes properly to get out any disgusting smells, before washing my hands with our new soap several times. I prayed I would never have to work with brains again!

We continued walking down towards the sea. There wasn’t much to see along the way, until we came up to a small pond. We ran up to it, but realized the water was salty. We were about to leave when he heard the water rumble. As we stared at the pond, a huge serpent shot out and tried to bite my neck!

I cast my ‘still life’ magic and held my breath. The serpent monster’s teeth were inches from my skin! Noel grabbed the Dragon’s Tooth from my hand and sliced the monster’s neck in one swing. She then used fire magic to burn the monster’s head, just in case it could keep going after losing its body, and moved me out of the way.

I took deep, gasping breaths as I let go of my magic. The monster fell to the ground, motionless. Noel walked over to it, bent down, and picked up a small, red gem.

“It was a starred monster?” I asked between breaths.

Noel nodded. “Yeah.”

“How did we kill it so easily?” I said.

“We were lucky. You reacted quickly and it bared its neck too easily,” she said.

“See? Still life magic is amazing!” I said.

“You still have to teach me how to do it,” she said.

“I thought I already did?” I said.

“You need to teach me properly,” she said. “I didn’t understand anything you said last time.”

I shrugged but agreed after Noel said we might face more powerful enemies in the future. I was reluctant to teach Noel my soon-to-be signature magic spell, but she learned it pretty quickly. She immediately tried to cast it on me, but I revealed that our understanding of motion magic made it pretty easy to resist motion freezing magic.

By now we had a wide selection of spells to choose from while fighting monsters. Armed with the Dragon’s Tooth and other smaller flint weapons, we could probably handle a one star monster, unless it caught us by surprise.

“We need to be more careful,” I said. “No rushing up to suspicious places anymore.”

Noel nodded. “And if we have to approach it, we should prepare to fire off our magic at any moment.”

And so we continued walking. It was a long, rather dreary journey, and the moon was beginning to wane. The red star still glowed sickly pale, but it began becoming brighter as the days wore on. Soon, there was a new moon in the sky. We set up our shelter for the night, another hole in the ground because we’d seen rain clouds in the distance.

We woke up to a wet, soggy wasteland. The humidity in the air was pretty unbearable, and Noel and I had to keep pouring water over our heads to wash off the sweat. The sun burned brightly, making the situation even worse. Our leather shoes held up nicely in the mud, but it was still a nightmare walking across the ground that day.

But by noon, there was a strange scent in the air. Noel smelt it first, and it took me a while to identify it, but when I did, I looked at Noel with a massive smile. I laughed as I raced forward, shouting to Noel to follow me!

The wet mud began to change into wet sand. A distinct smell took over the air and the horizon melted into the ground. I shouted in joy as the sea revealed itself. Massive waves crashed against the shore, spraying salt water into the air. I was tempted to take off my tunic and jump in, but remembered I wasn’t wearing much else.

Noel ran up beside me, more mesmerized than overjoyed. She’d heard about the ocean before, but told me she had never seen it in person. I slapped her gently on the shoulder and asked her how she liked the beach.

“It’s really pretty,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like how I imagined it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“None of the stories mentioned a giant blob in the middle of the sea,” she said.

“A giant what?” I said as I turned around.

A huge wave pushed against the shore. Only, it wasn’t a wave, but a blob of water. It looked like a water droplet standing on its head. The blob crashed into the shore, shattering its coat of water and bursting forth onto the beach. I screamed to Noel to run but she was way ahead of me.

I didn’t want to look behind me but the temptation was too great. As I ran away, I snuck a glance behind my shoulder and cursed.

A four-legged shark lumbered after us along the sand. It flashed several rows of sharp teeth at us under the midday sun. Its skin was rough like sandpaper and it gleamed with a menacing shade of blue. Its legs looked like fins with pointy ends like stilts, which would have made it funny to look at if it wasn’t chasing after us by piercing the sands and creating a dust-storm in its wake. And the worst part of all was its forehead, where two bright red gems sat like drops of congealed blood.