I couldn't say who noticed first.

I stood up from my place around the fire, and my legs buckled. Like a lightning bolt had run up from my heel to my hip.

Jay made the first cut into a stick of celery and it came out elliptical, as his knife waved and undulated like glass in front of a soprano.

Every one of Dave's guitar strings snapped at once, still playing a perfect B minor.

Sam threw up on Tilly, mid sentence. As she shrieked, he smiled through the resurrected porridge.

Andre felt all of his horrific growing pains, come back and slap him in the head at once. Dissappearing as quickly as it came.

Tom's ears bled as every one of his seismic instruments squealed and popped out of life.

Abby was half way through hacking into a tree, when the tree, the axe and in turn her hands began to vibrate, so violently, she left her callouses behind on the handle.

Connor was, as always, gambling on his phone. He won the jackpot, a life changing amount, enough to clear all his debt; then his phone fizzled out. Try as he might, he couldn't get it back.

Robin, simply sat and smiled, as his staff vibrated, Metta whined and he felt every one of his bones wiggle in and out of place, realligning.

It was always dramatic, that first step. We had been just a valley, a very biodiverse one, but a valley all the same, for the last one and a half days. But with that first step, we were a Grove.

She took her last step over the threshold, and all the shaking stopped. Nothing repaired, but it did stop.

A small woman, with dark hair peppered with dreadlocks that had little wooden fetishes lined up and down each, bounced down the track. She had her boots tied around her neck, and carried little else. Though god knows what lay in that patchwork jacket of hers.

'You could have texted ahead,' I called.

'Dropped my phone at a rave, sorry!' Maja called back.

Of course she did, that was so, so very Maja. For all she was the last of the Dryads, or so we thought, we'd never met another, and although she should embody groundedness and stoicism, she sure was airy.

'Fucking area skills, fuck! I had that, I had it!' Connor screamed from inside his tent.

Maja's bouncing had moved her right up to me, grinning up at me, level with my collarbones.

'He's just happy to see you,' I stroked her hair, 'I am too.'

She pushed me away, it was meant to be light but came like a bough across the chest. 'Gross, Jack,' she skipped away to do her hellos, 'you're so gay!' she called, without turning.

I smiled. Oh to be bullied by a Dryad.

She didn't have leaves and thorns in odd places. No more than you'd expect from a lifetime of sleeping in bushes. But I'd seen her cut herself in the kitchen once, and there was no blood, just clear sap and the white wood of a new hazel below. She'd never said what level Druid she was, but it can't have been high, since she was a little younger than me and had never been to war. Whatever it was, you could safely add 20 for the complementary race. Just like a Minotaur Knight, or Dwarf Enchanter, although they were nearly as rare as Dryads, these inborn racial boons reigned supreme.

The race most complementary to Illusionists was, annoyingly, humans. Every single one had some inborn talent, that was how magic and trade classes had gone unnoticed for so long. All humans were roughly a level 5 Illusionist, although they were able to only reflexively cast spells on themselves. The light would bend around Andre until he became just very tall and very muscular, rather than clearly something supernatural. A Dwarf would become a lowercase d dwarf, although not all dwarfs were Dwarves. Minotaurs, well they just stayed out of sight, I think.

Maja had hugged and helloed herself into the flow of the camp. She came back to me, making myself a sandwich in the kitchen. She hugged me from behind.

'I am happy to see you, and you're not gay,' she said muffled into my back.

'Thank you, I was worried.' I kept grating cheese. 'Do you want one?'

'What's in it?'

'Predominantly cheese. Maybe bread,' I said, cutting the sandwich in half.

'My favourite,' she said, reaching around me and taking both halves. 'Why you didn't become a chef we shall never know,' she spat little flecks of cheese onto my neck as she spoke.

'Tastes are hard. Never got the skills for it. Now get off I have adult things to do.' I wriggled free, knowing I could only get away because she wanted me to.

'Liar! You're not an adult!' she called at my back.