It took 12 days to arrive at Wiffleblatt. Our hunting party could have made the trip in eight traveling on horses. I'm not complaining because the coach that the goblins provided for Cat made the trip much easier for him. As we gained altitude entering the western mountains---I forgot the goblin name for them---the nights grew colder and Cat took to sleeping on the floor of the coach with me curled up next to him for warmth.

I know he stoically endured our travel on foot before reaching Cedar Stands, cooking over a fire, and sleeping in a bedroll on the ground, but I knew it was not easy for him. I suspect he endured because he needed to prove to himself that he could endure. Silly foolish stubborn boy. I wish he would accept that it is alright to rely on others. It doesn't help at all that elves tend toward self-reliance, and he wants that for himself despite his disabilities. Under his pleasant and friendly exterior is a relentless ambition to live his life without being dependent on others, which for him is impossible. Maybe his growing mastery of magic may make it possible eventually, but still, I find his stubbornness frustrating.

My other worry has been Motley Owl, who is struggling with his longstanding dislike of Blue Fox. Before he exploded in size and strength, he was one of Blue Fox's victims in the older boy's room. He can't let himself trust the grieving Blue Fox, who feels unworthy and guilty that he survived when the rest of his adventuring party died. Owl won't acknowledge that Blue Fox is no longer the bully he used to be.

My third worry is Blue Fox, who can't fathom Cat Rider at all. Cat confuses him. He doesn't understand why Cat pushes himself to do tasks made difficult by his disabilities. A few days ago, Cat was doing his self-appointed chore of feeding and grooming our horses. The feed bags are hard for him to lift and disturb his balance. He struggles with the weight of the saddles. He spends at least an hour cleaning tack after dinner every night. Blue Fox asked if he could help with the saddles and Cat turned him down.

"I thank you for the offer, Blue Fox, but I must decline," Cat explained with his usual cheerful smile. "This is what I can do, so I will do it. I can't help with setting up our tents, or getting water, or carrying enough dinner for the five of us back from the cook tent. So I will take care of this so the others can do the things I can't do."

"Can I at least carry the saddles for you?" Blue Fox asked, trying to be friendly and helpful. "I can tell you have trouble with them."

"No, I can manage the saddles by myself," my boy said as he took small controlled steps while carrying a saddle.

"If this is about how badly I treated you when we were kids," Blue Fox grimaced, "I'm not the person anymore, Cat Rider. I'm not trying to set you up to fall or fail or anything like that. I want to help our hunting group the best I can, and right now, it looks like you're the one who can use a hand the most."

"I know all that, Blue Fox. It's just that I need to do this, all of this," Cat tried not to let his frustration show as he persisted in his painfully slow maintenance of the saddles.

I silently added up to Blue Fox and brushed up against his leg. * You will find he's more stubborn than the rest of the group put together. If you really want to help him, then let him continue to help himself. *

"Oh, hello, Lady Fuzzy," Blue Fox was still startled every time I talked to him. "I confess I don't get him at all. Out of everyone here, he looks to be the one who could use some help."

* After he survived the fire that killed his sister, the humans did all they could to make him helpless and dependent on others. At the same time, they isolated him from friends and family and forced him to live with caretakers who had nothing but contempt for him. As a consequence, he needs to push himself to his limits to be helpful rather than helpless and to work harder even though others could do the work for him. Owl and Wren will stop him if he pushes himself too hard. *

"It's painful to watch him struggle," Fox commented.

* Yes, it is. It's also painful to watch you too under a storm cloud all the time because you can't forgive yourself for being alive. *

"What?"

* You heard me, Mister I-didn't-deserve-to-survive. * I circled around to his backside and headbutted him in the butt. * Cloud Eye could use your help holding that center post in that tent he's trying to put up. *

Having moved Blue Fox to more productive pursuits besides moping, I then sauntered off toward the round ear encampment to continue my investigation of Prince Willam's character. Maneuvering to get a back and chin scratch was the furthest thing from my mind.

Well, that was several days ago, before we arrived in Wiffleblatt. Even though the town was half empty, I found it interesting. It had a cheese factory, several cheese caves for aging those cheeses that the two-footed races inexplicably like with blue and green mold inside them, and a factory for drying whey to make it into a powder which the goblins use as a baking ingredient and to make army and survival rations.

The goblins idled the storage facility where their dairy farmers delivered milk, along with the cheese factory and the whey powder factory. The authorities had evacuated most of the families but kept a minimum crew to tend the cheese caves along with the expanded garrison.

The colonel in charge of the garrison was an active fellow. When he didn't have office or paperwork demands, he would dress down so he looked like a regular soldier in leather scale armor, sneak around town and announce instant and sudden wyvern attack drills. He would award exceptionally good drill response with certificates for leave days, getting out of dishwashing duty, which I am told hobgoblins especially hate, and free drink tokens at the three pubs still open. I was getting used to hobgoblins with large shields and long spears running to cover me up. Then I would need to tolerate the imposition when the hobgoblin soldiers insisted on scratching and petting me afterward.

I don't know what was worse: the attentions of the hobgoblins soldiers or Cat Rider afterward accusing me, of all people, of being a slut for affection and having no shame. I was just being kind to the soldiers and humoring them.

Regardless, I could sympathize with the colonel's need for drills since all five villages to the west were evacuated. Sentries posted in enclosed watch stations on the roofs of the two factories, the tallest buildings in town besides the clock tower, spotted wyverns flying to the west daily.

I think I shocked everyone besides Cat, Owl, and Wren when I jumped onto the roof of the whey factory and then on top of the watch station to watch for myself. I wanted to see if they had patterns of behavior not already described in the Compendium.