Angela groaned, her body aching from another night spent lying on the hard floor. Why, oh why, couldn’t Verna have given them a furnished house?

Rolling painfully onto her stomach, she fumbled through the bedroom door on her hands and knees, trying to find the stairs without plummeting down them.

“Dawn is a good time,” she muttered into the blackness. “Except, the problem with dawn is that if you want to be somewhere at dawn, you have to get up before dawn. And that means no sun. And when there’s no sun, there’s no light. And when there’s no electricity, there are no light switches, and that’s how you end up on your hands and knees, hoping you don’t break your neck on the stairs you can’t see.”

There had to be a way to get her hands on some night vision. Did druids in this place just walk through the forest at night, tripping over shit and stumbling into trees? Though for all she knew, “stumbling into shit in the dark” was how you unlocked the Trait, so…yeah.

After much bonking and swearing, Angela made it all the way downstairs. It still took her another few fumbled attempts to get into her shoes, but she managed it and headed out the door.

It was crisp, cold…and raining.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

She went back inside and searched the sitting room for her mom’s oilskin travelling cloak, once again reminded of how everyone got travelling gear except her. Which was especially bullshit, given that it was all custom sized to their proportions and Angela hadn’t been able to fit into her mom’s clothing since junior year of high school. Fortunately, a travelling cloak was basically a tarp with a hood. That she could manage.

Emerging again through the front door, Angela could appreciate how well-lit the main streets were, thanks to the magical blue glow of the evenly spaced streetlamps. The guards weren’t as plentiful as during the day, but there were still some on a major road like the Cirque du Chânce, so she should be able to get to the Druid Grove without incident.

The sound of the door closing behind her caused Angela to jump in surprise. Turning around, she discovered her dad standing there with his short sword strapped to his hip, a look of admonishment in his eyes.

“Really?” he said. “After what happened to your mom, you planned to walk across the city alone, in the dark?”

“Men don’t have a monopoly on the Strength stat in this place, you know,” she said sheepishly. “I’m pretty sure Naomi could pick you up and throw you across the street if she wanted to.”

“You’re not Naomi,” he noted. “You’re also completely unarmed. If you’re walking next to a big guy with a sword, you won’t look like such an easy target.

Angela scowled and put up a token attempt to ward him off, but the truth was, she was freaked out by her mom’s story. Getting attacked by wild animals somehow felt less frightening than being set upon by her fellow man. Or woman. Or cat-elf-horse-lizard-orc-fairy-whatever.

“Okay, you can come,” she said. “And…thanks.”

He smiled and ruffled her head through the oilskin cloak. “That’s what dads are for. Now, where are we going?”

“I haven’t been there, but I know the way,” she said. “I have this Grove Sense Trait that allows me to feel where it is and how far. It’s pretty cool because it—oh crap.”

“What?”

“I kinda forgot that the house was gonna move.”

Her dad facepalmed. “Oh, Angela.”

She gave a sheepish wave, saying, “Hiii….” Her Grove Sense Trait and inherent ability to know how long it was until dawn told her there was still time to make it to the Grove, but they’d have to haul ass. “I guess we better get moving?”

He raised an eyebrow, but held out his hand out in a broad gesture. “After you.”

Fortunately, Angela had asked Barnaby yesterday for specifics on the Grove’s location, and he’d pointed her towards the far eastern side of the city, just south of the Family estates. It was a doable distance, if a bit rushed, so they wasted no time hurrying their way through the dark streets.

Angela’s mind stirred as they marched through the city, the silence only broken by the huffing of her father as he laboured under the strain of their quick pace. That huffing kept reminding her of his presence, and she inevitably broke the silence.

“Is mom going to be alright?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said immediately, the confident answer catching her off guard.

“How can you be so sure? I mean…mom killed a guy. Mom.”

Angela’s mother was the most pacifist woman she had ever encountered. There was never a conflict that she didn’t insist could be avoided through more openness from the parties involved, and she had always been adamant that they not let any conflict escalate to physical violence.

That said, there was the revelation of her mother’s Judo Skill. That thing came outta nowhere. Neither Angela nor Mark had any idea she had even done the sport, let alone getting to that level of expertise. They knew Great-Grandpa Jack was a black belt and that his daughter, Grandma Carolyn, had met their Grandpa Walter at the dojo as a teen. Angela had never known her Grandpa Walter—he died less than a year before she was born—but he had apparently been a very good judoka, winning all sorts of competitions around the country. Which was all well and good, but…her mom? Angela and her brother had always assumed their mom never got into the sport. Which clearly wasn’t the case, but why hide that fact?

Clearly, there were some layers to that onion.

“I understand that it comes as a shock for you guys,” her dad continued, “but when push comes to shove, it truly was an accident. She was attacked, she threw her assailant, that person hit their head and died. It happens, and frankly, I’m glad she did it.”

A piece of paper appeared in front of him. He glanced it and scowled before tossing it aside.

“What Skill?” she asked.

“Lying to Yourself,” he grumbled.

Angela snorted. “See? Even you don’t believe it’s that simple.”

“I don’t care what the Tome says—those things are always trying to get a rise out of us. It was self-defence, and if that mugger hadn’t hit her head the wrong way, we’d all be laughing about it and ribbing your mom over her secret ninja skills.”

“Yeah, but that mugger did hit her head the wrong way,” Angela said. “Besides, it doesn’t really matter what we think. I already know that we—you, me, and Mark—will be okay. She’s the one I’m worried about.”

“And I maintain that she will be fine,” her dad said. “Your mom is far more resilient than you realize. You kids weren’t around when her mother died, which was bad enough. And when that piece of crap father of hers—”

“Please, dad, I don’t need the Grandpa Walter spiel right now,” she said.

Her father’s feelings about Grandpa Walter were hardly a secret, and as fondly as her mom would talk about Grandma Carolyn, she rarely spoke of Grandpa Walter. As a result, almost everything Angela knew about the man came from either great-grandpa Jack or her dad, who hadn’t known Grandpa Walter for long before he died. Unfortunately, her dad’s opinion of the man was framed almost entirely within the context of his death. In contrast, Grandpa Jack had known Walter even before he met Angela’s grandma. To hear Grandpa Jack describe it, Angela’s grandfather was a troubled man who loved his wife deeply, but who also viewed that love as the only thing that made life bearable. That contrasted significantly with her dad’s assessment of Walter as a selfish bastard who had abandoned his pregnant daughter when she needed him most. Hardly the most PC take from her dad. When you factored in that much of Walter’s depression stemmed from his own severe epilepsy, well, it wasn’t hard to work out that her dad’s treatment of Mark had less to do with disappointment over her brother’s behaviour than it did with an existential fear of Mark following in his grandfather’s footsteps.

God, this family needed therapy.

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me the deal with mom and the judo thing?” she asked.

“Your mother will decide when to share that story, not me,” he answered.

It was a reasonable response, and she hadn’t really expected him to say more than that. Which is why she was surprised when he kept going.

“That said,” he continued, “if she doesn’t want to tell you, I’m going to make my opinion on the issue pretty damn clear. It was one thing for her to keep things to herself on Earth. Arenia is a whole other kettle of fish.”

After that comment, they lapsed into silence, and even Angela was smart enough not to push the issue any further.

Eventually, their course looped them around the bottom of the Cirque du Chânce and back up the east side until they reached the bridge over the Incus River. As she and her dad crossed the bridge, they looked eastward at the panorama of industry lining the southern shore, where workers could already be heard despite dawn not yet peeking above the horizon. This was the heart of the lumber industry, where raw logs were driven into the city under the eastern wall by drivers who danced nimbly across the floating rafts to keep them from jamming, shepherding them on their journey to the enormous sawmill. There, they were pulled from the river through the efforts of elephant-sized quadrupedal lizards to be processed into boards or sent to the nearby charcoal burners for processing into fuel for use in the nearby factories. West of the mill was a riverside dock where processed wood and mounds of charcoal were loaded onto barges before being sent downstream into the city, floating under the bridge on their way to the dockside warehouses for shipping to parts unknown. Between the mill, the charcoal smoke, and the tanneries that filled the area, there was a miasma of smoke and stench that bathed the Industrial District in a palpable haze.

Which made for a hell of a contrast with the river’s opposite bank.

“Yowza,” Angela said, taking in the sight of the Druid Grove. It sat on the northern shore of the Incus, a towering band of forest that reached high up into the sky and stretched the full length of the bank, from the Cirque du Chânce bridge all the way to the city walls.

Although…

“Not very girthy, is it?” Angela noted. Even at its widest point, the northern edge of the grove was no more than a hundred metres from the riverbank.

Angela’s dad nodded. Then he cocked his head, looking to the south bank and back at the Druid Grove. He smiled and started laughing.

“Am I missing something?” she asked.

“Now I get it,” he said, shaking his head as they veered off the bridge and headed towards the grove. “I’m sure the Families make a big deal out of them planting the grove for Ennàd, but they put it on the north bank of the Incus, right between their estates and the Industrial District.”

“And?” Angela asked, not understanding

Her dad pointed to the haze of smoke in the air. “Doesn’t it seem like a mighty big coincidence that the Families decided to build a Druid Grove in the exact spot where it would filter out all the stench from the Industrial District before it could float north and sully their pristine estates?”

Angela looked at the grove again with fresh eyes. “Those dicks are using the Druid Grove as an air freshener!”

Her dad chuckled. “As pretty as this thing is, it might as well be hanging from a car mirror.”

A rumble of thunder came on the heels of his words, and Angela glanced skyward apprehensively. “Uh, you may want to avoid making jokes, dad. Regardless of its origin, the Druid Grove is still a religious place dedicated to a god.”

“Angie, I hardly think a god cares about some yahoo trying to make his daughter laugh.”

Angela shook her head vigorously. “Seriously, you don’t want to risk it.” While there was a good chance that her troubles on the way to Palmyre were simply bad luck, Angela couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was Ennàd fucking with her.

He raised his hands. “Okay. No more jokes. Not unless they’re really funn—”

Angela’s dad slammed into an invisible barrier on the edge of the grove, his face smushing up like a little kid with their face pressed against a window. He staggered back, grabbing his wounded face while Angela laughed hysterically.

“Yeah, very funny,” he said, daubing his nose to see if it was bleeding. Satisfied that it wasn’t, he raised a hand and tentatively checked if the barrier was still there. His fingers smushed against some unseen force. Glancing at the sky, he looked at Angela and sighed. “Looks like you were right, kiddo.”

“Either that or you’ve been hiding one hell of a Mime Skill,” she said, still giggling.

He stopped his explorations and glared at her. “Har, har. I’ll wait here for you. It’s getting light out. I don’t want you to miss your appointment—Ennàd’s probably annoyed enough already, given that you brought a heathen like me along.”

“Crap!” Angela exclaimed, looking at the brightening sky. “I’ll be back soon!”

Then she turned and ran into the grove.