Donna groaned as she stood up from her chair having finished her story.

“The little one is kicking something fierce meaning it’s only a matter of time before I have an accident and embarrass myself. If you pop up and speak to somebody they should be able to supply you with a spare hammock for you to bed down for the night. Tomorrow you will have a day of prep but then it’s time to get on and begin the ritual. After all you have a time limit and Pauline and Nate aren’t getting any younger. Tomorrow you’ll hopefully be introduced to Pauline properly. You’ll be spending weeks together and she is still very much a child so be nice.”

Beth made her departure politely and headed out the tree back into the heat. It wasn’t exactly late but she was exhausted from living in a general lack of safety. She went out and politely enquired after both somewhere to clean herself and to get herself a hammock for sleep. Having gotten herself as clean as she could given the heat, and enjoying the fact the water was very much cold Beth settled down for the night to digest the story she’d been told as well as the last several days she’d spent in the forest with Nate. She wasn’t the most optimist about handling Nate and Pauline together but she was encouraged by the fact children could complete the journey she was being sent on. It made her optimistic for her ability to accomplish her task. She pulled up the Trial screen.

Trial: Walking (common) 25

Reach the peak of the three sisters of Hepterel within the time limit.

Time Limit: 7 Weeks 2 Days

She couldn’t believe that only 5 days had already passed. She wondered how people back home were doing. She hadn’t seen Pete in what felt like forever. She wasn’t worried about him or her mother particularly. Her mum would have been properly supported by the church into picking the right skill and Pete could more than look after himself. She made a mental note that she needed to think about a response of Harri, she clearly was still unable to send a response but figured writing one anyway might be a nice thing for her to read in the future and further would help Beth process recent events. Beth was still thinking about how the fashion world was treating Harri as she fell asleep.

Thousands of miles away Harri sat on a call with her family laughing at the ridiculous quiz Guliveneir had set up for them. Back on earth Suzanne was practising dancing with a friend from church and laughing as despite her skill she still ended up standing on her friends toes. Not far away from Suzanne, Pete sat alone in his room, drinking another ale and roughly carving another wooden flute. He made a slight nick in its side and threw it against the wall in disgust where it snapped in half and landed in a pile of similarly broken wooden carvings.

Waking the next morning Beth felt better rested that she had since coming to Hepterel. As she carefully got out of the hammock, determined not to fall out and make a further fool of herself she noticed the village was up and was distinctly more busy than it had been the night before. Not having any plans until roughly midday when she was scheduled to meet the others she was at a slight loss as to what to do with herself. If she was honest she didn’t know where to begin when it came to chatting to the village and wanted to spend some time to herself before being stuck with two tenish year olds for a significant amount of time.

Her stomach rumbled, it had been a while since she had eaten but she was feeling too timid to approach anybody to ask about food. She needed a Pete, somebody extremely willing to chat to anybody and everybody. He would already be sharing breakfast with Pauline’s family, sharing jokes and bonding.

But he wasn’t there and Beth didn’t have his confidence. Instead she pulled some slightly crushed berries from her bag and nibbled on them before climbing to the top of the village. Back through the treeline to a place where she could at least look around and feel alone, for a little bit.

Having found a good tree she pulled out her half-staff. She figured training while also watching her footwork with the consequences of the long fall could only do her good. She was up there for maybe an hour when she heard rustling and saw Nate climbing up to join her. She turned away and began stepping through another pattern hoping that Nate would pick up on the hint and leave her alone. It seemed to work too, as she heard nothing further from his general direction that was until she was towards the end of a particular trio and heard a voice chimed in.

“You’ve landed slightly unbalanced there. Do it again but try to land your front foot a little bit further forward.”

Beth gritted her teeth slightly at the unsolicited comment but none the less did as he suggested. She glanced over her shoulder at him to see if he would say something further but he was silent. He was staring at her rather fixatedly though. She continued going and every once in a while he would chime in. Not even every time she made a mistake but on occasion. He eventually made more than a slight comment however.

“Watch me for a bit Beth.”

She turned to watch and he went through a series of steps with an imaginary halfstaff of his own. He did the steps fast. Too fast for her to properly watch but the flow felt familiar. He traced his feet along the ground when stepping something, she had seen the lieutenant in her previous Trial do and had constantly commented on her needing to do. She could do it some of the time, when she thought. But it hadn’t become subconscious in the way that seemed to be desired.

“Can you do it slower for me Nate?”

He nodded and did it again, then a third and fourth time. That seemed to be all he could manage before making a comment.

“Come on you’ve seen it several times now, surely you’ve got it down!”

“I’m not as much of a natural at this as you Nate, some people require more time than others.”

To his credit he nodded at this and despite clearly getting more and more worked up repeated it for her almost ten times before he stopped and insisted she give it a go. Her attempt was barely passable. In that she didn’t fall through the leaves to the ground below. She had the actions memorised and could even replicate some of them in a vacuum but linking them the way Nate did seemed like a pipe dream to her. After attempting it a couple more times she was done for the day. She went to join Nate where he sat and was nibbling on compacted fried vegetable package. He tore it in half, casing small pieces to fall onto the leaves beside him and passed it to Beth. She brushed the crumbs aside and sat giving him a nod of thanks for the food.

“I figured you might be hungry and hiding. You don’t love people do you?”

“It’s,” she paused thinking “It’s complicated. I have a messy relationship with groups, I was hurt by them a lot when I was younger and that kind of baggage doesn’t vanish. I would have thought you were more of a solo person from the fact you were out on your own when you found me.”

Nate shook his head “No, I love my home, for the most part its full of great people. I just don’t want to rely on them. I want to make sure our home is the safest place for our people and for that to happen we’ve all got to be the strongest we can. Once I’m strong enough I can teach them to get stronger.”

Beth digested that, it made sense to some degree yet was clearly fundamentally flawed. She still hadn’t worked out Nate. On one hand he was clearly a child but on the other he had probably had to fend for himself in the elements long enough to have a sense of maturity and awareness that most children lack. It left him yoyoing from insight to clear lack of knowledge. The fact Beth didn’t recognise this pattern in her own lifestyle illustrated just how far she too had to grow. The two sat up there and Beth listened to some of Nate’s stories of life in and out of his village. In a way they had that in common, both growing up in small communities, though Nate’s village life was generally significantly happier than Beth’s. He also told her stories from his time in the forest that she could only hope he was exaggerating it sounded like he had come closer to death more times than she hoped she ever would. Eventually time was up and they headed towards the clearly that formed the centre of the village for their leaving feast.