“Say like you're being pursued by zombies,” Chase said to Greta.

“Like you're being pursued by zombies,” Greta muttered back, piling the sticks up on the bundle.

“No! Don't say it. I mean, what if you were being pursued by zombies? Imagine that.”

“I'd rather imagine Burt.”

“You've got the rest of your life to imagine Burt!” Chase threw her hands up in the air, stretching herself to her full three-foot-two height, and making her long, black curls bounce against the laced-up back of her blouse. “Sweet butterballs, if Loosy dumps him, you might not have to imagine. You might have a chance with him.”

“Loosy's going to dump Burt?” Greta brightened up.

“No! Well maybe. I don't know. She's been acting clingy lately and he doesn't like that. She's moving too fast. They're arguing.” Chase sighed. “But that's not the topic at hand.”

“Burt's the topic at hand. Or maybe gathering kindling? Are you actually going to help me, here?” Greta put her hands on her hips, and straightened up to her full height, of three-foot-six. She had four inches and twenty pounds on Chase, and a firm glower on her broad face as she glared down at her sister.

“You're doing fine,” Chase said, flapping her hands. “But look, just think of being pursued by zombies. What would you do?”

“Run.” Greta looked at her like she was stupid.

“Ah! But what if you can't run?”

“Why can't I run? I can run fine.” Greta sighed, and looked over the clearing, before going after more sticks.

“Say like you've turned an ankle or something. Or there's a cliff. Anyway, just imagine you can't run anymore.”

“Well then I'm not being pursued anymore, am I? They've caught me.”

“That's semantics!”

“Say what ticks?”

“It's just wordplay,” Chase insisted, following Greta around, waving her hands in agitation as the larger girl gathered up fallen branches, stripped the leaves off, and chucked them toward the pile.

“Wordplay. Like how I should be chased by zombies instead?”

The black-haired girl glared daggers in Greta's back. Greta failed to fall over dead. “You know I don't like people using that word.”

“Just because it's your name...”

“It's...” Chase scowled, her pointed ears furling back under her hair. “It's my word. My birthright. They gave it to me, so I'm making it mine.”

“I don't think you can. You have to share words. Otherwise they're not words, they're just sounds. That's how you get language, is by sharing words, nobody would be able to talk if everyone kept them to themselves—” Greta's eyes grew wide, and she dropped the branch she was de-leafing. “And oh you clever little twerp, you just got me.”

“Boom. Smart bomb,” Chase grinned. “Plus one?”

“Intelligence.” Greta sighed, falling back onto her rump, and grabbing her head with both hands. “You literally talked me smarter. Again.”

Chase grinned wider, mouth nearly bisecting her head. A human would have been shocked at its width, but there weren't many humans around here. Just three back in the village, and all the rest were halvens like Chase and Greta. “Pay up,” Chase said, wiggling her fingers. “A bet's a bet.”

“Okay, no, I did that to myself. Not because of your stupid zombies talk.”

“I still managed to talk you smarter. And I had a situation all ready to go! I was going to tell you about items that were around and give you hints and let you figure out how to save yourself from the zombies!”

Greta sighed. “All right. All right, fine. You win the bet. They're in my room. I'll get them when we get home. After we finish picking up kindling.”

“Pfft, it's not like we need a lot of it,” Chase said, shrugging. She hiked up her skirt and flopped down next to Greta, bouncing her bare, hairy feet up and down. “The only reason we're out here doing that is that the grownups want to get us out of town before the festival. So long as we come back with something they'll be happy.”

“We do have something. No thanks to you. I should give you less because of that, you didn't do a lick of work,” Greta glared at her.

Chase grinned. “I was educating you. I even unlocked the Teacher job.”

“What, right now? Right here?” Greta's eyes went wide, and she stared uncertainly, one blonde braid tugging free of her kerchief and dangling, as her ears twitched with worry. “You didn't... you didn't take it, did you?”

“No, no. No no no.” Chase waved her hands and her smile grew strained. “I still don't have anything except for Cook. We're forbidden, I know it, they drummed it into our heads often enough. And no, I didn't unlock the teacher job with you first. That actually happened when I had a sit-down with Loosy and told her how bedding actually works between men and women. Which I haven't done either!” Chase's smile vanished, and she pouted at her sister, before the bigger girl could speak up. “I just set her straight, that's all. She had some weird ideas.”

“How?” Greta burst out. “She and Burt have been seeing each other for years! You mean to tell me they haven't once— she hasn't—” Greta turned red. “I saw them holding hands,” she whispered, in a voice that suggested that this was a momentous occurrence, worthy of being recorded in historical ledgers and taught to children for centuries to come.

Chase rolled her eyes. This was some juicy gossip that she'd be giving up here, but there was no way around it. She knew her sister. If she didn't talk, then Greta would go blundering out and around, and spill it, and cut off the revenue streams that Chase had planned for this information already. Greta had all the subtlety of a falling log. Word would spread, and it wouldn't profit Chase. That was simply unacceptable.

Unfortunately the only way around it was to give up something of higher value, and hope for the best.

“Okay, I'll tell you why, but this stays a secret, understand?”

“Of course!” Greta leaned forward, the tips of her ears escaping her bonnet, standing straight out to the side like pink knives.

Chase knew Greta. It'd stay a secret until it didn't. Which would be a few days, once Greta got bored and needed something new to talk about with her friends.

But a few days should be sufficient to move the information about Loosy's bedroom woes, (or lack thereof,) and reap the benefits thereof. “Loosy wants to go fast. Burt wants to take it slow,” Chase said.

Greta's eyes went wide. “What? Why? If she wants to go under a haystack, then why is he... I thought all boys...”

“Not Burt.”

“Why?” Greta frowned, then her wide eyes narrowed as she answered her own question. “She must be trying to trap him. The hussy! She wants her oven baking, so he has to court her proper before the bun's done.”

I chose a heck of a time to raise her intelligence, Chase thought to herself, ruefully. But she kept her face blank, and shrugged. “Who knows? That's one reason.” Her mind raced, looking for ways to profit from the situation. “I could look into this. Snoop around. Try to find the answer. But I won't be able to unless you keep this quiet.”

“I said I would,” Greta nodded. “Please, find out. You're good like that.”

Chase grinned. “It's what I do.”

Though in this case she wouldn't be telling Greta the real reason. It would cause way too much harm, and the implications would cause problems that would reach into the grown-up world. She wasn't ready to take on the grown-up world, not yet. It would do her harm that would set her back years, derail all of her plans and careful progress, and worst of all, hurt a friend.

There were lines she would not cross. That was a big one.

“Come on,” Greta said finally, tucking her braid back into her bonnet, and heading back to the pile of sticks. She reached underneath to the ropes she'd set on the ground before starting her stack, and grasped them, pulling the wood into a bundle that went on her back. She did it effortlessly, muscles playing in the sleeves of her blouse.

Chase may have gotten the brains in the family, but Greta had the brawn. Which suited Chase fine. It let Greta handle the boring stuff, leaving Chase free to muse on the more important business. One part of which tugged at her mind, as she looked around the clearing, the freshly-fallen branches, and the bigger trees fallen down the hill. “Why do you suppose that wind came up all of a sudden, last night?”

Greta shrugged. “Because there was a storm?”

“There's no rain, no wet. And that wasn't thunder.”

“So it was a windstorm. And that was the wind howling.”

“I don't know. That was some weird wind, if it was. It almost sounded like a voice.”

“It has to be wind. A voice wouldn't knock down branches and trees and blow leaves away.”

“Unless it was a really, really loud voice.” She turned, and looked up at the peak. At the great hole in the side of it, the cave that glared over the valley like a great dark eye, a stream weeping down from it like a teardrop tracing a cheek. “Unless it was from there.”

Greta hit her, a light cuff with the back of her hand, rapping her temple.

“Hey!” Chase said, resisting the urge to glance up and look for red numbers. “That hurt!”

“You already brought plenty of risk on us by talking about zombies, earlier. Don't tempt fate and talk about that.”

“Fate loves us,” Chase groused, rubbing her wounded head. “It says so right in our status.”

“Yeah, but being deliberately stupid is another thing entirely. Next you'll be finding a sword meant for a prophesey'd hero, and revealing an old birthmark, and then FOOMP, the village will get burnt down and it'll all be your fault Chase Berrymore.”

Chase laughed, but part of her, oddly, yearned for it. Maybe not that precisely, but something. She was too big for this place, ironic as that was. She did want to find that lost magical sword, she did want her parents to reveal that she was an adopted heir to a royal line, she did want all that excitement and more. Because sweet gods above, she'd had the boredom of the alternative, and it was all she could do to stay sane.

Chase didn't find a sword on the way back home. But she did find something far more important, even if she didn't realize it at the time.

They were crossing the river, moving carefully between the smooth white stones that had been placed centuries ago, when a flash of color caught her eye.

And along with the color, came glowing words drifting through the air, that Chase alone saw.

PER+1

“Greta!” Chase said, freezing in place.

Greta stumbled, and shrieked as the bundle of sticks shifted, dropping wood into the water. “Chase! What the heck?” She wobbled on a stone, barely keeping her balance.

“I saw something,” Chase whispered. “I got perception.”

Greta froze, and the rest of the sticks tumbled into the river.

Greta and Chase were halven, and halven were normally as perceptive as the average stump. Bad eyesight, average hearing, really every sense was sub-par save for taste. Most halven shrugged and got on with surviving, living the pastoral life in safe places, and focusing on their strengths, rather than trying to rely on a natural weakness.

But not Chase. Chase had trained and trained, finding ways to shore up her natural weaknesses, refusing to accept the limitations imposed on her by such a petty thing as birth and bloodline.

She'd honed her senses well, to the point that she'd hit diminishing returns. The unstated laws that governed the world decreed that the higher a person's perception, the more time and practice it took to raise the attribute.

And all too soon, Chase had come to the point that many other people had before her, where she couldn't raise her perception attribute any further without taking risks. Because the higher the attribute, the more the risk required to raise it.

Chase had gotten her perception to a respectable forty-one, a few months back. That had taken half a year of practice and training and spying on her friends and neighbors to manage.

And now, in the space of a heartbeat, whatever that flash of color she'd seen had raised her perception to forty-two. Whatever it was, it was risky.

The young halven woman trembled, ears extended to full out from her hair, staring. Next to her, Greta did the same thing, clutching the kindling ropes to her, as the sticks bobbed and drifted downstream.

“You have your hurlers?” Chase whispered to Greta.

“Yes.” The stout blonde's hands slid down to her blouse pockets, and the carved stones inside.

Chase took a breath, then took another. “Cover me,” she whispered, before she could lose her nerve.

“What?” Greta shrieked, then went back to a whisper. “What? Are you insane? We should—”

But Chase was already off, moving to the bank and downstream, pacing the drifting sticks. The river picked up here, broad above where the mountain streams joined into a fairly wide but shallow torrent, it deepened into rocky narrows, with rushing water and swirling currents.

And a dozen meters down the riverbank, she saw the flash of red again. Something bobbed in the water, caught on a rock. Red and black and that shape had to be an ear, and it was an animal trapped there, moving, trying to escape a watery fate.

“Oh!” Chase said. Then she raised her voice. “Oh! It's trapped!”

“What's trapped?” Greta shouted back.

“It's an animal!”

A yellow eye seemed to turn her way, or maybe that was the motion of the water, but there was no time because she realized that the sticks were about to knock into the creature.

There were no neat lines of smooth rocks here. They were all jagged, and far between. The water just beyond them ran fast, and Chase was no swimmer.

But she didn't want the poor creature to die. And if it died because the sticks knocked it loose, then it would be her fault. Chase had scared Greta into dropping the sticks. That made it her fault.

Setting her jaw, she moved before she could think on it, before she could lose her nerve, and leaped out onto the first rock. That one was easy.

The next one was slippery, and she started to go down, managed to keep her feet.

AGL+1

And oh, didn't that show her just how much of a risk she was taking, but she pushed back the dread, and looked to the third rock—

—and it was too small.

The animal was caught up against it, and she couldn't jump to it. This close up it was far smaller than it had seemed from shore, far lower into the water. She'd slip for sure. And then...

Chase pushed that into the back of her mind that was howling with fear. She couldn't do it. She couldn't jump to the rock and save the critter. She glanced over, and the first of the sticks was slipping past her rock, on its way to the rapids. The rest would follow, and the bulk of them were coming straight for the third rock.

And then, in a flash, the solution came to her.

INT+1

Chase scooped up the first stick before it could go past her rock, knelt down to steady herself, and poked it toward the animal.

The first few sticks collided with the creature, jarring it loose, and Chase jabbed the stick, wobbling it around. “Come on!” She pleaded. “Grab hold!”

The creature twitched again, and she thought it tried to move, but she couldn't tell. On the third jab she lifted it a bit, straining to get the animal free of the water—

And promptly fell into the river.

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 8, Cook level 3

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 40 Constitution: 28 / Hit Points: 68 / Armor: 0

Intelligence: 45 Wisdom: 53 / Sanity: 98 / Mental Fortitude: 25

Dexterity: 59 Agility: 51 / Stamina: 110 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 69 Willpower: 35 / Moxie: 104 / Cool: 25

Perception: 42 Luck: 69 / Fortune: 111 / Fate: 16 Generic Skills

Brawling – Level 7

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 9

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 11

Swim – Level 6

Throwing – Level 18 Halven Skills

Fate's Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 13

Freshen - Level 10 Unlocked Jobs

Archer, Farmer, Grifter, Herbalist, Teacher