After a moment of thought Danika asked, "Do you prefer Kit or Kit Tay?"

"Kit please," Kit answered quickly. "Can I call you Zip?"

"Sure," Danika agreed, "and I'll invite you to the party I'm in if you wouldn't mind me going along on your quest to find the spring you need? I came here to search for wild Amaranth plants, so we could probably do both at the same time."

Kit nodded and Danika invited her to the party she shared with Shrubbery and Aishin.

Kit joined the party and asked a bit nervously, "Who are the other two members? Are they coming along?"

Danika replied, "The dryad is a friend from an old game, and the assassin is a friend from this game who has agreed to become my familiar once we gather all the ingredients. They're both busy with their own projects right now I think."

Kit gasped and asked excitedly, "Do you think you could gather more than one set? I have the Bond with Familiar skill, but the ingredients sounded impossible." Her face fell as she added, "Especially now that I can't buy things from The Traveling Merchant."

Danika blinked at her. She'd been expecting the usual surprise at a human familiar. She hesitated and then replied, "I'll ask Aishin. It should be easy for the plants, but I only caught one snowflake, and I'm not sure about the rest."

Danika sent a message informing Aishin that she'd added Kit to the party and asking if extra ingredients were possible. She sent a message to Shrubbery as well, and her default messenger bird chirped at her as it collected the second message.

Kit commented, "You're also stuck with the default messenger? I really want a cute one, but I can't afford to waste real money on one."

Danika looked at her and then thoughtfully started a new message and swiped her menu over to her messenger settings. She tried dragging the little gold mouse into the message, and a dialogue popped up saying, "Exclusive messengers can't be transferred, but will accompany you if you choose to reincarnate." Danika smiled and asked Kit, "Do you like white mice?"

Kit replied, "Sure? Wait! Do you know where to get that new white mouse messenger quest people have been posting about!? I've heard it's random chance!"

Danika shrugged and dragged the little white mouse into the message. "I don't know where to get it, but I did it by accident with Shrubbery." She tapped send and another dialogue popped up, it didn't require Karma as she'd expected, it simply warned that gifting a messenger was permanent and could not be revoked once submitted. Danika sent the message and her little bird gave her that familiar sarcastic look as it took the message and looped around the two girls before delivering it to Kit.

Kit opened it with a curious expression, and the little white mouse appeared on her palm. Its little tail waved as it studied her face intently. Kit was apparently reading a dialogue, since she looked up and asked, "Are you really sure Zip? This is a really extravagant gift and it says it can't be undone."

Danika smiled and explained, "We were the first ones to do it, and have the gold mouse too. It's fine."

Kit said quickly, "Then I'm accepting!" She tapped the invisible dialogue and the mouse vanished. She swiped through invisible screens while asking, "But why aren't you using the gold mouse if you've got it!?"

Danika shrugged and replied, "I like the personality of the default bird." A thought occurred to her and she suggested, "Maybe it's like the traveling merchant and has a bigger conversational library or whatever?"

After Kit finished with her menus she pulled out the map again and asked, "Do you have any ideas about where to start?"

Danika shrugged and looked around. The river town bustled with activity. She even caught sight of several other groups of players traveling with the swiftness of people who have a destination. She suggested, "This seems like a pretty busy town, let's ask the locals if they've heard of wooly monkeys with yellow tails or hooded people stealing sweethearts, or maybe big cats with long teeth? And where Amaranth grows, for me."

Kit gazed at her with surprise and asked, "You think it's marked with the territory of animals and bandits?"

Danika replied, "I don't know, but we might as well ask about the most obvious interpretation first?"

"That would really make sense actually," Kit agreed. "One of my skills let's me see territory boundaries, although so far I've only used it in a couple of disputes. Once to see if a farmer was lying about his neighbor building a fence over his property, and once when a dog claimed a flower bed was built over its territory."

Danika frowned and asked, "Doesn't a fence create a boundary?"

"Eventually," Kit agreed, "But it seems to take a lot of time? Or something?" She pointed to a tree full of birds and said, "That tree is that flock's territory, and those three empty trees," she gestured to them, "are claimed by them as well, but that one belongs to someone else."

The last tree looked exactly the same to Danika, but while she watched a few of the birds visited the other three trees, but not that one.

Kit looked around with interest and added, "I've never used it in a place with so many people before. All the streets and the square are white."

Danika suggested, "So you could probably see well traveled paths even if they weren't normally visible?"

Kit looked thoughtful, and then nodded. "I guess I should be practicing this skill more often, it didn't seem very useful," she said wryly.

In the sky beyond the tree Danika was facing, she caught sight of a furred serpentine form in the sky. She pointed and said excitedly, "Look!" She zipped into the sky over the town without waiting for Kit's reply.

The creature flew leisurely, and didn't appear to notice her approach until Danika was beside it and examining it with her menu lens. It was a player named EmbersDragon, and Danika was a little jealous because EmbersDragon was as big as a Great Dane. EmbersDragon was a Wizard, with an accumulated level of only 25, and was a Luck Dragon. The luck dragon had a friendly furry face like a yellow Labrador.

"Oh, hi," EmbersDragon said as the luck dragon noticed ZipZing's little sparkly form.

"Hi!" Danika replied. "What is your dragon half? I never saw this kind!" She had interrupted the Jade Emperor and gone back to look at the fairy dragon before he'd said the options were finished.

"It's half dog," EmbersDragon explained kindly, "and I changed my fur color to match my dog's."

"Oh, it's really cool," Danika exclaimed.

Kit approached in her hawk shape and called out, "Did they know something about the clues?"

"Clues?" EmbersDragon asked with confusion.

Kit and Danika explained, but EmbersDragon didn't know anything about the creatures in the area because the furry half dragon had only recently arrived. After a bit more conversation, Danika and Kit returned to the streets below.

They had only asked a handful of NPCs before they found one who nodded and said, "Oh yes, those troublesome monkeys! Only the older ones have those distinct yellow tails. There's a whole tribe of them living in the hills to the west. I don't know why you'd want to seek them out though, those little thieves will empty your pockets if you let them get too close."