When Danika finished her shift, she hurried into the VR-medi pod to confront the druid. Three days would already have passed within the game. She logged into her peaceful little garden, and Hikaru appeared beside her.

"Stay," Danika instructed the little firefly firmly. She zipped down to the little center stone and said, "Exit."

Danika sighed in relief when she found that her pebble hadn't moved from the small rise above the druid's cottage. The druid himself was busy with some task in front of it. She couldn't quite see what Mark Bounds was working on, but her new Identify Target skill displayed his label clearly.

She quickly scooped up her pebble and used her binding string on it, and then zipped down the gentle slope to meet the NPC druid.

The druid looked up as she approached and regarded her with amusement. "I had been wondering who had decided to move their own space into mine," he commented as she drew closer.

"Oh, it was the middle of the night when I first arrived, and I didn't want to wake you," Danika replied.

"What do you seek from me?" the druid questioned. His eyes were a brilliant blue and his hair was white, but his face was as ageless as the wizard from her own vale's had been.

"I need to learn the Weaving Moonlight skill," Danika announced promptly.

"Why should I teach it to you?" the druid asked with interest.

She eyed him uncertainly. Conversations like this were one of the disadvantages to a game with NPCs that interacted in a more human fashion. "Why shouldn't you?" she questioned in return.

"You're not a druid, and you don't serve my god," Mark Bounds pointed out logically.

"Is there some service that I could perform for you that you would exchange for teaching me the skill?" Danika questioned.

"I'm sure I could find some useful task that you could accomplish in exchange," he agreed. "Will that be acceptable?"

Danika opened her mouth to accept, and then hesitated and asked warily, "What sort of task and how long will it take?"

The druid chuckled. "How long it will take depends upon you, but I will only teach you to weave an essence into moonlight if you will bring me a single hair, scale, tooth or nail from a thousand different living creatures."

"A thousand different species, or just a thousand individual creatures?" Danika questioned. If it were just a thousand individuals, she could probably accomplish it fairly easily.

"A thousand different types of animals," the druid clarified. "I know that you have the skill to distinguish between them."

That was more difficult. Danika considered it. "Do all of the animals have to be alive when I deliver the items, or just when they are collected?"

"What a bloodthirsty question," Mark Bounds complained. "The creature must be alive when the fragment of its essence is collected. And next you will probably ask if there is a time limit?" he suggested.

"Is there?" Danika asked.

"Only in that I must still be alive when the items are delivered, in order to complete the exchange. I'm getting old you know, and might be nearing my last century," the druid said dryly.

"Ok," Danika agreed. "I'll definitely try to have it completed within a century," she added with equal dryness.

"You may collect from the animals in my domain, but please try not to kill any of them. They get so upset about it and start asking why they can't eat each other," Mark Bounds said seriously.

Danika blinked, and then chuckled and agreed, "Ok."

The druid reached down into the bucket of what appeared to be ash that he'd been stirring, and drew out the lump that had formed like a pat of butter in a bucket of cream. He shook the lump and the black dust dropped from its surface to reveal its shine.

Mark Bounds pocketed the diamond and said, "Well, don't just hover around, you've got a thousand animals to chase. Go get started."

Danika grinned and took her dismissal with good grace. "Alright, thanks!" she said and zipped away a moment later.

--

Danika had already collected 8 strands of fur from different animals in the druid's domain before Kit logged in.

The snow leopard cub bounded up to her with Kit's message, and then wandered away very slowly. Danika called after him, "Be careful! If you move too slowly someone might mistake you for an albino sloth!"

The cub pointedly ignored her.

Danika grinned and read Kit's message. Kit lamented: "I love the leopard cub messenger, but I want to use the white mouse you gifted to me more too! Where are you, other than to the northeast?"

Danika frowned and switched her messenger to her little default bird and replied: "Can't you change your messenger? I'm quite a way past the elven capital, I found an NPC druid who will teach me the weaving skill after I collect hair, scales, teeth and claws from a thousand different kinds of living animals."

The little bird collected her message and flew off normally, and having verified that she could switch, she set her messenger back to the cub.

The cub returned while Danika was chasing a fat bumble bee a minute later. She caught it in her breath attack, and while it was asleep she delicately plucked a tiny strand from its furry abdomen, and tucked it into her old salt sack. For this kind of collecting, the ordinary little sack was much more useful than the embroidered pouch.

The cub glared at her and only dropped the message after he was certain she had noted his opinion. Danika said defensively, "I was just checking if I could switch."

Kit had written: "I can switch it, I just wish that there were a random or alternating function, so that you could rotate through your available messengers. Wow, so far! Should I be helping you collect them or working on my next druid skill quest?"

Danika finished her reply before the cub had vanished from her line of sight, so he walked back to her to carry it away. His jaws clamped over her little clawed hand when he accepted it, although she couldn't feel the bite. She'd written: "Oh. There's no group reward, so go ahead and work on your own quests, but thanks for offering!"

After a minute she wrote another message, this time to Aishin asking, "Will you get time to play tonight?"

She had collected the fur of another half a dozen animals before she finally received his reply: "I don't know. I'm sorry."

Danika replied quickly: "It's fine! I was just curious."

The snow leopard cub was back a moment later. Aishin asked: "Did you find the druid? Are you ok?"

Danika wrote him a lengthy message, assuring him that she was fine, and describing her meeting with the druid and her new quest.

She received a short message from SilentSky a bit later: "Sorry he can't play right now. Please stop making him laugh at random moments for another hour?"

Danika gazed at the message and wondered what they were doing that made laughing inappropriate, and what she'd said in her message that had made Aishin laugh enough to matter.