Home is where the heart is.

Pre-Fall saying

Johanna felt trepidation as she crossed the familiar fields surrounding her home. The miraculous healing she’d received had barely left a bruise and shallow scratches, which Laura had erased after the fact using her magical massaging thumb. Her jacket had suffered a bit more and no amount of saintly healing worked on the leather skin, but she’d managed to re-lace it properly, and once cleaned a bit, it almost looked normal, if scuffed. And then, they’d pressed on, unwilling to risk staying on the road where Lepus or worse could stumble on them.

They crossed the entrance gate and she couldn’t stop a smile from forming in anticipation, then the familiar shape of home came in view, as she turned around the Claws’ house corner. There wasn’t much room left inside the walls of Anasta, and most houses of the families had expanded to the maximum size offered by the protective barriers and the edicts of the successive mayors against fire risk before rising to multiple floors. But she knew every corner of home.

The only figure seated under the porch, next to the door, was the young terrier, Bundt. The dog sat and started barking while wagging his tail, loudly warning everyone that a visitor was coming.

And visiting she was. She’d spent less than half of her time “home” last year. They had been busy doing salvage runs regularly, at least until the winter season did curtail those activities. She’d last been there a month and a half ago, for the midsummer solstice festivities, in-between runs to the ruins. Even Bundt had a difficult time adjusting last winter, as he had been a small puppy with his eyes barely open when they’d started doing salvage work last year.

Loran came out. She waved at her eldest brother. He was startled, seeing her, then smiled before yelling into the house.

“Jo’s here, folks!”

Johanna reached the porch and hugged her brother. He and Tom exchanged hugs as well, and she entered just in time to see three figures barreling toward her.

“Aunt Jo!” “Did you bring us something?” “Did you see new Ancient stuff???”

She almost stiffened at the last question. But she kept smiling and apologizing.

“No, big top. No goodies this time.”

The two excitable nephews and Johanna’s lone niece made long faces on hearing the news but immediately bounced back, asking more questions.

“Let your aunt breathe and drop her bags first, you little rascals,” the voice came from further.

“Hi, mom!”

Johanna embraced the matronly figure that had come out. She pulled out slightly, noticing for the first time a lock of grey hair near the left temple. She realized then, for the first time, that her mother was slowly turning into the grandmother she’d been for nearly five years now.

As a fifth child, Johanna had been late and unexpected. And when the first son of her older brother had come out, she’d been so weirded out at being now called aunt to think about the fact that mother had changed categories as well.

“It looks a bit earlier than usual. Good expedition or bad expedition?” she asked casually, looking significantly at Johanna’s mussed jacket.

Johanna measured her answer carefully.

“It depends.”

Her mother looked carefully at her. Then she nodded.

“Dinner is almost ready, everyone should be back already. Maybe your father’s still at the orchard. Drop your bags, and we’ll talk about it after then.”

“Will do,” Johanna said with a cheer she did not entirely feel.

“And you do have an old jacket in your cupboard,” her mother added.

She winced a bit but headed up. Her room was still the smallest of the house, with a bed barely large enough for her and Tom. He laughed, despite knowing the room well.

“Quite a change from the inn,” he said.

She punched him in the shoulder.

“That’s still my room you’re talking about, in case you forgot.”

“More snuggling,” he replied.

She punched again, then dropped her bag near the old cupboard.

“Happy?” Tom asked, hugging her as they settled on the bed.

“Always. Until we have our own home…”

Even without her slight resemblance with all the square-jawed figures around, Moore wouldn’t have had to guess much about her relationship to the people there. All the person descriptors which he pulled as she embraced them listed “Milton” in the name, making it obvious that was her family.

The interesting part was the three little kids that had come to greet “his” Milton. All of them were level 0, which he’d spotted already on kids in the previous town. But he had more information now, and they all had also 0 experience totals and exactly fifteen in each stat.

Didn’t everyone have an average of just over fifteen without allocation? He checked quickly Peter Donnall’s totals, and confirmed a total of 91, not 90, just like Milton’s own. And yes, the other two had 92 now that he’d added one point for a skill.

So, his working hypothesis was that those kids were too young to have a character setting. No XP gains, stats at their base level. At this stage, they were…

Blank sheets? Is that it?

His guess was that they’d “develop” later, at some time during adolescence. Based on XP passive gains he’d spotted… his team of four had probably started getting XP at around 17 years or so? Was it exactly 17? No, Donnall had had too much XP for that, even if he got lucky on the variation of daily XP. He didn’t think the rogue had gotten involved in fights for XP; they were too familiar with each other and were probably salvagers since 18 or maybe earlier.

Or maybe there was no fixed cut-off date, and it happened “some time” after puberty. A small mystery. Not really relevant, at least not directly, since he couldn’t direct anyone’s skills. Whether or not the four had obtained their final stats and begun leveling at age 18, 17, or 15, it ultimately didn’t matter now.

Meanwhile, while Johanna Milton was greeting her own family, he watched Donnall doing more or less the same. He’d expected the other two to head to their own families, but for some reason, they hadn’t done so. It looked like Vogel and Welter were going to stay with their own boy/girlfriends or whatever. Based on the names from the descriptors, it didn’t look like they were already married or anything like that, but it was hard to guess from his perspective.

After offering a prayer of thanks, the whole family started digging into the bowls of stew from Johanna’s mother. Johanna listened to the relatively innocuous gossip. There wasn’t much new anyway, since she’d been there during the solstice’s Saint John’s Eve six weeks ago, dropping the spring savings into her stockpile.

“Wait, so Mark is finally getting married?” she asked.

“Old man Vanu dropped an ultimatum. Mark finally settled for the hand of Eva Nick from Avon.”

“Man was picking a girl in every village,” Tom laughed. “Good for him to pick the right village.”

“She was your neighbor next door, I think?” Johanna asked.

“Two years older than me. It’s high time she landed him.”

“The marriage’s set for the equinox,” Johanna’s mother said, looking significantly at her.

Tom came to her rescue immediately.

“Going to have our house by next summer, certainly. That’s when we can think about it.”

“Finally.”

“Yes. Not saying you can anticipate for the next solstice yet, but…” he added.

“You’re still careful?” Johanna’s mother asked.

“I’m keeping track of the days. I know it’s not perfect, but it works so far,” she said.

“And if it fails, it advances one date and pushes back the less important one,” Tom said.

“Hey, getting a house is important! That’s why it comes first!”

Tom raised his hands in mock defeat, bringing a smile to her brother’s face. The future head of the Milton farmhouse liked Tom, and he’d tried to convince him to dissuade her from running away, and stay to help on the farm.

“Who you think I’m going to listen to? You or her?” he’d simply replied, more than once.

Loran had finally admitted defeat but never lost his shine to his future brother-in-law.

“But don’t worry. Even though we’re going to move away from here, I wouldn’t let you down. This is my old home, I’ll have Pastor Vanu officiate, and everyone will be invited.”

“Easy words since I’ll probably get to organize everything,” Loran said with a mock pout.

“Get help from Donnall. I know Peter said he’d do it on the same day.”

“Double marriage. It hasn’t happened in, what… thirty years?”

Johanna almost asked to stop planning, because who knew what could happen, but she realized that things had indeed already happened. It shouldn’t affect their plans…

But yes. Who knows.

Once the kids were dismissed and her brother had gone to make sure everything was okay for the night, her father threw a look at her. Obviously, Johanna’s mother had told him she had some kind of problem. While her older brother was already taking more and more of a role in the running of the farm, Bram Milton was still the family’s patriarch, after grandpa passed away three years ago.

“We ran into a problem. Two, in fact.”

“Two?”

“The second one might be the more immediately troublesome. We ran into a pack of Lepus on the road from Valetta.”

Her father startled.

“A Lepus colony?”

“Nine beasts.”

Her father whistled softly.

“That’s trouble, indeed. A significant migration. And Mayor Anasta needs to be warned about that. If that pack comes around…”

Johanna grimaced slightly before announcing, “They won’t.”

“What do you mean they won’t?”

“We… got attacked and fought them off. And killed the entire pack.”

The look her father threw her was telling.

“That’s the other problem,” she admitted.

“Not to say that you’re not good, dear, but killing nine Lepus with you four? Without heavy crossbows and proper weapons?” her mother asked, ignoring her statement. Then her eyes widened.

“Your jacket?”

“Yes. One of them gored me with its horn.”

“WHAT?” her father exclaimed.

“If you’re wounded, you should have told us earlier. Maria Vanu isn’t a city doctor, but she’s good.”

“I’m okay, mom. Laura fixed me quickly during the battle.”

Johanna’s two parents looked at each other before her mother took the lead.

“You’re not making sense. What do you mean fixed you?”

“As I said… that’s our second problem.”

She turned her palm up and reached into her feeling for the magic. The flame burst above her palm, as she’d expected by now. A three-inch condensed flame, ramrod-straight, barely flickering, unlike a candle or anything natural.

Both her parents flinched.

“What???”

“I can do that. That’s how we could deal with the Lepus. Partially.”

“How can you even make fire in your hand?” Ada Milton asked.

But her father said it first.

“You’re… a sorceress? How is that even possible?”