The noise was coming from a fair bit of distance away, farther into the forest from where I’d entered. I was careful to make my way toward where I’d heard her while trying to make a little noise as possible and keep an eye on my surroundings. The dog decided it would just run toward her, throwing caution to the wind and charging through the thicket making noise with wild abandon.

I sped up to keep the dog in sight, but was still wary of walking into a bandit ambush. It turns out that my worries were for nothing, because the only thing we found was a young girl alone in the woods, sitting under a tree with her head in her lap and arms around her knees. She was located in a bit of a clearing in the trees and looked worse for wear. She was shaking, with a bloody dagger grasped in her unsteady right hand. She had thin gashes along her legs that had stopped bleeding and her clothes were torn.

Not too far from where she was seated was the culprit, a dead weresquirrel. Not were- as in a werewolf, but it was what the locals called the cat sized squirrels with sharp canines and a more meat based diet. It had been stabbed several times and the pelt was far beyond ruined, which was disappointing because they were generally very soft and fluffy.

Okay, so the girl doesn’t seem to be a threat, but I was unsure how to approach her without getting stabbed as she was obviously feeling very traumatized. Once again I let the dog make my decision for me, as she burst from the tree line and trotted over to the girl. When the dog licked her leg the girl tensed before slowly picking her head up from her legs.

She was a very beautiful girl, about my age or perhaps a bit older. Her eyes were a clear green, although they were a bit red from crying at the moment, and she had a cute little button nose to set it all off. With light freckles and deep orange hair, I realized she matched the appearance of a lot of the dryads from the so-called fictional stories I’d read. I tensed up, ready to defend the dog who’d saved my life, but when she smiled and pushed her hair back behind her ear before petting the dog my worry melted away.

Although it was a very weak smile, like you’d expect from someone having a hard time, it still radiated goodwill to me. Combine that with the fact that I saw her ears were rounded like normal humans and I was pretty sure she wasn’t about to eat my dog. Unfortunately when I relaxed I leaned back a bit and crushed a branch under foot.

“Who's there? If it’s another one of you squirrels, I will murder the acorns out of you!” She’d gotten unsteadily to her feet and was standing in front of the dog with a dagger in both hands. Even when she was inadvertently threatening my life, I still thought she was very cute. Far cuter than Marsha had been at least.

“Woah, Woah, Woah! I’m coming out with my hands up,” I exited the tree line with my hands over my head, taking care to stash my spear over my shoulder where I could still reach it. It wouldn’t do well to disarm myself for no reason, “My dog and I heard you call for help and came to investigate. We don’t mean you any harm.”

“Then why were you hiding in the trees like some sort of creep?” When I mentioned the dog, her eyes had flicked back for a second as if remembering that it was there before returning to me and hardening.

“I was just making sure you were some sort of bandit setting an ambush for travelers, that’s all. I see that you are injured, do you need help? I have some sal-”

“Stop right there! Don’t come any closer, okay? For all I know, you’re a bandit. It would sure be in theme with my luck today.” I stopped making my way slowly toward her at her behest. I’d never been very good at talking to anybody, let alone girls, so I sort of stood there. My arms dropped to my side as I tried to figure out how to convince her that I wasn’t a threat. She was still glaring at me expectantly. I tried to smile to show her I was nice.

Nope, bad idea. She didn’t look angry at me so much as uncomfortable now. I guess standing there and staring at her in silence for a minute before smiling could be interpreted as off putting. I really didn’t understand how I could be so bad at this kind of thing.

I don’t know how much longer that would have gone on before I figured out how to be social. I didn’t have to know, because the dog decided it would walk back over to me and help me out. After seeing that the dog really did know me she visibly relaxed before apologizing.

“Sorry, that was really rude of me. I guess if you were a bandit, you would have just attacked me or something. My name is Brook. What’s yours?”

“Lucas, but call me Luke. What’re you doing out here in the woods, all alone?”

There was another awkward pause where Brook took a step backwards. Her eyes darted around the trees and she held her dagger a little closer. Right…

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. Err…” I really didn’t see how to talk my way out of this.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m just a little shaken still. I was traveling with a caravan when we were attacked. I escaped into the woods and I’ve been wandering ever since.”

“Right. Well you, uh, you can travel with me I guess. I’m not sure where I’m going other than west but it’s probably safer than walking around the woods on your own. Especially if you said bandits are in the area.”

It didn’t take her much convincing to tag along. Even with my low charisma and social awkwardness, traveling this forest on your own was a far less appealing option than just grouping up. I stopped myself from offering to bandage up her legs, because wow that would be creepy, and handed her the pulped healing herbs and spare bandages I had in the bag. While we were at it we shared lunch of mostly-smoked rat meat since I hadn’t had a chance to eat yet and she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in who knows how long, and we set out.

The days passed pretty quickly as we traversed the forest in the general direction I believed to be west. There was a decent chance I’d lost my bearings a ways back but I didn’t bring that up, there was no sense panicking Brook.

While we walked I learned a bit more about her. Brook had come from a smaller town in the Carolinas. Her father was a soldier but died when she was young and her mother took up with a trader. Since then Brook and parents had been on the road up and down the coast, trading goods and trying to make enough money to buy land out west. Everything had gone well too until her mother and adoptive father had been killed by bandits a few weeks back, taken out by arrows from the tree line.

She was a few years older than me, somewhere around 21 or 22, and had trained to use knives to defend herself. Brook had been surviving off nuts and wild root vegetables when the dog, who she was now calling Sophie, and I stumbled upon her. She’d inadvertently picked a fight with the weresquirrel after finding its stash of nuts in the clearing and eating them.

I told her all about Tinyton and my parents in return. Explained my passion for reading stories from merchants, her parents did not deal in them apparently, and my dream of being a wizard who helped explore the lost magics. We talked about my skills and proficiency with the spear. I even showed her how my growth spell worked when we found a nut tree that had been stripped clean.

I did a lot more talking than she did once I got started and she didn’t seem to mind allowing me to fill the silence. I probably shared more with this stranger I’d just met in the five days we’d been traveling than I had with anyone else in my life. Why is it so much easier to talk to strangers? Probably because you know that once you part ways, you’ll never have to deal with them again. Being known intimately is far less intimidating when the person is just a passing face in the crowd of life.

Honestly I think I mostly talked because of how boring it was traveling in the forest. It was just trees and trees and, oh look, more trees.

“If we don’t find the road or something sometime soon I’m going to fall on your spear when we make camp.” I smiled a little awkwardly at the joke. I couldn’t tell if she was messing with me or if the turn of phrase had been accidental. Judging by the shit-eating smirk on her face I assumed it was intentional. A theory rapidly validated by good natured laughter when I looked broke eye contact and looked away blushing.

“We should be finding the road any day now, we’ve been sticking to a straight line.”

“Yes we have. I’ve been trying to stick to a straight line for days now. It’s been very, very hard.”

Sophie saved me from having to respond to what had becoming an increasingly awkward situation with a bark. So far she’d only alerted us when she found small game for us to hunt or a stream of water to drink from.

“Sophie found something, we should check it out.”

“Hmph, of course that’s what you want to check out right now.” Brook started fake pouting, which only made my face that much warmer, but came along with me to investigate the finding. It wasn’t like I found Brook unattractive, but I had no real experience with the flirting thing and I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely interested in me or just teasing me for fun. I did not want to take her seriously and try to reciprocate just to be embarrassed. It would make the journey that much more awkward.

A message from the interface broke me out of my reverie, putting that train of thought off for later.

[Warning: Now entering localized instance. Instance type: F rank monster lair]