“Let’s go back to the rooms and do some more reading, then,” Akari said. “We’ve got food for tomorrow, and materials to work with next time we have a rainy day. We’ve gotten a lot done today, really. We can work on some of that planning, figure out what we want to try out or practice next, that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe we could stop and see if Tom’s ready for us, too?” Heather suggested. “With the mana tokens he owes me, that is. They’re not due until tomorrow, but if we’re going to go by anyway, it’s worth checking.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Danielle said. “Let’s get our stuff together and go see what he says.”

  They packed up their empty canteens and assorted other gear, and Sadie collected the three hides. Akari bundled up the remains of the wood they’d chopped, and brought that too. Danielle covered over the tanning pit with sticks. Since they’d kept the rocks out of the brains, it didn’t take too much convincing to get everyone to take a couple of them back to the room for future water-heating uses, especially since Sadie had carried them all home from the pond in the first place.

  They walked back into camp on the main road again, just as they’d gone out. That meant that room 1019 was actually on their way, plus or minus a little backtracking to the stairs if they didn’t want to climb the retaining wall. Cassy, Sadie, and Akari decided to wait near the stairs while Danielle and Heather went down to knock on Tom’s door.

  Danielle activated Detect Mana Source to see if he was inside, even as she knocked. It looked like he was there, so she stepped back to the retaining wall with Heather. “I’m pretty sure he’s home,” she said.

  Heather nodded. “I hope he won’t feel pressured or anything because we’re a little early,” she fretted.

  “Don’t worry, if he’s not ready we’ll just offer to come back later,” Danielle said. “He should have, you know, four of the five pieces we’re expecting, though.”

  Danielle could see a mana source approach the door and pause, and a first she thought he must be using a Skill, but when he finally opened the door, he cracked it and peered out from a low angle, apparently crouching behind the door.

  “Who – who’s there?” Tom asked, then said, “Oh! The Healers! Is it a week already?”

  “Well, it would be a week tomorrow,” Heather admitted. “We were going past your room anyway, though, so I thought I’d stop by and see if you were ready?”

  “Oh, sure. I can be. Come in, I guess,” Tom said, stepping back to let the door come open.

  Danielle and Heather stepped inside the room. It was, interestingly, messier than it had been a week before. Tom was obviously taking advantage of having the space to himself to leave things lying around. Both of his mugs were sitting on the counter, dirty, and a mess of wax packaging from the pemmican rations was shoved into a corner next to the cold box. His denim uniform was tossed carelessly on one bed, and what looked like all his socks were piled on the floor near the footboards. That left him dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, and apparently wearing his boots barefoot. Had he put them on just to answer the door? Danielle could imagine wanting to have something on her feet if she was worried about hostile parties at the door, so it seemed possible.

  Tom did have the mana tokens in his footlocker, though, so the two girls waited politely in the kitchen area while he got them out. He lay out his payment on the counter. “One, two, three, four,” he counted, then held out his hand and manifested another five-point mana token. “Five!” he said, adding it to the line. “That’s the whole thing, right?”

  “Yes, that’s what we agreed to,” Heather agreed, picking them up and sliding them into her Decision Day bag. “Thank you. Have you been feeling all right, since? No weird leftover pain or anything?”

  “I, um. Nothing real, I don’t think,” Tom said. “I’m not doing so good with the nightmares, though.”

  Danielle and Heather both flinched at the mention of nightmares. “You too, huh?” Heather asked. “I’m not surprised. Even I’ve had a few nightmares, and I wasn’t even here for all of what you went through.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a few issues myself,” Danielle admitted, thinking of the way her memory of the pool of blood kept distracting her during the situation with the cougar. “Have you been handling life OK though? Are you getting out and getting fish or setting snares or whatever?”

  “Are you kidding? There’s crazies out there calling themselves wolves! Not to mention, the snares just disappear,” Tom said miserably. “I, I’m just – I don’t know, I can’t sleep but I’m tired all the time, and I don’t know what to do about anything.”

  “Oh. You don’t have a hunting party or anything, do you,” Heather realized.

  “Nope, I’m all alone in a ghost room,” Tom said, giving an involuntary shudder. “I keep hearing things. I asked the Rangers if I could move, and they said no, ghosts aren’t a thing, and mana echoes aren’t a thing either, so try not to let superstition get to me.”

  “Have you talked to anyone alive since the Rangers left?” Danielle asked.

  “Um, a couple of times, but not for a long time, and I heard about the Wolf guys,” Tom said. “It didn’t make me want to spend more time outside.”

  “You should come join us tomorrow afternoon,” Danielle said. “Some of us that went to church back in school are going to have a prayer meeting, and then we’ll probably hang out for a while, maybe cook a late lunch or something. Assuming it doesn’t rain again, it’d be a safe place for you to hang out and get some normal human interaction.”

  Tom laughed. “My old man would chew your head off for calling a church meeting normal interaction,” he said, “but I might take you up on it anyway. You religious people supposedly have ways to deal with ghosts, right?”

  Danielle shrugged. “With my religion, it’s more that we don’t believe God allows ghosts of humans to stay on earth. We do believe that God protects us from evil spirits, though. Anyway, if you just need a safe place to feel safe and normal and get some sunshine, you don’t have to join us for the prayer meeting part, you can just hang out after.”

  “That, um. That sounds really good. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Tom said.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” Heather agreed. “I’ll be doing the ‘just hang out after’ thing too, so don’t worry about being the only one.”

  Tom chuckled. “Thanks. I don’t know if it’ll help, but it can’t be worse than what I’ve been doing most of this week, so, see you then.”

  “See you then,” Danielle agreed, and stepped out of the room. Heather followed, and they rejoined the other three to walk around the end of the building at ground level.

  “It sounds like he’s not doing so well, really,” Heather said.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassy asked.

  “He’s spent the last week in the room where two people died, afraid to go outside for fear of Wolf Pack members, trying to decide if he believes in ghosts or not,” Danielle said.

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  “Oh. That would do it,” Cassy said, shuddering.

  “Is there anything we can do for him?” Akari asked.

  “I invited him to come hang out tomorrow afternoon,” Danielle said. “For the prayer meeting or after it, whichever. I think just being with some people that are acting normal and safe and stuff will probably help a little. We might want to gift him a few tomatoes, too, I get the idea he’s been eating nothing but emergency rations this whole time. It’s not much, but it’s something, you know?”

  “Did he at least make Heather’s tokens?” Sadie asked.

  “He did – he made the last one just now,” Heather said, “so that’s all taken care of.”

  Danielle nodded. “Hopefully he’ll start saving up for the Catalog thing now,” she said. “Oh, and speaking of saving up, since everyone donated to the party healing stash last night, we should all put something to savings tonight, right? There’s no reason for us to skip days when we have the purple tomatoes.”

  “Oh, yeah, we should check when we get back to the room,” Cassy agreed.

  Sadie laughed. “Listen to the mana-rich telling us poor people to save more,” she said.

  “Well if you don’t want to we’re not making you,” Cassy said. “But the mana tomatoes will only keep so long, and your pool is only so big.”

  “No, I know, it’s just funny,” Sadie said.

  “I’m capped,” Heather said.

  “For shame, reading your Interface while walking,” Sadie joked. “You’re going to walk into a post again, like you did last year.”

  “That was a book, not a quick glance at my Interface,” Heather said in annoyance. “Besides, I’m literally surrounded by you guys, someone else would have to hit the post first before I even could.”

  “All right, but pay attention now, we’re almost to the building,” Danielle said. “The last thing we need is anyone falling down the stairs.”

  It was after eight when they got all the materials squirreled away under beds and counters or in the corners next to the bookcase. Sadie and Akari made mana tokens for their catalog stashes, and the other three added mana to their Payment Plan traits. Then they spent some time discussing their projects, from questions about what tools they had and/or needed, to how long the bamboo, wood, and reeds should dry before use. About an hour later, Cassy took one bamboo pole and a few purple tomatoes and headed back to her room; this time Danielle didn’t see any stray mana sources, so the Party settled for watching from the doorway until she got into her room. It was almost 9:30, but not quite full dark, though the sunken walkway didn’t benefit much from the faint light lingering in the sky.

  The four left in room 6024 took their time getting ready for bed, taking turns in the shower and at the sink. They topped up their mana – but not so much as to cap out and waste generation again; Akari was particularly grumpy about having lost a point of production to her pool limit that evening. She led the others in a round of complaints about the limits of a tiny, ten-point mana pool.

  Danielle kept her mouth closed, nodded along, and chose a moment when everyone else was distracted to eat her own late-night snack of mana tomatoes; together with her usual enhanced mana generation, it only took 16 for her to bring herself back up to half her pool. She told herself she wasn’t hiding how many purple tomatoes she was eating, she just didn’t want to rub it in to Akari that she still had space for over 30 points of mana.

  Danielle also updated her journal before bed, not trusting the moon by itself for her safety calendar. She ended up getting the last shower, and found everyone else reading in bed when she got out. She gave them a minute to put away their books, and turned out the light.

  Sunday began with an alarm clock, to Danielle’s annoyance. What was the point of a rest day if it still had alarm clocks? She had to admit, though, she had evidently slept ten solid hours, so maybe Akari had been onto something when she decided to set it. Sadie and Akari had evidently been awake for over an hour and a half already, although Akari insisted she had set the alarm the night before.

  Danielle was even more glad to be awake when Cassy showed up barely fifteen minutes later, at 9:15. To Danielle’s surprise – and everyone else’s too, if she was any judge of expressions – the ABCs had escorted Cassy down the walkway. Even Cassy seemed a little bemused as she waved goodbye to the three of them. They waved at the rest of the SHAD Party as they passed the door and continued around toward the stairs.

  “Good morning! We’re still on for an official day of rest with prayer meeting, right?” Cassy said.

  “That’s the plan,” Danielle agreed.

  “About that – ” Sadie began.

  “Look, Sadie, did we not agree that if we had food, we’d be resting every seventh day?” Akari asked. “And do we not have plenty of food?”

  “We do, but Danielle’s talked about this whole day of rest thing before,” Sadie said. “For example, back when we were dormmates, she once told Heather and me about how it was OK for the cafeteria people to work on Sunday, even if they were Christian, because preparing food for everyone was specifically allowed. Healing and medicine and emergency stuff too, right?”

  “Yeah? It’s not like we weren’t planning to cook dinner,” Akari said suspiciously.

  “And I seem to recall that reading doesn’t count as work either,” Sadie said. “She got real worked up about it when I said she wasn’t supposed to be reading her literature homework on Sunday; said it wasn’t against the rules as long as the stuff she was reading wasn’t ‘dishonoring to God,’ I think?”

  “It’s not like I was writing my report on Sunday! I was literally just reading the book. I read books for fun!” Danielle protested.

  “So we’re agreed that it wasn’t work, and I never should have bothered you about it, right?” Sadie asked.

  “Yes, but I still don’t like the sound of this,” Danielle said. “It sounds like you’re about to try and convince me to play rules-lawyer with my religion, and it doesn’t work that way, Sadie.”

  “I’m just making sure I have your rules straight before I make a suggestion!” Sadie protested. “Cooking is allowed, so there’s nothing preventing us from building a fire to cook the rabbits this morning, right? And reading is allowed, so there’s no reason we can’t continue reading our Room-library books either. I mean, you’ve mostly been reading about the System, and since you’re so certain that the existence of the System doesn’t disprove the existence of God, then that book can’t be dishonoring to God, right?”

  “I don’t know if that means it couldn’t be dishonoring, but in point of fact, it hasn’t been saying anything objectionable,” Danielle admitted.

  “I guess I don’t know any reason why we couldn’t start cooking the rabbits early, either,” Akari said, “but I’m not sure why you’d want to. Wouldn’t you rather have them be hot at dinner time?”

  “Well, I was thinking that if Heather and I just happened to put some mostly-dry fish around the sides of the fire to keep drying, then none of you true believers would be responsible for that,” Sadie said. “So if just starting the fire isn’t work, then no problem, right?”

  “Well, no. I don’t know of any reasonable definition of work that would include using Skill: Fire Starting on a pile of wood,” Akari admitted*. “I mean, maybe if we were doing it the hard way, but that’d still come under preparing food. Cutting wood would be a different issue, though, and we don’t have that much wood left that isn’t designated for crafts.”

  “That’s a good point; we don’t want to just run out of firewood before the prayer meeting,” Danielle said.

  “I’ll go out and cut a few logs, then,” Sadie said.

  “You’re supposed to be taking the day off too, though, remember? You literally carried a bunch of rocks around yesterday. Aren’t you already sore?” Danielle asked.

  “I seem to remember someone saying a little light exercise was – ” Sadie began.

  “Believe it or not,” Cassy said loudly, interrupting the incipient argument, “we’re actually set for wood already.”

  “What?” Akari asked. Danielle echoed her, “What?”

  “How?” Sadie asked.

  “Well, um. Bethany isn’t what I’d call a ‘true believer’ – and I don’t think she’d call herself that either – but I guess her mom might be, because apparently Beth used to have to attend church every week on parental instructions. It turns out, she misses the change of pace and the social aspect of it all, and she really appreciated us doing what she called, ‘adding a little bit of normalcy to this crazy new life,’ so she donated a pile of firewood and said she’s going to show up for the after-service potluck this time.”

  “Really? That’s, um. After-service potluck?” Danielle asked.

  “I asked her that too – heh, that’s almost exactly what came out of my mouth, word for word,” Cassy said with a chuckle. “She said she figured if we did our thing at noon again, and the fire was going during the whole thing, it would be ready for everyone to cook a late lunch on afterward, and then we could all eat together. I figure it’ll be kind of like last Sunday, or whatever day it was when we cooked with the Lemonade party.”

  “That actually sounds like a nice way to spend a rest day,” Heather said. “I guess I’ll come out for that part again.”

  “All right, well, if the wood and fish are on hand, and it isn’t going to take a ton of time or effort to set up, then I guess it’s not breaking the agreement if Sadie puts out the fish and tomatoes to dry,” Danielle conceded. “We can all hang out nearby and read too; just don’t expect us ‘true believers’ to pretend that taking tons of notes and making plans and stuff counts as a hobby.”

  “But you’re not going to get bent out of shape if I do it?” Sadie pressed. “Take notes and stuff, I mean.”

  Danielle shrugged uncomfortably. “If you really think that counts as resting, I’m not going to argue about it with you. I get it that you think of this as just a superstitious old tradition, and I’m not trying to push for you to act like you believe in the religious part, just so you don’t stop me from acting like I believe.”

  “Perfect!”

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2