The rain did not stop overnight, nor did it slow down. It just kept falling from the iron-gray sky, soaking into the woods, the ground, and everyone’s moods.

  There was a noticeable chill in the room when the alarm clock went off, and nobody wanted to be the one to get up and turn it off. Sadie’s cry of “You set it, you get it!” eventually won out, and Danielle turned the clock off and the kitchen light on, filled four mugs with water, and delivered a mug to each roommate in her bed; then Danielle got into her footlocker for a dose of aspirin, swallowed it with the whole mug of water, and promptly got back under her blanket.

  “What are you doing?” Akari asked, sounding amused.

  “I’m tired and sore and now I’m cold, too. I’m getting back under my warm blanket and warming up,” Danielle complained.

  “That’s a great idea. I’m doing that too,” Sadie announced.

  “Is that why you brought everyone water?” Heather asked, already pulling out her own dose of pain reliever. “You’re a genius. We should probably set the clock to wake us back up after a while, though.”

  Akari sat up properly, stifling a yawn. “You’re all still that sore? What happened with you, Sadie? I thought you were fine yesterday.”

  “I was OK from the walking, but now I’m sore from the weaving,” Sadie told her. “My dad taught me some weaving, but I never did that much at one time before.”

  “Oh.” Akari pulled on a pair of socks before putting her feet on the tile floor, then stood up and stretched. “I guess I’ll do breakfast again, then.”

  “Do you think we can unlock your rapid muscle healing thing if we keep doing this to ourselves?” Sadie asked. “Because I’m starting to realize that it’s awesome and I want it.”

  “By the time you have the mana to get it, you probably won’t need it anymore,” Heather groused. “We’ll all have become super-hikers the old-fashioned way, and we’ll look like body builders, and then we’ll unlock the muscle recovery thing.”

  “I’m going to search the Medic Skill tree and see if it has, like, healing muscle massage or something in it,” Danielle said. The others laughed.

  “Wake me again when it’s warm,” Heather said, and turned towards the wall to get the light out of her eyes.

  “Can I use that mint you were drying for tea?” Akari asked her.

  “Oh – yeah, that’d be good,” Heather said without turning.

  Akari got out the open pemmican and fried slices again, then boiled water in one of the distiller pots (again leaving the lid off) and put the mint in it to steep. Danielle brought up her list of unlocked Skills in her System and discovered that while the Medic Skill tree didn’t have any massage Skills (at least, not in tiers 1 or 2), she had unlocked some new possibilities like “Brand Cautery,” (which sounded horrifying but useful) and “Remove Venom” (which sounded less nightmare-inducing and less likely to overlap with better Skills Heather already had). There were also a few she thought might be more useful for Inside medics, like “Find Vein” – that had to be for giving injections, she thought, not helpful unless one had injectable medicines (and the right kind of needles). It was interesting that the System included it, though.

  Danielle checked her clothes, and straightened them back out on the blanket over her. The knit T-shirt and shorts were mostly dry, but the heavier denim was still distinctly damp. “This is why I need a Skill for drying things,” she muttered, talking to the System. “I can wring them out, and put them in the warmest place available, maybe fan them if I have time, but my need for dry clothing is bigger than my ability to get clothing dry right now.”

  Danielle wondered if she was really being unreasonable by considering so many Skills and Traits she wanted. It was true that she probably wouldn’t be able to get every Skill that ever caught her interest – no one could do everything, after all. The assumption that saving up the mana for new Skills was difficult might not be as reasonable as it felt, though. A tier 1 Skill only cost 100 mana, after all. If a normal person put half their mana into Payment Plan every day, at base level 1 that would be 3 points per day. 33 days would get them to 99 points, and the next day they could take the new Skill and have a couple extra points to use it. If they leveled up by killing one fish every day, like the Ranger had suggested, they’d get the bonus Skill faster than the level.

  Higher tiered Skills also had higher costs, but higher leveled people also had higher mana generation. Add Mana Improvement on top of that – and there was a Mana Development Trait pool, so the special Trait Danielle and Cassy shared obviously wasn't the only way to improve one’s mana – and it didn’t seem like it would really take that long to start piling up amounts of mana that most people in camp were probably still considering unattainably large. Danielle could theoretically save up for a tier 1 Skill in five days and still have one more Skill activation per day than her level 1 neighbors who lacked Mana Improvement. Not to mention that she had the Mana Development Trait pool, which she still hadn’t actually examined in much detail, but now she was thinking maybe she should; if she passed up a different Trait, but the mana Trait paid for it in a few days or weeks, then she could have them both.

  Before she could dive into that properly, though, Akari called everyone to breakfast. Heather suggested they each have a few of the mana tomatoes “before they go bad,” and everyone agreed on eating two for breakfast and reevaluating at dinner. They went pretty well with the fried pemmican, in Danielle’s opinion. The mint tea and tomatoes were an odd combination, but everyone was grateful for a warm beverage to start a chilly day.

  “We should see if we can find some more mint,” Sadie said. “It’s summer, but that obviously doesn’t mean it’s going to be boiling hot all the time, and it’s the best option we have in tea. Unless we found some in the scavenging loot after all?”

  “Oh – I almost forgot about that. I think we should save it, though, it turned out to be chamomile. That’s supposed to be medicinal, right?" Akari asked, turning to Heather. "We probably don’t want to drink it just to warm up, unless we can figure out how to get more.”

  “It must grow around here,” Heather said, “or be able to, at least. It was in the seeds they hid in the boxed dinners.”

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  “So we’ll be able to grow more eventually, but first we have to figure out how to grow things,” Sadie summarized. “OK. It comes back to finding more mint, then.”

  “For now,” Akari agreed.

  “Maybe Heather can Skill-find some,” Sadie suggested.

  “Possibly, especially if it’s done raining,” Danielle replied. “Let’s go see if we’ve got sunshine today.”

  “It’s my turn for hostility sense!” Akari said, and jumped up to join her as she headed for the door.

  Danielle activated Detect Mana Source anyway, and joined Akari in scanning the direction of the walkway, then the building above.

  “I see the hostile person above, same as Heather was saying yesterday,” Akari said.

  “I see someone who is probably Cassy coming down the walkway,” Danielle said. “But point out this hostile person? I want to see if I can pick up any difference in the mana source.”

  “Up there – um, I’m not sure how else to explain where she is,” Akari said, pointing.

  Danielle got closer and looked along her arm. “Looks like most people are staying in again. Well, or are sleeping in maybe. It looks like you’re pointing at the second room-group from the end, second floor.”

  “What? How can you tell that?” Akari asked.

  “I’m seeing all the people, remember?” Danielle said. “I’m going by clusters of four sources.” She squinted at the group of mana sources that seemed most in line with Akari’s arm. “I can’t tell the girls in that room apart, though. You’re only seeing one hostile?”

  “Yeah, just one,” Akari confirmed. “You’re definitely seeing more people in her room?”

  “Yeah. Looks like they’re awake, too, they’re all grouped up rather than spaced out on beds. Anyway, let’s check the weather and let Cassy in,” Danielle said.

  Opening the door turned out to mean letting a cold breeze in. Granted, it wasn’t as cold as Winter Cycle was Inside, but it was unpleasantly chilly, especially by comparison to the first few days they’d spent Outside. Danielle leaned out and waved to Cassy, who waved back in surprise and picked up the pace.

  “It sounds like it’s still raining,” Sadie said.

  “Yeah. Still no sign of the water collecting up or flooding the walkway or anything, but it’s still coming down,” Danielle said. She stepped back to let Cassy in, then closed the door.

  “I’m glad you guys are up,” Cassy said. “It’s miserable out, and the ABCs didn’t catch anything yesterday – they lost their snares again – so they’re all grumpy about having to eat pemmican for breakfast and arguing about what to do today, and I really didn’t want to listen to any more of it.”

  “Yeah, we need to talk about what to do today, too,” Danielle said. “We’re all pretty good with mana, not capped or low. There’s not much point in cutting more tomatoes until we can dry what’s already on the racks, though. Sadie, are your hands OK to try making more drying racks?”

  “I’m pretty sore,” Sadie said. “More importantly, though, I also don’t have any more good straight sticks the right size, and I’m reluctant to spend another whole ball of twine on it.”

  “Maybe we should spend the day making twine then?” Danielle suggested.

  “What – all of us?” Heather asked, startled.

  “Even if we all wanted to, we don’t have nearly enough material for that,” Sadie said. “The vines might be usable if I had the wood for it, but even then I’m not sure.”

  “Hm. We could at least go fishing, then,” Danielle said. “Unless we want to eat Pemmican all day tomorrow, we need to do something. I mean, we’ve got plenty of cherry tomatoes, but it still seems like a good idea to have something to go with them.”

  “Um, I should share a warning about that,” Cassy said unhappily.

  “Oh no,” Akari said. “Is this more advice from your parents?”

  “Yeah. They said, don’t go into the river when it’s been raining, it gets deeper, faster, and stronger, and it can be dangerous.” Cassy sighed. “Maybe we should have set the snares again after all.”

  “Well I’m glad we found that out from your parents, and not by walking all the way to the river,” Heather said.

  “Agreed,” Danielle said. “What do you want to do instead, though?”

  “Your thing from the snare yesterday was a little bigger than the rabbits, right?” Akari said. “Maybe we can make more game-meat glop, but with bigger chunks of tomatoes this time, and maybe some onions?” She looked to Cassy for confirmation and got a nod of agreement. “So we could make a better version, with a larger animal and more veggies, and break open the unclaimed hardtack for bread crumbs, or maybe just to use as biscuits under the game-glop ‘gravy’ right?”

  “That sounds good, but I’m not sure how it helps the food situation tomorrow,” Danielle said.

  “We make enough to put half of it away for tomorrow, is how it helps,” Akari replied.

  “And then we go fishing tomorrow – when hopefully it’ll finally stop raining – and get fish to eat the next day,” Sadie said.

  “What if it doesn’t, though? Stop raining, I mean?” Heather asked fretfully.

  “If it doesn’t stop raining by this afternoon, we could go set snares somewhere on the path to the river,” Cassy suggested. “Then tomorrow, either we empty the snares on the way to your fishing spot, or we just go out to the snares if it’s still raining.”

  “Do you think we’ll catch anything that way?” Heather asked again.

  “Danielle caught something yesterday,” Sadie said. “It’s like we said then; animals need their food every day whether it’s raining or not, same as us. Oh, and that’s where we should put the snares, too: by the tomatoes, where things’ll come looking for food! We promised to show Cassy where they were anyway, and let her help pick. We may as well let her help us keep down the four-legged competition, too.”

  “OK, that’s a good food plan,” Akari said. “If the rain does stop this afternoon or tomorrow, we might be able to get fish and snare meat tomorrow, and be back on track with having food a day or two ahead.”

  “All right, I agree, that’s a good solid plan for the food side of things,” Danielle said. “That leaves us all of this morning and at least half the afternoon to work on other stuff, though. I want to make a proposal for how we should use that time.”

  “Oh no, that’s your ‘this is going to hurt’ tone of voice,” Heather said.

  “It’s probably not going to hurt,” Danielle said. “This is my ‘determined survivor’ tone of voice.”

  “OK, let’s hear it,” Sadie said.

  “We should teach each other stuff,” Danielle said. “Akari’s the best swordsman among us, so we let her lead sword drills, then we take a break and she maybe teaches us about fire starting or something. Or Sadie can teach us her way! Either way, we get a fire started and prop up the tomatoes. Next, I lead staff drills, and then maybe give you as much as possible of the first aid course I took last year. Sadie might not get to lead bow drills until it clears up, but she can still teach us about making cord, even if we don’t get to make much. Cassy can teach us spear drills – I’m guessing we can do those with our staves, just to get started?”

  “Yeah, that would work,” Cassy said. “Maybe for my non-exercise part, I can teach you what my dad taught me about hunting, after that? I think maybe I got taught some stuff that would be mentioned in high school science classes but since nobody here got to high school, it’s not common knowledge.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” Heather said. “I’m not a fighter, my parents made my older sibs do all the hard stuff when we went camping, you know more about how to be a Healer than I do without even having the Class, I’m not an expert on any special subject.”

  “You can give us voice lessons!” Danielle said with a grin. “It’ll still be a nice way to pass the time, it’ll give us a bunch of shared tunes we know to use with Cassy’s Notes on the Wind Skill when she gets her flute made, and if we’re lucky, the other three of us will unlock Breath Support.”

  “Oh. I guess that would work,” Heather agreed.

  “And for your exercise part, you can come up with races for us to do,” Danielle said.

  “What happened to this not being something that’ll hurt?” Heather asked.

  “It doesn’t have to be running. It can be a race to do anything fast at all. It’s to work on unlocking Speed Improvement – you have to show the System you want to be fast, right?” Danielle grinned. “Speed Improvement isn’t just about walking. You can pick what we race at, and we’ll use the competition as encouragement to push ourselves to get faster at whatever it is.”

  “I kind of like this idea,” Cassy said, “but I don’t think we’ll get all of that done today.”

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