Peter blushed brick red. “So maybe I’m an expert in what people think is bossy, then,” he said.

  “I swear I don’t mean it that way,” Danielle said, blushing a little herself. “I’m just bad at rewording suggestions so they sound more, um, optional I guess.”

  “It’s fine,” Lucas said. “I’m used to Peter, I get it.”

  “Thanks. Um, since you’re a Healer, would you be willing to be called on in case of people needing healing? The Rangers are pretty serious about making sure Healers get paid for their services, and I guess you don’t exactly have a party to protect you, but if our party was calling on you, we’d do that job,” Danielle asked him.

  “I don’t mind,” Lucas said. “I’m not sure how helpful I’d be, though, I might have picked the wrong starting Skills.”

  “Oh? Do you mind telling me what you have?” Danielle asked.

  “Disinfect Wound and Weaken Disease,” Lucas said. “I was worrying about infected thorn punctures and skinned knees, in the Dome – not people with swords killing each other for mana.”

  “Interesting. I guess you must be pretty focused on leveling up, then?” Danielle asked.

  “Pretty focused on finding my daily rabbit, really,” Lucas said. “I kind of admire the way you’re thinking ahead to winter already. I’m just praying I’ll get the hang of snaring rabbits before I run out of pemmican. I don’t even have a clue what to replace the hardtack with; it’s lousy bread but it’s something!”

  “Working with a hunting party helps,” Danielle said. “We’ve never all caught a rabbit on the same day, but if one of us does, all four – er, five, of us can eat it. Granted, we don’t have a lot of leftovers to worry about that way,” she joked.

  “Aren’t you the people with three rabbits on the fire?” Lucas asked.

  “Yeah, but we’re planning to get three meals out of them, too,” Danielle said. “Oh, my Skill’s about to end,” she added. “Give me your room number real quick so I can find you if we need someone to disinfect?”

  “I’m Peter’s roommate,” Lucas said. “You already put it in your Planner.”

  “Oh, right – heh, good thing, too, because the Skill ended while you were talking.”

  “Do you really think there’s a chance you’ll need to find me just to do wound cleaning, though?” Lucas asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Danielle said. “I figure when there’s multiple people wounded, anything that saves mana for the people with Close Wound is worth doing. Besides, neither of the other Healers I know has anything at all for disease. If one person in a room is sick, then probably the other three have been infected too; I can totally imagine paying you to use Weaken Disease on everyone so the three that aren’t sick in bed yet can get a lighter case, and keep finding food.”

  “Oh. Huh. I guess that would make sense. I was thinking I’d be using it to help people get over food poisoning faster, if they got a little desperate and ate something they shouldn’t have,” Lucas said. “It’s not like any of us are used to cooking for ourselves anyway.”

  “Also a good point,” Danielle said. “There are Skills for finding food, and Skills for purifying food, and Skills for identifying food, but nobody can have all of them at once – well, I mean eventually they could, but not yet. Unless they went all in on that theme in the Dome maybe, but in that case, they probably have other problems.”

  “Not having any, or having the wrong one, is a problem too, though,” Peter said. “As we’ve been learning.”

  “That’s why we work with our friends,” Danielle said. “Maybe one person in a room has a finding Skill and another has Purify; or maybe one Healer has Disinfect and another has Align Body and in a dire enough situation, the person using Close Wound might be a third person, and when they all catch colds from being out in the rain taking care of an emergency, you come along with Weaken Disease. Teamwork!”

  “All right, all right, point made,” Peter said. He sounded annoyed but he was still giving her a lopsided smile, so Danielle figured it wasn’t really too bad. “Next thing I know you’ll be starting a mission Hospital,” he joked.

  “Actually, my party’s been talking about getting the Healers into a System org and getting a room in the name of the org to be a quarantine room, or maybe even a kind of clinic,” Danielle said. “We figure if we can get enough people to donate 5 mana each, we can get one room easy, maybe even a room in each building. We haven’t had a chance to ask if that’s something we can really do, though – get a room in the name of an org, I mean. Do you want in on that, if we can figure out how to make it happen?” she asked Lucas.

  “Definitely,” Lucas said.

  “Cool. I’ll keep you informed if we make any progress on it, then,” Danielle told him with a nod.

  “I’ve gotta give you credit,” Peter said. “Earlier I was thinking that you seemed like someone who was afraid to think ahead too far, but you’re really not afraid to think big. You just have a different idea from a lot of us about what’s realistic and what’s not.”

  “That could be,” Danielle admitted. “I guess to some people, it might sound defeatist to say we should plan for five to ten years and not drive ourselves to the edge trying to get back in one, but to me, it’s not defeatist, it’s – well, survivalist. When they said, ‘You’re going Outside, like it or not,’ I didn’t waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to escape the Sending. I worked on figuring out how to end up in the best position once I was Outside, instead. Now they’re saying, ‘Sent pretty reliably Return in five to ten years,’ and I’m looking at what I knew a month ago, and what I knew a week ago, and what I know now, and I’m thinking the best path to survival is to plan for five to ten years.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “How can you even hope to plan that far ahead, though?” Lucas asked. “I mean, you said it yourself – comparing what we thought we knew a month ago to what we learned a week ago to what you learned during the week, how can you think you have enough information to plan for next week, let alone next year, or five years from now?”

  “I’m not trying to plan next year in detail; but I’m planning to figure out what I need to get to next year,” Danielle said. “I’m working on food preservation, I’m thinking about the winter cold and flu season, I’m trying to get my Party’s Healer leveled up and get Skills that will let us make tools so when we suddenly need tools to do something we haven’t even imagined yet, we can do something about it. It’s all kind of overwhelming, but we can look at what we know we need and do the next piece. I just have to trust that God will handle all the things that are out of my control.”

  “Which is still practically everything,” Peter said.

  “It’s a good thing God is infinite,” Danielle agreed, “and at least He knows what’s coming, right?”

  “I hope you’re not counting on your imaginary guy in the sky to tell you stuff,” a girl sitting nearby said.

  “Um, no, like I said, the plan is to do my best with what I’ve got each day, adjust my plans as new information becomes available, and trust God to handle what’s out of my control anyway,” Danielle said.

  “So basically, you’re psyching yourself out of fretting over the stuff you can’t do anything about,” the girl said.

  “I guess that’s one way to describe it,” Danielle said. “Not the way I would describe it, but – ”

  “You can do that without religion, you know,” the girl interrupted.

  “You seem like you have a bone to pick with someone,” Danielle said, “but I’m not really up for a big philosophical argument right now. I’m going to go see if my lunch is cooked through yet.” She started walking away.

  “Hey, wait, you can’t just walk off like that!” the girl objected. “Isn’t it your Christian duty to prove me wrong or something?”

  “You’re not a Christian, you don’t get to tell me what my ‘Christian duties’ are,” Danielle said. “And no, I don’t have a duty to argue with you. I have a duty to tell you the truth, which I’ve done. Changing your mind is God’s job.”

  “Well it’s not going to happen!” the girl exclaimed.

  “Then it’s not my problem,” Danielle said, and kept walking.

  Behind her, she heard Peter saying, “Smooth, Layla. I’m sure you made a great first impression by attacking her religion. Hey, good news though, you never even introduced yourself, so at least she doesn’t know your name!”

  “Shut up, head case,” the girl said.

  Danielle made herself stop listening, and went over to the fire. She found Sadie there, also checking on their rabbits. “How are they looking?” Danielle asked.

  “Ready, I think,” Sadie said. “You know, she was probably just trying to help.”

  “Who, argument girl?” Danielle asked.

  “You’ve been known to come off kind of abrasive yourself sometimes,” Sadie said.

  “Yeah, well. I’m working on it,” Danielle said. “I’m trying to do my best for everyone, too, but this day of rest is honestly starting to get kind of exhausting.”

  “You always do,” Sadie said.

  “What? What do I always do?” Danielle asked in surprise.

  “Your best for everyone around you,” Sadie said. “I like that about you. You don’t always get it right, but you always try. Sometimes it comes off as bossy or whatever, but once I really got to know you, I realized even then, it’s usually trying to help. In your head, anyway.”

  “Oh. Thank you,” Danielle said awkwardly.

  “I’m just saying, argument girl might be trying, too. She figures you’ll be a better survivor if you face the harsh truth. Probably,” Sadie said. “I mean, either she messed up, or I’m wrong and she’s just trolling for an argument. Maybe give her some benefit of the doubt, though.”

  “OK. That’s a good perspective check,” Danielle said stiffly. “Not that I was exactly going to do anything about it one way or the other, but still. Thanks.”

  Sadie shrugged. “I didn’t exactly think you were going to pick a fight with her. You have a lot of stuff going on, though,” she said. “You’re planning big stuff like the hospital rooms, and you have Skills that everyone’s eventually going to want you to use for them. I feel like you might be the kind of person that other people shouldn’t be stinging up, because you’re going to end up important.”

  “Thank you, I think?” Danielle said, even more awkwardly. “Seriously though, I know the Rangers are excited about the one Skill, but I think you’re maybe blowing this out of proportion.”

  Sadie shrugged again. “Just promise me you won’t go making any of that stuff a religion-club only thing,” she said.

  “I really think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” Danielle said, “but for what it’s worth? If I actually got to where I had the influence to make that promise matter? I’d be looking out for everyone that was willing to be looked out for.”

  “Who do you think wouldn’t want to be looked out for?” Sadie asked.

  “I was thinking of Mr. Wolves Don’t Need Help With Anything,” Danielle said.

  “Oh. Yeah, OK, the Wolf Pack probably wouldn’t accept any help you’d be willing to give,” Sadie said.

  “It probably wouldn’t be safe to let them into infirmary rooms, either,” Danielle pointed out. “I don’t know how their roommates are handling things as it is – I mean, are they forced to join or die? Do they have some kind of understanding? Anyway. I’m just saying, for stuff like the infirmary rooms, there might be some issues with certain people. I’m not figuring to make them specific to different religions unless people start fighting over it though. Um, like with weapons. If that happened, we might have to split things up.”

  “I think these are done,” Sadie said.

  “What? Oh, the rabbits. Yeah, they look pretty done to me too,” Danielle confirmed. “Let’s take them inside to divide up.”

  “Not planning to eat out here?” Sadie asked.

  “There’s nowhere to cut them out here, and we also need to get the dinner and breakfast parts in the cold box as soon as they’re cooled off enough,” Danielle said. “Besides, I’ve mingled plenty. I need a break from the crowd. I woke up this morning thinking maybe there’d be four or five people instead of three like last week; instead there were nearly twenty, and the picnic part got even bigger.”

  “Does it feel good, to be popular?” Sadie asked.

  “This isn’t being popular, this is being a target,” Danielle said. “The Wolves are out to avenge that guy’s ego, the vast majority of people that watched the prayer meeting were treating it like an entertainment stream, the bigger crowd that came after only wanted to use the fire and the excuse to hang out. Don’t get me wrong, I used the circumstances too, when I made that big announcement; but it was an unpopular announcement, and I’m glad we’re planning to be out of camp tomorrow.”

  “I think it’d be weird,” Sadie said. “Actually being popular, I mean.”

  “Yeah, probably. I’m too used to thinking of popular people as dangerous,” Danielle admitted. “Well, in a different way from how the Wolf Pack is dangerous. Just, you know, socially dangerous.”

  “They weren’t all as bad as Vanessa and Mallory,” Sadie said, carefully lifting the rabbits and their skewer off the forked sticks. “Can you get the other stick?”

  Danielle walked around the fire to get the other stick, then used it to wave at Akari and Heather, who were talking with some of the Lemonade party. Akari waved back in acknowledgement. Danielle and Sadie started toward the building.

  “Vanessa and Mallory have to be around the camp somewhere,” Danielle said. “I wish I could say that doesn’t worry me, but Vanessa has a track record of trying to keep me from using anything good.”

  “Hopefully they’re way over on the front side of building one,” Sadie said.

  “Hopefully neither of them ends up on the town council when we finally elect one,” Danielle replied. “Have you seen where Cassy got to?”

  “We let her into the room to read,” Sadie said. “She got to her limit with the crowd faster than you did.”

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