When we were done, I asked her about what sort of teology existed on Amaranth. She told me she mostly kept to the forest, but she did have some iions with the trolls to the north now and then. She retty sure they didn’t have anything like guns, steam power, or trains. In fact, it sounded like even a good steel sword was something of a rarity. I got the impression of a world that had a teological level something like Europe a millennia or mo.

  “Xy, I need your help.”

  “Of course, Abby. I will charge you the appropriate amount of chocote, of course.”

  I ughed. “I’m one bar up on you, I believe.”

  “I suppose you are,” she said. “Let’s go outside to talk, though.”

  I nodded, grabbed a few things, a out with her. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time getting dressed, so I put ohy bck dress I had bought from the thrift store because it felt odd to go into the woods naked. It fit me pretty well; I reminded myself to look myself over in the mirror ter.

  “So,” I said, feeling it was all a mess to expin. “That neancer who was here talk to me. He’s trapped inside, and all he do is chatter.”

  Chatter! And after I told you all about my treasure horde! A quiet while you were boning the dryad! I didn’t even tell you that you should use one of my boo double pee her, sihey were right there.

  “That’s strange. But I trust you, Abby. You’re a good woman.”

  The funny thing was, it felt very o be called a “good woman,” and not just the “good” part. “It is pretty strange,” I agreed, not ready to address the other question. “Everything about this is strange, and that’s just part of it. Anyway, he has told me that he hid some treasure not far from here.” I reached for my notebook.

  Don’t show her the map! She’ll steal it!

  Enash thought that, because that’s what he would do. I showed her the map and tried to describe the distances involved. “Does that ndmark rock sound familiar? Or the cave?”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t notice rocks like I do trees. If it’s all grown over, I probably wouldn’t know about it. From what you say, it’s in my territory.”

  Tell her about the zombies. That’ll scare her away.

  I was going to, anyway. “Acc to E – the neahere are zombies proteg the treasure.”

  Xy frowned. “Zombies don’t st very long. Why did you start to say ohing, and then say something else?”

  Don’t tell her. Say you were about to say Evil Neancer.

  There were certainly times for pying things close to the vest, but I didn’t know that this was one of them. I had precisely one person I could turn to for help in this world. And okay, we’d just had sex and I was feeling intimate. “The neancer’s name. I was about to say his name.”

  “Oh. What’s his name?”

  Eagle. Evil. Email. Eerce.

  Enash seemed to have absorbed some of Earth culture. Had he been viewing our media from Amaranth? That would expin how he got the idea to make a futa. “Enash,” I said, and waited.

  Xy’s eyes widened. “The one who cursed the orcs?”

  “I assume so. I haven’t quizzed him about it.”

  They were always going on about their long sgs!

  “Actually, he just admitted it,” I told her.

  “He’s talking to you now? And he hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he see, too? Was he watg when –”

  “Yes.” I should have told her about that part, but how do you expin something like that? For that matter, how was I going to expin it now?

  Fortunately, Xy distracted herself from that topic. “He was really evil, Abby. The absolute worst, from what I heard. They couldn’t even kill him, just seal him away in a – oh.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re sure he ’t get loose from your head?”

  I shrugged. “I’m learning as I go, and doing the best I , Xy. I don’t think he . If he could, I think he would have.”

  “This treasure he told you about, it could be a trap.”

  “Absolutely. But so far, he hasn’t tried to kill me, and he wanted me t Earth ons to try to deal with the zombies he left behind. That was why I had that pistol you fired. I’m thinking that me dying is not good for him. This is the only body he has any sciousness in, and when I’m up oh he ’t seem to talk to me. I don’t trust him, and I’m not pretending to trust him, but I think there’s a good ce he wants me to have his stuff so that I’ll be more likely to survive.” And more likely to kill things?

  “I don’t like it, Abby.”

  “I get that. But Enash isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.”

  Am too!

  “He speuries building a portal, and it didn’t work the way he thought it would,” I said. “He didn’t expect to be trapped like this. I think it’s worthwhile at least log the cave.”

  She’s trying to hold you back from greatness. You ’t trust her, but she makes a useful pawn. Easy on the eyes, too. You know, even after they are zombies, with enough lube –

  “You have a very funny expression on your face, Abby.”

  “That’s because Enash suggested something disgusting.”

  It’s like a fleshlight, but actually made of flesh.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll trust you on that. So, we find the cave, and then what?”

  “Then I figure out how to prepare for it.”

  “We,” she corrected.

  I wasn’t going to object.

  “Let’s go take a look.” She said something I didn’t uand, and a squirrel hopped out of the bush. She said something to it in a high, chittering voice, and it hopped away. “They aren’t very bright, but they do simple things. That one is going in the general dire and asking other squirrels about whether or not they’ve seen a cave a person could fit into.”

  She waved, and a path parted for us. “We’ll be able to pick up a trail the deer use soon, but I think they have always known to avoid the tomb here, so none of the trails e very close.”

  I ged into shorts and a sweatshirt, while Xy watched, and I grabbed my backpad the crowbar. It felt good to have something heavy in my hand. Xy had already gone dowh she had made by the time I got set. It wasn’t any wider than it o be, and I often had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Once I uimated the size of my chest and got a little tear in my sweatshirt. It wasn’t i. Yeah, as far as I khere was no one around but the animals and Xy, but g about that kind of thing was ingrained from years of western civilization.

  I caught up to her, but it wasn’t easy.

  Five miles on a city street is an hour and a half for me, max. But this was harder than that. It got easier when we found the deer trail, but of course the trail didn’t ght toward where we wao go. I tried to map it, but the light in the forest was almost always i, so I couldn’t fix dire by the sun.

  Very soon, I was not at all certain that I could find my way home again.

  I did not like being depe on someone. Never had. It was the reason for a lot of decisions in my life. I worked for myself, because w for someone else meant being depe on them. I didn’t have anyone w for me, because same. In my less charitable moments, I saw moionships as exercises in codependence, which was unfair. I knew a lot of people with healthy monogamous retionships. But the idea of being depe on one person for sex? No. Being poly hadn’t gotten me more sex, but it meant that I wasn’t depe on a single source for that, or for love and affe.

  It sure had been nice when Xy said, “we.”

  Sure does have a nice ass, doesn’t she?

  “Bro,” I whispered under my breath.

  A squirrel came and chittered at Xy, and she stopped a over to listen to it.

  Yes, she did have a nice ass.

  But wheraightened she was serious. “Trolls,” she told me, as if that expined everything.

  Blue, tall, and usually nky. Se, but even stupider than you for the most part. ’t fuless they’re drunk, or the men ’t and the women won’t. They make pretty good zombies.

  I suppose that was sort of helpful, if a little too focused on their sexual habits. “What about trolls?” I asked.

  “They’ve been spotted entering the forest, from the north, against reement. I fear that soon they will start chopping down trees, for why else would they e?” She was obviously torn.

  “We go deal with it together,” I said. We, again.

  She shook her head. “You move slowly through the trees, Abby. No. I must take care of it myself.” She bent down to talk to the squirrel.

  “I caught up to you,” I pointed out. “I’m not that slow.”

  She finished her squirrel versation. “I was careful not to get too far ahead, Abby. No. It is twice this distance away, and I want to get there before night falls.” She poi the squirrel. “This is Nutty. He will guide you home, when it starts to get dark. Just hop three times, and he’ll know you’re ready, and until that he’ll follow you. For now, we must go separate ways. I wish you lu finding your cave, Abby.”

  Then she walked off the path. The leaves and things moved out of her way, as she ran. Could I run that fast? Maybe. If I could keep running that fast for ten miles, it was because Abby was a lot better ruhan Abel. In any case, she wasn’t clearing a path, because it closed up behind her. In seds, I couldn’t see her anymore.

  So I searched as best I could, with Nutty hopping behind me.

  I’d gone from depe on a beautiful green dryad to being depe on a squirrel named Nutty. Things were not looking up.

  It was starting to get dark, and I was about to give up, when I found what might be the rock. It had vaguely humanoid features, if you looked at it the right way, but if it had a long had broken off. I could see a spot where it might have been, and subsequently eroded almost smooth.

  It might be. I don’t know. Time ges so much. Let’s search for the cave.

  I was tempted. But being out here in the dark wasn’t appealing. And even if I found the cave, I wouldn’t go on without more preparation. I wanted Xy at my back, too. In the sario I was imagining, if the zombies were too much, I could Dimension Step away, and if they chased, Xy’s vines could stop them.

  “No,” I told Enash. “I want my saw. It’s getting dark, and I don’t know what’s in the forest.” There was a very bad movie in that idea, somewhere. Futa saw Zombie Massacre.

  But we’re so close.

  “But we want to succeed, not die due to impatience.”

  Feeling ridiculous, I hopped three times for Nutty the squirrel. It made my chest hurt, not unbearably, but in a whole new way.

  Maybe I needed a bra, after all. It was very good I hadn’t been able to run after Xy, because I would have tried, and it would not have gone well. But there wasn’t time to think about that, because Nutty was on the move, and I o follow my small little guide or be hopelessly lost in the darkening forest.

  He did a good job, though. It was dark when I got back, and eveing the st of the trail mix in my backpack except for a few nuts didn’t stop me from being hungry and tired.

  I checked my Endurance.

  Endurance: 2/30

  Evehaerday. I offered Nutty the three almonds and a hazelnut that I had saved for him. He chittered at me, which of course I didn’t uand, and gobbled them down. I hoped the salt on them wasn’t bad for him. I took a moment to watch him eat and the inside.

  I felt like I had menda items on my to do list when I fihe day than when I’d started, and that was usually the definition of a bad day. But watg Xy shower, a so much joy out of flushing a leaf down a toilet, retty good. And of course, fug her. I really hoped she was okay. She better be.

  My world of agendas and schedules on spreadsheets was out of trol, but it wasn’t all bad, at all.

  TheAmaraine