Cleaning Sunny up was a chore. She was absolutely filthy, which hadn’t been noticeable at first between the oversized smock and the smell of grease in the air, and Otter’s sense of smell being absolutely dulled by her brain still being burned out from using her Thread of Fate.

  It hadn’t been like this the st time. The link with Rua had gone smoother in every possible way. In a sense, it’d even been an enjoyable experience. The link with Sunny was anything but, and Otter wasn’t sure if it was the girl’s fault, something to do with the Vexurian armour, or the skill itself. It was entirely possible that running around, using it in succession wasn’t a good idea.

  Otter was going to have to take care not to use the skill again. Not only did it have permanent consequences by reserving one point of Will, but it also allowed someone access to her mind. It wasn’t full telepathy, or a hive mind, or anything like that, but it was still too intimate a thing to share with just anyone.

  In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have used it on Sunny. But something in her mind had just been telling her over and over and over again to do it. Once the thought had entered her brain, it’d been unshakeable. An incontestable truth. It was just something that was going to happen, just like the sun coming up in the morning, the wind continuing to blow, or banana chips remaining absolutely disgusting.

  Sunny was covered in grime, sweat, and swamp stink. Apparently ten years worth of it, if that truly were how long she’d been stuck in that suit of armour. They’d had to switch out the water in the tub four times before it finally didn’t come out a very gross colour.

  Cleaning her gave Otter the opportunity to inspect Sunny for injuries. She distinctly remembered cutting the girl’s skin open and drawing blood getting those cloths off her. But there was no sign of any wounds. No scars. Just unblemished skin. Another mystery to add to the pile.

  And then there was the matter of her colr. The thin band of metal remained intact, and no amount of filing at it seemed to even scratch it. Otter had to resign herself to leaving it on for the time being, and trying to wash under and around the damnable thing.

  Afterwards, Otter and Rua took their turns, the other having the duty of watching Sunny and making sure she didn’t hurt herself if left unattended. Not that it seemed an issue, after cooking them breakfast and not setting the cabin on fire.

  Honestly, she’d done a better and neater job of food than Otter would’ve.

  Still, it felt irresponsible to leave a kid unwatched, especially when they had no idea why she was a kid. Rua grumbled about ‘parenting responsibilities,’ very stubbornly remaining adamant she was not in any way anyone’s “mama.”

  Sunny, of course, disagreed.

  Afterwards, they began the somewhat shameful task of ‘naked undry.’ Sunny was the only one of the three with clean clothes, and apparently they hadn’t been out long enough for Otter’s Will to regenerate, something that according to Rua only happened at the hours of noon and midnight, coming back all at once.

  They only let the clothes air dry for an hour before putting them back on. Prancing around naked with a child in the house felt weird at best, absolutely scandalous at worst. They really needed to stop making trips into the swamp until they were ready to leave. Or at least, Rua had to stop burning all her Will when they did so they’d at least have some repcement clothes.

  The entire time, Rua watched Sunny with narrowed eyes, as if suspicious she were up to something. Otter found the whole thing amusing, and Sunny remained oblivious to the scrutiny, flitting between absolute joy at every little sensation around her – oh how she giggled as Otter had scrubbed her down in the tub – and worry she’d make Otter upset in some way. Despite that, she seemed completely ignorant of Rua’s actual tangible disapproval.

  Brushing her hair proved a challenge. Her hair was just so thick and unruly, and she didn’t seem capable of sitting still while Otter worked at it. The entire time, she looked pleadingly at Rua to save her, who showed no mercy or sympathy. If anything, she seemed grimly happy that Sunny was undergoing some distress.

  It was a homey kind of domesticity. One Otter was happy to enjoy, even if Rua’s teeth were on edge the entire time. Half the fun was in teasing Rua’s newfound entry into motherhood.

  Otter went through her messages, and as usual, there was nothing interesting. A lot of people whingeing that it was unfair she had magic, and they didn’t. People she never really cared for requesting alliances, people who never would make the request if they’d known who she really was. Beast Infection apparently trying to be STI’s PR man and requesting aid of any kind.

  And, of course, an obligatory dick pic message. Yeah, that figured. This was why she didn’t check these stupid things.

  In retaliation, she showed Rua how to set up a Spasm account with a throwaway burner e-mail and phone number, and had her take a clip of Otter’s dick. It got sent to the offending idiot, with the caption, “Mine’s bigger LOL.”

  The rest of the day was spent trying to pry information out of Sunny. Any information. Where she came from. Why was she a kid. Why she thought Rua was her mother. Who put her in the armour. How long had she been in it. Why was she alive if she’d spent the st ten years sleeping in it. What was her favourite colour. What kind of food did she like.

  She always answered the same. With a shy shrug. She even held up under tickle torture.

  Sunny helped Rua cook. She knew her way around the kitchen and all of its contents as if she’d lived there for ages. And Otter wanted to bme the lingering headache, but it wasn’t until she sat down in a chair at the dinner table did she notice something that should’ve been obvious to her the second they’d left the bedroom.

  She was sitting in a dining room chair. And not the cursed chair, the destroyer of spines and lower back muscles. Because there were now three dining room chairs.

  “Where did this come from?” Otter asked. “Have you been holding out on me this whole time?”

  Rua looked confused, and then noticed the chairs herself. “Huh.”

  Rua’s original chair was an unadorned wooden piece, nailed together by a competent if not skilled carpenter. The two new additions were all one piece, wood with no seams, no nails, no glue.

  “Did you do this, my sunny girl?” Otter asked.

  Sunny nodded, smiling.

  “How?”

  She shyly shrugged.

  Rua leaned into one, sniffing. “Pact magic.”

  “Really?”

  “I can smell it.”

  Otter gave it an experimental sniff. It just smelled like wood to her.

  “Can you do Pact magic?” Otter asked.

  Sunny shrugged, then thought better of it as she’d clearly been caught, and nodded.

  “It’s weird she can do Pact magic, right?”

  “No,” Rua said. “She needs a Pact if she was made into a Vexurian. The armour feeds on it. It’s how it functions. So, it looks like she has some kind of wood shaping ability. Probably crafting-reted. Useless to a warmongering empire, so into the suit of armour she goes, I guess.”

  “Is that true?” Otter asked. “Can my sunny little girl craft things with wood?”

  Sunny smiled, and nodded.

  “Well, she hasn’t lied so far,” Rua muttered, as if that were some kind of indictment against her characters instead of a vindication.

  Otter leaned back in her new chair, her back blissfully enjoying not being assaulted by shoddy construction and poor padding. Sure, it was hard and stiff, but it was better than the alternative by leagues.

  “What is weird is that the Dreamers don’t make Pacts with children,” Rua said. “Sixteen, at youngest.”

  “Well, we already knew she was an adult. Something happened to her to… I don’t know. De-age her?”

  Rua grunted, her arms crossed and her eyes on Sunny, who seemed to enjoy the attention.

  Sunny giggled to herself, and waved.

  “She’s a weird kid, though,” Otter conceded. “She probably gets it from me.”

  “She’s not our kid.”

  “If you want, I can always knock you up. We can give her a sister or a brother.” Otter waggled her eyebrows in what she assumed was a seductive way.

  “Damned penoa. I cannot wait until we get to the main isnd.”

  “What, so you can ditch me and our poor daughter? Leave me a single father? You’re breaking my heart.”

  “No, so you can finally… you know what, never mind. This isn’t as funny as you think it is. You know there’s going to be a problem when we get to the mainnd. For one, she’s very obviously Criobani. People aren’t going to take kindly to that.”

  “You hear that, Sunny? Fantasy racism. Man, this sucks. All because you have green eyes.”

  Sunny giggled, staring off into the distance away from them both. She gave a shrug.

  “You don’t even actually want to be a dad,” Rua said. “You’re only saying that because you think this whole thing is funny, and because you’re penoa.”

  “Hey, it can be a combination of things. I think I’d be a great dad. I could teach her how to own the noobs, and how to prepare for and run raids, and how to do the math to know when it’s optimal to burst down your enemy with DPS. And then, when she’s safely eighteen and not a day before, I’ll show her how to fsh just enough cleavage to border the line between a gaming streamer and a tiddy streamer.”

  “I don’t know what any of that is, but I’m going to assume none of it is a relevant life skill.”

  Sunny shook her head furiously, enough to send her copper ringlets flying in every direction. Then she pointed at Rua and said, “Mama.”

  “See?” Rua said. “She’s on my side.”

  “Lies, she was clearly disagreeing with… wait. If she’s talking to us, why isn’t she looking at either one of us?”

  “She just said… well, not my name, but she said that thing she calls me in error.”

  Sunny smiled shyly at the distance, and shuffled her feet.

  “Sunny,” Otter asked. “Pay attention to me, girl. Are you talking to someone right now?”

  She looked over, and nodded emphatically, and pointed at the air. “Unca.”

  “Unca?” What the incestuous Greek pantheon did that mean? Wait. “Uncle?”

  “Unca,” she said again, nodding and pointing at something that wasn’t there.

  Panic hit Otter.

  “She’s looking at a chat window,” she said. “Someone’s talking to her. Sunny, disconnect. Right now. Just think the word.”

  Sunny looked between Otter and the window, as if uncertain.

  “Listen to her,” Rua snapped. “Disconnect!”

  Sunny yelped, and her whole posture changed. Otter brought up her menu, checking the Online settings. Sure enough, another name had been added to the list: Sunny.

  “I should’ve realized. I’m so fucking stupid,” she said. “Who do you think that was?”

  “Holt, obviously,” Rua said. “Probably sniffing around for answers. Trying to figure out how you’re adding people into his game. The fact that Sunny’s a child is probably adding to the mystery on his end.”

  “What do we do? She can’t talk to him.”

  “Obviously.” Rua squatted down, gently taking Sunny by the shoulders. “You need to listen to me. If that man tries talking to you again, you disconnect, okay?”

  Sunny’s brow furrowed, and her lip began to quiver.

  “I’m not mad at you,” Rua said, her tone going gentle. “I mean, I still want to throw you in a ke, but I’m not any madder than I was ten minutes ago. That man is no good. As a matter of fact, if anyone tries to message you that isn’t me or Otter, you disconnect. It’s for your safety. Do you understand?”

  Sunny wrung her hands, but she nodded.

  “You’ve had a big day. We got you out of that armour, you carried us all the way home all by your little self, you made us food, you had your first bath in ten years… How about we eat, and then I put you to bed?”

  Sunny held out her arms. “Up.”

  “You heard the girl,” Otter said. “She wants uppies.”

  Otter didn’t have the bravery to make the joke that any uppies with Rua was not in fact that far up. She was already irritated enough as it was, and Otter liked the idea of having sex in her future.

  “Uppies,” Sunny repeated, flexing her fingers.

  Rua dramatically sighed, and picked Sunny up, and then sat her in her p at the table. Otter set out the bowls and food. Nothing fancy this time. No questionable otherworldly food. Just stew, with jaffa.

  Sunny was a messy eater. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind on whether her movements were very precise and coordinated, or childishly clumsy, flitting between the two from one moment to the next. Rua allowed her the mess right up until Sunny snuck a surprise kiss on her cheek that left a spot of stew behind. And then it was diligent, annoyed wiping with a cloth at every opportunity.

  Afterwards, Otter took her to bed while Rua cleaned up. Sunny was all tucked in and ready to go to sleep, if not for one problem.

  “Not tired,” Sunny said.

  Otter rolled her eyes. Of course.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you a quick bedtime story, and then you have to go to sleep, okay?”

  Sunny’s eyes widened, and then she gave a furious nod.

  “Alright. I’ve got just the one. Stood the test of time and everything. Just won’t get into the ter bits. That’s where the real divisive stuff is, and the st thing I want to do is hear you repeating it and having some ince… you know what, never mind.

  “A long time ago, in a gaxy far, far away…”