When Otter awoke in the morning, she was treated to a warm sight. Rua, who’d started off the night on the left side of the bed, leaving Otter sandwiched between her and Sunny, had somehow migrated to the middle, pressed against Otter with her arms wrapped around the little redheaded girl.

  She would have appreciated it more if her brain didn’t feel like hammered potato mush that had been fried in sriracha. And with her luck, this world probably didn’t have ibuprofen. Her brain hadn’t felt like this since…. Well, since before she’d logged into the game.

  But this was a different kind of headache than she was used to. More battery acid, less icepick in the eye.

  Otter tentatively reached out through the link to both Rua and Sunny. She withdrew her questing senses the second they touched either. It was like part of her brain burned when she tried, and she didn’t know if it was due to something wrong with the link itself, or if both of them were in just as much pain.

  It’d been starting to feel fine by the end of the night. Otter had been freely able to use it during her… activities… with Rua. But now that she was just waking up, it was back to nothing but pain.

  Well, years with Sami had taught her how to deal with a headache. She began to rub at the area between her thumb and forefinger, and went questing for cups to fill with water, and a warm washcloth.

  She returned with a tray filled with what she could muster, pced the washcloth on Sunny’s head – she was on her back, as opposed to Rua’s awkward side-sleep position – and settled for massaging Rua’s hand while drinking her own water.

  The room wasn’t exactly lit well, even with what passed for sunlight filtering in through the room’s only window, but something seemed off. Watching the two of them while easing her aching head, Otter wasn’t exactly sure what it was. But the hamster wheel in her brain slowly chugged along, and the more she looked at the two of them, the quicker it turned.

  Rua was short. An inescapable curse, to be sure. The kind of small that would make her look like a child if she definitely didn’t have woman parts going on, or the tone and definition you really only got from being an adult that worked out. The kind of small that made Otter want to just kind of … pick her up and throw her down, maybe bully her a bit. But in a fun way.

  But Rua seemed shorter than usual. No. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t that Rua was shorter. It was that Sunny was bigger.

  If Otter had to make a guess – and she was particurly bad at on-the-fly measurements – Sunny had been maybe four feet tall before they’d gone to bed. She’d easily gained maybe eight inches overnight. She was nearly the size of Rua.

  “Huh,” Otter said.

  Okay. Chalk that up in the ‘weird’ column for Sunny, which was an increasingly longer list.

  Maybe she’d hit puberty overnight or something. Fantasy world puberty. Which was apparently super fast. Or… was she regaining the age she’d lost, since her severing from the armor? Why had she lost it in the first pce?

  Otter checked with the link again, focusing wholly on Sunny. She pushed past the pain, trying to get any information she could. It was an intrusion, she knew. Sunny had never consented to the link. She hadn’t asked to be emotionally and mentally bonded to someone else.

  But she also probably hadn’t consented to being shoved into a metal suit of armour and forced to fight as a mindless soldier. Hadn’t asked to be buried in the mud and forgotten for years. Maybe forever. Just stuck in the filth of the swamp, entombed forever.

  And Otter had to make sure Sunny wasn’t a threat. It was easy to dismiss her, to just assume she was harmless because she looked and acted like a child. She should’ve done this sooner. If not for her own safety, than for Rua’s. Maybe even for Sunny’s herself.

  Navigating the link with Sunny was like walking naked through a thornbush covered in salt and lemon juice. Every synapse cut and then burned. Every thought was a ndmine of stinging pain.

  And through it all, Otter couldn’t discern any of it. Reading Rua was easy. It was like having a second body, where she could feel base emotions and bask in them, experience every sensation, both physical and mental. It wasn’t telepathy by any means, but in a way it was so much more intimate. It was like donning a warm bnket on a cold night.

  Sunny was like a cloak made of razor bdes. Putting those sensations over herself, Otter could feel herself being cut, blood being drawn at even the slightest shift. And worse, it was like every wound was being pped at, her essence being gobbled down and devoured for fuel.

  But there was no sense of maliciousness. No feeling of spite or anger or deviousness. No malign intent.

  Something about being in Sunny’s mind made Otter think of a leech. Parasitic, to be sure, but not out of any desire to do harm. Just… surviving.

  Otter withdrew herself carefully from her awareness of the link, tucking it into the back of her mind. Her headache intensified, but it was a small price. When she came to, focusing back on the real world, Sunny’s eyes were open and watching her.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Otter said in a whisper.

  She made a grunt. The kind you’d make when rudely awakened from a good sleep.

  “Wanna make some breakfast?” Otter asked.

  Sunny yawned, and then stretched before wriggling out of Rua’s embrace. She held out her arms, and Otter picked her up. She hadn’t noticed before, not used to her new strength given to her by the game, but now that she was actively looking for anomalies, she noticed that Sunny was heavy. Heavier than a little girl should be.

  She carried Sunny from the room, making sure to close the door behind them, and put her down once they were in the kitchen. Sunny immediately set to work, getting out a baking sheet before going to the pantry and pulling out some red root vegetables.

  “We need to talk,” Otter said.

  “I know.” Sunny sounded older. Not a lot. She was still very much a kid, but her tone was more mature than before, particurly given that she was now capable of more than one word at a time.

  “Where do I start?”

  Sunny gave her a small smile, and then shrugged. It was the same shy smile she’d had the day before. So, that hadn’t changed.

  “What are you?” Otter asked.

  That same shy shrug. Otter focused on the bond through the pain. There was a hint of sadness at hearing the question. Well, at least it kind of worked. Stupid mystery css feature. Even so, it made Otter feel a little guilty.

  “Sorry, bad wording. I just… I don’t want to hurt you. But I also need to know. Are you dangerous?”

  Sunny put the vegetables in the sink, activating the glyph stone to make water. Just yesterday, she would’ve needed to stand on one of the chairs in order to do that. Now she could reach the stone just by standing on her tiptoes.

  She seemed to be thinking, deying her response, but ultimately settled with, “Yes.”

  “Dangerous to me and Rua?”

  “Maybe. Yes.”

  Otter sucked in a breath, and she felt one hand flex into a fist. “On purpose?”

  “No.” Sunny began to scrub at one of the red vegetables.

  Otter nodded, and forced herself to rex. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if she hadn’t liked the answer to that question. She was gd she didn’t have to find out.

  “Do you know your name? Who you are?”

  The girl paused, looking at Otter as if she’d asked the stupidest question in the world. “Sunny.”

  “No, I mean… from before.”

  The girl put the vegetable she’d been cleaning aside and moved to the next one, working at the skin with a brush and warm water.

  “No. She died. I’m not her.”

  “Do… do you know what you’re doing? To me and Rua? Through the link?”

  “Eating,” she said. “Hungry. Not on purpose. Putting… mind together. To repce the old one. Woke up. Body was… a shell. Empty.”

  “And you carried us home. Both of us. What, in two trips?”

  “Just one. M’strong. Swoll, got gains.” She gave a mocking flex, but there were no muscles to dispy. “Was awkward. Small. Don’t know why. But knew had to get you safe. Both. You and mama.”

  Otter snorted. “You know she’s not actually…”

  “I know. Imprinted.” Sunny shook her head as she put down her vegetable to work on another. “Not sure what word means. But also know. Because… you know.”

  “You’re assimiting our minds. You’re a gestalt of me and Rua.”

  “You’re my parents. But not. Dunno. Weird. Brain… like child. But not. Some ideas too big for me. But won’t be as they settle. I think.”

  Huh. Well, so much for Rua not having a kid. Or, was she really their daughter? The whole thing was weird. But Otter figured she’d signed up for this, the second she’d triggered her Thread of Fate and thrust it on this girl.

  “And you’re… what? Growing up as your mind expands?”

  Sunny finished cleaning her food, and pulled a knife from a block on the counter. She began to chop at the vegetables, her hand steady and sure.

  “Has to do with my Pact. I think. I should know what it does. But I don’t. Old me did. New me doesn’t. S’not in the game menu. Skills are all blurry. Know what my Pact is, though. ‘Lifecrafter.’ Don’t know what it means. But… the wood listened, when I told it I needed syrup. It bled for me, into a jar. Then fixed itself when it was done. Then when I wanted chairs… it was like they grew out of the trees.”

  Otter grunted. Could she do this with all trees? All pnts? What else could she make?

  “Huh. Neat. Anything else you can do?”

  “Make hash browns. Or… something like them.”

  “I am a slut for hash browns, tell me of your sorcery.”

  “No magic. Just… You know how. And ma… Rua… knows what everything here tastes like. Think can make with ingredients on hand. Will taste… funny. Not same. But can make.”

  “Think we can make some ketchup? Worst comes to worst, put ketchup on it. Then it just tastes like ketchup.”

  “Do you know how to make ketchup?”

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think I do? Only know… what you know.”

  Did little Sunny just sass her? They grew up so fast. It nearly brought a tear to Otter’s eye. She leaned in and gave her a quick hug.

  “Shouldn’t we be skinning these not-potatoes?” Otter asked.

  Sunny shrugged. “Skin on these has… salty fvour, almost. Might be better with.”

  “You’re the boss.” Which felt weird to say to… how old did Sunny look now? Twelve? Felt weird to say to a twelve-year-old who was clearly having trouble sorting out her speech patterns. “I don’t think we have any eggs.”

  “Jar in pantry, has a kind of fish oil. Doesn’t taste like the kind you’re used to. Can use as egg substitute.”

  “These are going to be some gnarly hash browns.”

  “Science. Won’t know until we try.”

  “For science!”

  Otter held up a hand for a high five, and Sunny gave her one, that wide smile of hers taking over her face.

  There were a lot of substitutions to be made. About the only thing that they needed that had a one to one corretion between their worlds was salt. Even the flour Rua had was milled from some weird fantasy wheat equivalent that wasn’t entirely the same. They made do.

  In an hour’s time, they had three ptes of hash browns served at the table that didn’t look terrible. At the scent of food, Rua came stumbling from the bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She peered at Sunny, and grunted.

  “Is the future ke denizen bigger?”

  “Mama!” Sunny cried in what sounded like joy. Weird that she seemed to enjoy being threatened with ke dunkings. “I made food.”

  “And she’s talking in full sentences now. Yeah, that’s not weird.”

  “We’ll catch you up,” Otter said. “We’ve had some… revetions.”

  “I don’t take revetions on an empty stomach.”

  “That’s why we have hash browns.”

  Rua poked the edge of her pte, sending it scraping along the table. “This is… hashed brown?”

  “Yep!” Sunny said, pulling Rua’s chair out for her. “You’ll like them, I promise, mama.”

  “Not your mom,” Rua said, as if by reflex. “Well, whatever these revetions are, I better like them and the food. If either are upsetting, into the ke you go.”

  She poked Sunny on the nose as she said it, who giggled at the threat. Otter wasn’t sure if it was a joke.