Tristan strolled back down the faintly worn track, still in a good mood for all that his basket only had a half dozen or so mostly ripe Yamman Fruits nestled in the bottom of it. Hardly Nessa’s fault, that, she wasn’t a Cook or a Farmer to know what fully ripened fruit looked like. He would just have to come back again in a few days for a proper harvest. At least this pawfull of them would give him a chance to practise and try out some new recipes and maybe earn another skill point or two before then.

  As he made his way the few miles back toward home, the sun settling over the horizon, the cool of evening starting to come on, the feline caught sight of something in the distance, a short trek away from the road, shining and glowing over the Maris bushes, it looked like someone had lit a fire. His thoughts turned to the girl he had passed on the way up here, this wasn’t half a mile from where she had been. He had hoped those Guards had seen her safely into town, but if instead she was still out here somewhere, by herself overnight… Not that it was the worst place to camp, the view wasn’t up to much but with the lack of wild animals nosing around the food supplies and a quick walk back to town afterward.

  Still, he was making good time, perhaps he ought to check on her, just in case. It’d be nice to see her again, regardless, he didn’t meet many feline folk around any more.

  The camp site, if it could pass for that, came into view a few minutes away from the road, as Tristan carefully stepped over and around the denser parts of the foliage. A small campfire, admittedly neat and well made, burning away happily with only a small trail of smoke from the softer wood, sat alone in the middle of a grassy patch, the girl sitting, legs crossed, engrossed in whatever she was doing as she wound bits of grass around a collection of twigs.

  “Hi there, good to see you again.” he called out with a wave.

  She looked up in surprise, dropped whatever she had been doing and hastily reached up to pull on and adjust the front of her dress, which Tristan realised now had been ripped in at least a couple of places, affording him a bit too much of a view.

  “Uh, sorry, I happened to be passing by…” he said, turning to look slightly away.

  She tugged harder at her dress, seeming more annoyed than embarrassed in the moment.

  “Oh yea, uhh, Timothy wasn’t it?”

  “Tristan.”

  “Yes, of course, lovely name. I’m, uhh… yes of course I have a name.” she paused for a moment, looking unsure.

  “You don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want, I can clear out of your business if you want, send me away and you’ll not see me again until you happen by my shop in a couple of weeks just by chance and we’ll greet each other politely across the counter and…”

  “No, no, it’s not that. Just… I should’ve planned this out ahead of time maybe. Alright, sure, you can call me Amber, it’s lovely to meet you. Have you travelled far?”

  “Only up from Treville, just here for the afternoon, picking up some supplies. Yourself?”

  “I’m not sure, I only just got here. You said you had a shop in town?”

  “Yea. Well no, not really. It’s my sister’s shop, but I help out there. I’m a Cook by trade, but well, at level 5 it’s tricky to get anyone to take me seriously, got to get a lot more of that experience first, then I’ll be ready to make a real impression.”

  Amber gestured for him to sit beside the fire, he settled down grateful for the warmth as a chill wind had started coming in with the sunset, and set his basket on the ground.

  “The Yamman are just starting to ripen on the trees up the hill a ways, I’m going to test out some recipes with them tonight, and then head back in a few days to collect more.”

  Amber just nodded and made slight interested sounds, he might’ve thought she was just humouring him, but her expression seemed genuinely to be taking in everything he said. Or the attention might’ve all been for the fruits.

  “Did you pack anything to eat while you’re out here?”

  “No, that is, I was hoping to find what I need growing around the place, but, well, I’m not an expert on which of these are good to eat. So, you know, it’s lovely to meet someone that apparently is.”

  “Oh, sure, yea, I get you. I mean, there’s not really anything around here that’s harmful or… you know, it’s all just does it taste good.” As he talked, he was looking around him and snapped a longer twig off a nearby plant, threading one of the big, juicy, purple fruits onto the end of it and holding it out over the fire.

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  “Are you… that is, the town’s only just down the hill, if you wanted to…”

  “Oh no, I’d rather avoid the town for now, I think I’m better off up here.” she paused and looked down at her torn and mud stained clothes. “Besides, I’ve got my fire here now.”

  Tristan watched her for a moment, the glow of the fire picking out the outlines of confusion and concern on his face, as he tried to piece together what was up, and couldn’t get anywhere. Instead, he passed her the stick with the now well roasted Yamman, its skin curling and peeling back with the heat.

  “So tell me a bit… oh, oh hot, too hot…” she said, muffled over a mouthful of juicy fruit, some of the liquid dribbling down her chin. “Anyway, yes, completely dignified behavior here. Tell me a bit about this place, you mentioned a town?”

  “Treville, yes, about ten miles down the road that way. Well, maybe a bit less.” he said in response to her mildly shocked look. Grabbing another stick and Yamman fruit, he gestured with it before setting it against the flames. “And that’s Verlin about twenty miles up the road the other way. Not much traffic comes along here any more, is a shame. In between, part of the Greening Woods spreads all the way down here, most of it is further north. It’s a nice enough little town, I guess, got our shops and taverns and town watch and all that, quiet and out the way, peaceful around here away from trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Ah, well, you know how it is, everyone’s got a friend of a friend that knows someone another city over who swears he saw a dragon once or heard of a wizard getting himself burned alive in his tower or… then when you come to talk about it, it all seems so far fetched and unlikely.”

  “Well, I’ve been here all afternoon and I’ve barely seen any dragons at all.”

  Time passed, the sun settled all the way behind the hill, and the sky above darkened. Tristan lay back against the grass and looked up at the scattering of stars overhead. The fire still burned strong and bright and warm, for all that Amber never did anything to keep it going, never so much as feeding it another log or moving the burning branches to a better position. Most likely it was some kind of magic spell.

  “Of course, levelling up as a Cook is exactly what you’d expect. I can prepare foods, identify foods, keep foods cold, well, to an extent. How about yourself?”

  “Me, oh, well I’m the Hearth Mage. This is my hearth. I know normally they’re inside houses, but mine is here instead.”

  “That’s… well, not something I’ve heard of before, what’s it like?”

  “To be honest, I’m still figuring some of it out. But, at its core, I’m tied to the land. That is, the land around my fireplace, this is where I work, I can do things here, make things happen. People that come into my circle, I can help them. In some way, I think. Mostly it just gives us a warm place to sit, but at the moment, I think that’s all we need.”

  “Ah, I get you, and that’s why you’re all the way out here. I mean, it wouldn’t do to claim the surrounding area of land if it overlapped three of your neighbours’ houses in the middle of town, would it.”

  “Sure, yea, that’s… that’s exactly it. You know, it’s getting late, are you going to be ok getting back to town in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m sure I can manage, it’s only a, what, two or three hour trek in the moonlight. Maybe I should’ve thought of that, as much as I’ve been enjoying your company here this afternoon, or evening, or both.”

  But even so, Tristan hesitated a bit, reluctant to leave this cosy fireplace for the long, cold and dark walk back home.

  “Are you going to be able to manage by yourself out here overnight, though. I mean, do you have somewhere to sleep even?”

  “Oh, not to worry there, that’s something I can manage without trouble.” With a casual gesture and wave with one arm, she summoned an entire bed into the space beside the fire, and a rather nicer, softer and cleaner looking one than what waited for Tristan in the back room of the shop at that.

  “A shame it’s kinda small, though, I wouldn’t mind something a bit bigger, maybe a double bed… uhh, that is… so I have space to spread out and take up all that room by myself. Or maybe a nice fancy four-poster bed with the curtains around it, or one of those with the shelves for books built into the frame. It’s simple, but it’s comfortable. As long as it doesn’t rain.”

  “I don’t think it’s likely to rain tonight, not a cloud in the sky.”

  “And the fire is definitely magical, so no doubt it’ll be able to keep the place warm all night without any trouble. You know, you could stay the night in my little campsite, head home in the morning. I’m not just saying that so you’ll cook me breakfast or anything, I don’t like the sound of you walking all that way at this time.”

  “Is there another bed for me in that summoning?”

  “Oh, no, just the one, unless you were… I can only make one for myself. Or rather, why don’t you take the bed, and I’m more than happy resting on the grass here. After the day I’ve had, I could sleep on a rock, and I’m pretty sure just being around my fireplace is giving me all kinds of rest benefits anyway, all that residual magic.”

  “I definitely wouldn’t feel right doing that. How about you have the bed and I sleep on the rocks? Or rather, I’m pretty sure I saw some Rutuda plants near here before, big soft leaves from them wouldn’t be too bad to sleep on, or under.”

  “See, there you go, already proving the value of keeping you around, I wouldn’t have known about that otherwise.”

  The following sunrise, Tristan slowly drifted awake to find that at some point during the night, the pair had both ended up snuggled close against each other in the same pile of leaves, the bed empty beside them. Rather than drawing attention to it and ruining the moment, he pretended to still be asleep for some time longer.