Adabelle watched as Trevor looked around the clearing. While he only saw her in the corner of his eye, he could tell that she was waiting anxiously for him to say something. Almost like she was worried that he’d be frightened by her Power. The young man could see why, but he didn’t feel ill at ease because of it.

“This is awesome,” he finally said, turning to face her with excitement in his eyes. “You did all this just by practicing? You must be amazing!”

“I, uh,” Adabelle stuttered as Trevor rounded on her.

“I mean, it doesn’t seem very practical but this is, like, legendary stuff, right?” he asked. “Man, no wonder this place is called the Danger Zone. This is a real treat to see.”

“It is?” she asked, confused.

“Oh, for sure,” he confirmed. “Do you know what I see when I look at this?”

“Destroyed nature? Desolation? A land where nothing will grow back?” she offered.

Trevor shook his head. “No, I see someone exercising great responsibility when given great Power,” he said. “This clearing is far from everything, and it just screams to me that you had to learn the hard way how to control it. It speaks to both your abilities and your character.”

“I think you’re looking a little too deeply into it, don’t you?” she asked.

“Not even a little bit,” Trevor stated without hesitation, and looked away when her face started to darken. “Is it scary? Sure, a little bit. But the person it’s attached to clearly doesn’t want it affecting anyone she doesn’t intend it to. So, the Danger Zone is close enough to the city that you can travel to it easily, but you also won’t have to worry about hurting someone.”

“Would you be disappointed to learn that I stumbled upon this spot and threw a tantrum?”

“No, because sometimes you just need to scream. I imagine it’s usually not accompanied by magic this powerful, but I’m not going to fault you for being upset,” Trevor said. “From what you told me, you’ve been through a lot. No one got hurt?”

“No one was here,” she confirmed.

“Then no harm, no foul,” he said with a shrug. “Lashing out isn’t always the correct option, but you’ve got to do something with your emotions, right? Keeping them bottled up is harmful in the long term. If this is what helped you become the Lady Adabelle Ramansa Katine I know today, then it’s not just destruction for destruction’s sake. It’s a beautiful wound left behind by an emotional transformation.”

“You know you sound like you’re just making things up,” Adabelle said.

“Sorry, I’ve never had to console somebody who had magic before,” he offered.

The woman laughed and shook her head. “How can you be this understanding towards me, and yet you balk when the slightest bit of kindness is shown back to you?”

“Years of practice, probably,” Trevor said. He realized he was waving off his hardships, but he had never been on a world saving quest against the forces of the underworld before and decided his own problems back home were definitely beneath hers. Turning to face Adabelle, he offered her a warm smile. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m always worried when I bring someone new here,” she said, smiling back. “Jackson took it with a grain of salt, while Wayne got really quiet about it.”

“Our world is one full of war,” Trevor said. “It’s fully possible that this was something that triggered a bad memory.”

“He mentioned something about an… Oh, what was it,” she mused, crossing her arms. “Afghantan?”

“Afghanistan?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

Trevor nodded. “Yeah, I can see how this could bring back some unpleasant memories for him. He doesn’t seem like the type to dwell on it much, though.”

“After a couple of days, he approached me and told me we were going shooting,” Adabelle said. “After that, we got along quite well.”

“I imagine Rashie just stared and wanted to go swimming afterwards?”

“That girl always wants to go swimming,” she chuckled. “I made it rain and flooded the area for her. A small one, during a drought, and she went crazy. Out of the three of us, I think she took being summoned here the best. Well, until you showed up. You’ve proven quite resilient. I’d love to hear your story when you’re ready to share.”

Shrugging, Trevor shook his head. “My story is boring and tedious, no one wants to hear it.”

“I think you’ll find that friends are people who show interest in others,” Adabelle said. “Or does that only go one way, Son of Ander?”

She was really getting good at calling him out, and Trevor deflected again. “As for when I got here, I was a nervous wreck the first day. Got run into by a minotaur, who I will not name drop during this conversation, and was scared by Glyrphizith’s roar so badly that I had to ask a dwarven family if everything was alright. Went home, met you and Mr. Tiggles, and then crashed pretty much immediately.”

“Glyrphizith’s nice, though obsessed with timepieces,” Adabelle mentioned. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Maybe someday, but not yet. I don’t think I’m ready to meet a humongous dragon. Give me a few more weeks.”

“Sure, I’ll hold you to that,” she said with a smile. “How about a deal?”

“A deal about the dragon?” Trevor asked, confused.

Shaking her head, Adabelle gestured towards the wasteland around them. “I’ll give you a demonstration of my power, if you can stomach it.”

“As long as it’s safe, yeah,” he agreed immediately.

“But before I do, you have to tell me about your life on Earth.”

Trevor was ready to agree again when he fully processed her words, and then he looked away and scratched his head. “I mean, you’re really getting the short end of the stick on that one.”This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Of course I am,” she teased. “I’m the one summoning a disaster for your amusement.”

“I think you’d find that I’m summoning one, too,” he muttered.

“So is it a deal?” she asked, putting out her hand to shake.

Trevor eyed her hand for a few moments before sighing and taking it. “It’s a deal,” he replied. “But I don’t really know where to start.”

“Wherever you want,” she said before sitting down on the rock.

Taking a seat beside her, Trevor focused on the destruction as he collected his thoughts. It took him a few minutes to speak, and Adabelle was patient with him.

“I worked for a store like Thimbleden’s Sundries, except a thousand times bigger and the people running it weren't great,” he started. “I was one of hundreds of employees. We stocked food, clothes, gardening equipment, cleaning supplies, entertainment. If you needed it, then there’s a good chance you could get it there or get it ordered.”

“So it was like the Tosa Marketplace, but as a whole in the same building?”

“Yeah, that sums it up,” Trevor said with a nod. “I used to work for a small grocery store, but they were run out of business by prices they couldn’t afford to match. This was something that happened all over, by the way, and the same thing happened in my city. So, I applied and got the job.”

“From your tone, I’m going to guess that’s not a good thing,” Adabelle stated.

“Not really,” he confirmed. “It was a terrible place to work. There was never enough time to do everything that needed to be done, and management wasn’t very understanding. Not to mention it was constantly understaffed. I was always getting called in because they needed me to cover someone else who called out, or quit on the floor, or was sick. And, because I needed money, I went in.”

Trevor shook his head. “The truth of it is, I don’t have any impressive stories,” he said. “I went to work, I worked until I was tired, and then I came home and messed around playing games until I fell asleep. The next day, I repeated it.”

“Why didn’t you find another place to work?”

“I was barely making enough to get by, and the only reason I was getting that much was because I got called in for so much overtime. Even then, the only reason I got overtime was because they had to give it, not because they wanted to. If I wanted to find a job that paid as much as that with less hours I would have needed more education, but I just didn’t have the energy for that.”

“What would you have rather done?” Adabelle asked. Her tail wrapped around his wrist, and he glanced away.

“No clue. I never knew what I wanted to do,” Trevor said, shoulders slumping as he kicked at the stone he was sitting on. “Some people figure it out, or just know from an early age, but I wasn’t one of them. I found it best to keep my head down and do the work that was in front of me in order to survive. There was a promotion I was up for, that was exciting, but that would have been more of the same."

“Did you have any friends to keep your spirits up?”

“Some, very far away,” he answered.

“Internet?” she asked, and he gave a confused nod. “Wayne told me about that. Seemed very handy.”

“It was,” Trevor responded with a nod. “Not that it did me much good as anything other than a time waster.”

“And how did you waste time?”

“Games, mostly.”

“What games did you play?”

Trevor hesitated. “Is this really an interesting line of questioning for you?”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a line of questioning if you didn’t make it as difficult as pulling teeth,” Adabelle snorted.

Sighing, Trevor nodded. “I’m sorry, I’m just not great at talking about myself. Like I said. I don’t have any interesting stories. It was work, come home, clean if I had the energy, waste time and then go to sleep. Rinse and repeat.”

“Okay, so what about here?” she asked, changing her questions. “What about Tosa?”

“Tosa?” Trevor paused, thinking about it. “Tosa’s great. Working for Thimbleden is a lot better than anything back home. I’m really only there to waste time, but it’s nice to be helpful, you know? The customers are all understanding and nice, and it’s very rare that anyone ever yells. Running around making deliveries is definitely the highlight of my day. Just stretching my legs and getting outside. The whole sunlight thing I was talking about works, you know.”

“I’ve kept my windows open ever since,” she said with an amused smile.

“That’s good,” he said with a nod. “Though, I have to say, it feels nice working here. I’ve got enough money to really sustain myself for a while even if I decided to sit still and do nothing, but I’ve got so much energy. Even before I upgraded my Stamina stat, I mean. It’s actually fun to work, and it’s relaxing. When I’m like this I have a really hard time sitting still unless something’s got my attention, but it doesn’t feel cumbersome. You know?”

“I think I’m familiar, yes.”

“Okay, good. It just feels like, I don’t know, I’m not struggling here. If I wanted to stop spending time at Thimbleden’s Sundries then, yeah, people would be disappointed that I’m gone, but I wouldn’t be worried about them or get yelled at. Torlock and Billan are still there, after all. It’s not stressful, and there’s nothing to worry about. If I don’t want to run around, then I can go spend time with Drelik, or eat with Gad, Froil, and Dag. Or just spend time by the river watching the logs float by. It’s idyllic.”

“Trevor, may I make an observation?” Adabelle asked, and she was looking at him very curiously when he turned back to her.

“Yeah, lady, of course you can. Don’t even have to ask.”

“Right. After hearing, well, all of that, I think I understand your thought process a little bit more,” she stated, and he was about to apologize when her tail squeezed his wrist. “You probably feel like your story is lesser to mine because my stakes were higher than yours. Is that a reasonable guess?”

Once again, she called him out accurately, and he nodded.

“I thought so,” she said. Adabelle’s tail pulled his wrist towards her, and she took his hand in both of hers. “My battles were all external, and I had the help of my friends. A lot was on the line, but I get the impression that you had just as much of a struggle in your mind as I did against the forces of evil.”

“That’s really not the same,” he said. “You had-“

Adabelle put a finger against his lips, and he shut up immediately. “Don’t downplay your feelings,” she interrupted. “What I got from your story is that you were very isolated in your world. Maybe you didn’t start out that way, but it definitely became that. You don’t want to talk about yourself because it makes you sad, and as someone with a lot of empathy you don’t want to project that on to other people. I got this because the moment you started talking about Tosa, you suddenly wanted to share a lot more. You’ve found acceptance here.”

Trevor swallowed, but couldn’t look away from Adabelle. Her face was full of concern, and he could see that she really did care for his well-being as a friend. “I… don’t know what to say.”

“And that’s fine, so long as you’re aware that you’re happy here,” she said, smiling. “And I’m glad you got summoned.”

“I am, too,” he said, smiling back.

“I think you both need to check your six more often,” came the drawling voice of Wayne.

Adabelle let go of Trevor and stood up, turning around. “Wayne. You’ve gotten stealthier,” she greeted.

“Yep, picked up a sneaky sneak skill last time I increased my Speed,” he said before looking between her and Trevor. “Jackson sent me to look for the two of y'all. Said he had a quest for you both, and that it’ll probably come with a few from around town. So, if you two are done flirting, we gotta make like greased lightning.”

“We weren’t flirting,” Trevor said quickly.

“We were, as you put it, swapping backstories,” Adabelle said before turning to Trevor and smiling apologetically. “I guess we’ll have to push the disaster show off until next time, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. No worries. I’m looking forward to it,” he said, smiling back.

“Good, now let’s get going,” Wayne said before turning around and walking off towards the road. Adabelle followed, and Trevor took a breath to compose himself before jogging to catch up.