I stared at the threads that connected me to Katrin and Errod, pointing off into the jungle.  It seemed to be the right way for the Eldan''s Thigh - the nearest town, a sprawling riverside trading post right out of an adventure movie.  Then again, a difference of a few degrees wouldn''t be something I''d be likely to notice. Had they moved? I began pacing again, arguing with myself. They''d abandoned me, just like my mother. But also, they wouldn''t do that which mean they were in trouble. But even if someone was still looking for us they''d be looking for me specifically rather that Katrin and Errod, right?  So clearly Katrin and Errod were fine, and just taking their time in town. Maybe one of the moskar had been injured, and they were working on a way to get the wagon mobile again. Speaking of the wagon, maybe it had broken an axle.


    Could they have been attacked by monsters?  According to Kalyssi, our guide down the river, there was a large colony of tixmin near Eldan''s Thigh just around a bend in the river where they liked to go swimming. It was possible that Errod and Katrin had made a wrong turn at one of the spots where the path split off, and ended up surrounded by angry monsters. They''d left Shitheel with me, though, and he was the only one of the moskar that didn''t get a little skittish when they smelled a tixmin - I had to assume that even if they missed a turn the moskar would object as the smell got stronger, and if that failed the tixmin did that hooting thing that should tip them off before they were too close. That meant that in all likelihood Errod and Katrin hadn''t run into that particular kind of trouble, and with Errod getting better with the sword every day and Katrin becoming increasingly scary in her use of magic the other denizens of the jungle were nothing much to worry about.


    Clearly they hated me, and were right now boarding a boat to head down the Nubasarri river and never come back.


    For the hundredth time I tried to calculate the journey.  They would have made it to the clearing where multiple game trails split off by nightfall, camped in the jungle, and then hit the town the next morning some time - maybe closer to lunch if they played it safe and camped as soon as the sun got behind the trees. After that it would have been most of a day in town, back into the jungle to cover a little ground and camp, and then back on the tixmin trail for day three. That would mean getting back late in the day, maybe even a teeny bit after nightfall, which is why I kept a light going for them on the wall. If things had gone slowly for some reason or if they just didn''t want to rush, maybe they would have slept in the town which would in turn mean getting back on the morning of the fourth day instead. Nothing concerning about that.


    But it was the morning of the fifth, and there was no sign of them.


    The day they had left I''d done almost nothing, just puttering around the camp and playing with Mister Creepy. The remote-control spider was pretty agile, and I was getting better at using it. I could only barely see through its eyes, and it required me to have my own eyes tightly shut, but even that was pretty cool. It was like having a drone with an extremely low-res video camera on it. Even so that got old eventually, and I spent the evening staring at The Paradox of Fate but not actually reading it. I''d been hesitant to go into my memory palace because of the rogue figments, and hadn''t felt like doing chores especially when nobody was there to make me feel guilty for being lazy. So it was mostly a wasted day.


    The next two days I''d been more productive, checking on the tiny garden we''d started and trimming back the plants that seemed to grow a foot per day and mess up our walls. I cleaned the wagon, made a proper dinner, the whole thing. I''d even gone back into my memory palace to train, although I found some little signs that the my guests were still poking around - mom''s antique scissors were stabbed into my pillow one day, and the next there was a clump of hair that I suspected was from Sarah Harkin. I didn''t feel guilty about that shit though, making her hair fall out was an accident - if I did it at all - and she was a total bitch. Plus she''d tried to drown me afterwards, so I felt like we were even. I didn''t see the actual troublemaker though, and was able to spend some time trying to strengthen my abilities and even went on a few rides at a shitty little carnival that I found in one of my memories. The only real concern was that I was blind to the real world while I was doing all that, but it seemed unlikely that something would climb the wall and break into the wagon without me hearing a commotion.


    By the end of that third day I was too anxious to do much, pacing around and checking the fate strings and waiting for Errod and Katrin to show up. I didn''t sleep well, and spent the whole morning of the fourth day standing on the little platform attached to the wall even though with all the trees it didn''t help me see far. I thought about sending Mister Creepy out, but the range was shit and it was likely something would eat him - I could re-attach the control plate to something else if I recovered it, but that was easier said than done since it would need to either be lobotomized or cared for. Still, it was tempting to have something that could fly. I''d promised Errod that I wouldn''t wander into the jungle by myself since we regularly had to save each other''s asses when fighting monsters, but in the afternoon I headed out anyway. I didn''t try to go down the trail, but instead did my best to compare the angle of the fate threads for Katrin and Errod with the sun and then headed off to the North for about a mile before coming back and doing the same thing in the other direction. They barely moved. Logically the movement should be more noticeable the closer they were, which meant that whatever was happening they weren''t near the camp.


    That brought me to the fifth day, and all I could think to do was pack. I''d spent the morning second-guessing myself, but what it came down to was that either they were abandoning me or I was abandoning them by not going to find them - and between the two it seemed like the latter was more likely. I spent a few hours deconstructing the camp, cramming everything worth keeping into or on top of the remaining wagon, and then got Dopey hooked up and began the ordeal of wrangling Shitheel. He hadn''t been attached to the wagon for a month, and had clearly decided that part of his life was behind him.


    "You''re an asshole, you know that?"


    Hiss, he said.


    "Yes, I know you hate me. I get it. You''ve mentioned it a few dozen times every day. But this is your whole fucking job."


    Hiss, Shitheel rebutted.


    "No, you can''t quit your job. You''ve been on god damn vacation since we got here, I have been shoveling your shit and feeding you and -" (hiss) "- no, I''ve been feeding you every day. I know you''ve grazed on a bunch of random plants and eaten a few of those lizard squirrel things, but if it weren''t for the bag of moskar chow you''d be in sorry shape."


    Hiss, he conceded.


    "I''m going to grab you by the harness now, and if you give me any attitude I swear to god I will just slit your throat and let Dopey pick up the slack. You understand?"


    And it seemed like maybe he did, because while he snorted disdainfully at me and dragged his feet terribly he didn''t go so far as to actually try to bite me. Right as we neared a mud puddle he headbutted me, but I''d felt him tensing up for it and managed to hop over the puddle - much to his disappointment. After that he tried to lure me into a false sense of security by being docile so he could suddenly run away just as I went to hook him to the wagon, but that was what he did literally every time and so I''d long since learned to quickly loop the rope around a spur on the wagon so as to give myself some more leverage.  "I hate you. So much. But I guess thanks for taking my mind off of all this. Dick."If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I didn''t make it as far as I wanted, and ended up pulling off the trail to camp once the moskar were cranky and tired and the sun was down. At first I was determined to stay up all night, but since I''d done that the night before I ducked into the memory palace instead so that I would at least be a little more aware as I slept.


    "Oh motherfucker. I don''t have the energy to deal with you tonight, will you just get the fuck out of here?"


    She was sitting on the floor, cutting up construction paper. "I used to love this, you know. Scissors and colorful paper and maybe some cartoons, and I would be happy my whole life."


    "Great. Good. Take them with you when you go."


    "No, if I leave then I am just in a dream. Better to stay here, in your horrible mind."


    "Cool." I headed into the next room and took a seat on the bed, trying to decide if I should poke through some memories or what. Instead, the interloper followed me in.


    "Why are some memories altered? What did you do that was so terrible you had to hide it?"


    "I don''t know. Fuck off."


    "Do you think someone tried to make you less evil? I looked at memories before and after, and you seem... less of a monster, since whatever happened. Maybe someone dug into your brain and scooped some of the worst parts out. Like the bruised spots in an over-ripe fruit, chunks of your memories and personality all dripping and dark, thrown aside into the trash. There couldn''t have been much left, with you."


    I ignored her, got up and headed off into the memories.


    "Or did you steal the better parts of someone else? Rip the humanity out of someone again?" She opened a door and looked in.


    "Okay stay out of there, just -" But she had already ducked through. I followed her, and found myself in the woods. Little me was there crying, and the scarred one was looking down at her.


    "I know this feeling," she said, "being scared and sad in the woods and wanting to return home. Wanting your mother back."


    "Yeah, it was shitty. Can we not? I''ve been trying to avoid this stuff.  I''m out in the wilderness with my friends and when they wanted to go into town for supplies I just..."


    "You thought they would abandon you and never return?"


    "I... no. No, I didn''t think that, but I felt it. And feeling it is bad enough. Anyway, I don''t need to re-live this shit. I still like camping, somehow, and I want that to stay true. Come on, out of the memory."


    To my surprise she did leave, but then immediately opened another door.  It was the memory of Errod and Katrin leaving.  I ignored my scarred doppelganger, instead looking for any sign that something was wrong.  I followed Katrin as she moved things between the wagons - I could only really rely on the bits I''d seen the first time around, of course, but... or could I?


    I woke up, disoriented in the dark wagon that for just a moment felt bigger that it was. I closed my eyes again almost immediately and brought the mental image of my Dumines up and staring into that twisting space.  I still had potential left after the disastrous and flawed attempt to pull Katrin and Errod into my mind palace since I''d been putting off doing much as I repeatedly changed plans.  Still, I always wanted to find the most efficient way to do things - I wanted to tie as many abilities as possible together so that I could maximize my power by the time I ran out of capacity.


    I''d already put some thought into it, to make my memories more accurate.  Katrin had suggested that I would need Spatial magic, but there had to be another way.  What had I already developed... I''d made it easier to get into my mind palace by thinning the planar membrane with the thought that it could also let me do other planar stuff - specifically I''d also tied it to the area within the aura defined by my lutore, the place where my mind and soul connected to my body.  Could I use that, somehow?  There was a feeling of overlap, a sense that the planar membrane and my lutore both permeated the world around me.  Could I use one of those with Perception to "see" the world?  I concentrated, and the squirming lines contorted as they tried to suggest a solution.  Add Temporal in there so I could look into the past, and... something locked into place.


    My Dumines, or the thing that controlled them, seemed to be suggesting an intersection of the planar membrane and my lutore rather than just one of the two.  I had almost forgotten that I''d merged layers of my lutore as the first thing I unlocked since it had been useless on its own past letting me better see and comprehend the magic that was under the Dumine interface.  But there seemed to be a synergy here, where I could further meld my lutore with the planar membrane somewhat and then reach backwards through them.  My understanding wasn''t complete which meant locking it in would be a slight risk.  Maybe if I could access the main interface like a normal person it would be better, but I thought I would also probably not have as much influence over the details of the process; it seemed like I was increasingly having a conversation with the force behind my Dumines.


    I felt pretty good about it, and was almost positive it would help me do Planar effects later as well.  I''d be limited to the area right around me, but... fuck it.  I committed to it and felt potential drain away.  It would work via the memory palace, since I''d been trying to overlap my abilities as much as possible to keep the cost down both in terms of potential and mana usage, so I popped back in.  "Okay. Cool. Here we go. I''m just looking at myself, so this should be easy. But how?"


    I wandered into the hotel hallway, and there it was - a door with the room number of zero. I opened it, and stepped into the cramped space of the wagon where I could see myself laying in bed with my eyes closed. "Fuck yeah. Okay. So this is now. Good. And I can... go where?" I opened the door and stepped out of the wagon, but of course when I turned around the door was shut again. My mana usage was ticking upwards now that there was a wall between me and my body, which I hadn''t thought about but wasn''t too surprising. I could see Dopey sleeping, and Shitheel laying there with one eye open scanning the jungle. I took a few more steps but became uncomfortably aware of some kind of... resistance. "Okay. What is that, twenty feet? I can work with that. Now the temporal bit. You can do this Callie. Come on."


    I stepped back into the hotel hallway, then into the memory of Katrin packing the wagon. I concentrated, and felt my mana use amp up dramatically as everything around me became crisper, more in focus. I walked over to Katrin, and could hear her talking to Errod.


    "She''ll be fine, right? You saw how she got when we split up last time."


    Errod nodded. "She was scared. Didn''t want to be alone. Funny, considering what she''s told us about her habit of running off and living in abandoned places."


    "I think it''s the difference between her choosing to leave, and other people deciding to leave her. I think I''m still missing a lot of context but her mom sort of abandoned her, and then... I don''t know, the whole thing seems bizarre but that ''foster care'' thing seems to involve passing the kids around a lot."


    "I still don''t get why they wouldn''t just be apprenticed out to someone, learn a trade."


    Katrin let out a deep sigh.  "Who knows. Earth sounds awful, honestly."


    "Well whether that''s it or not, she''ll get over it. We''ll be back in a few days, and maybe she''ll be in a tolerable mood."


    "Speaking of, is your nose okay?"


    Errod shrugged.  "It''s fine. And I don''t know how deliberate it was, we were sparring and... she gets carried away. But if it happens again I''m going to bring up the idea of seeing someone about her emotional issues again. There''s no shame in getting help, and she has the money."


    "The mental security she wanted to get first shouldn''t be hard to unlock at all, she should be able to do that within the week if not sooner. Maybe she could do it right now."


    That was true.  I could have, maybe still could, but had wanted to see how it felt to have other people in my mind first.  I had the thought I could handle security the same way, maybe shunt anyone trying to come in to a secure room of my own creation.  But then that had gone badly, and now I''d had to do this temporal scrying thing, and if there really was trouble I''d need to maybe save some potential to help deal with that.  I was just thinking that I was relieved they were talking about coming back and clearly didn''t want to ditch me when I realized the other implication - this meant that something had gone wrong and kept them from coming back, and I had no idea what I was going to walk into the next day.