“The fuck is that?” Orion muttered.

Hazel was pulling reeds from the bank. He glanced over to where Tam and Bas were splashing around and explained, “That’s a jei-jei.”

Orion didn’t like her boots getting muddy, but it wouldn’t be hard to clean them off with her magic. She formed a spear of ice in her hands and joined in the other two’s efforts to catch dinner.

Hazel was weaving baskets and talking to himself as he did. He kept up a steady background noise as the younger three tried to catch food. His first basket was passed to Tam, who used it to catch any jei-jei that swam out of their burrows. The second was kept on the shore to hold anything that was actually caught. After that, he pulled two books out from his pack and continued to stay on the bank.

Eventually the second basket was filled with jei-jei, other amphibians, and fish.

“That was fun, but far too tiring,” Bas said. He put his spear down next to his pack and pulled out his short sword.

Orion rubbed the bridge of her nose. She hated to admit it, but her aim with a spear was pretty bad. At some point, she had considered whether or not to just freeze a large section of the swamp. She had decided against it only because chipping through the ice or waiting for the animals to thaw would be worse.

Bas gutted the fish with his sword. If cooked whole, the organs would burst and make the whole animal taste foul. He put the entrails in a hole and covered them with dirt, then washed his hands and sword off in the swamp.

Bas was, as usual, vetoed from cooking the meals—he was in charge of music and entertainment, sometimes accompanied by Hazel. That left Tam, Hazel, and Orion as options.

Orion had been trying to think of an idea to test whether Hazel was also a transmigrator, and she finally had one. “Let’s play rock, paper, scissors to decide.”

“What is that?” Tam raised her eyebrows.

Hazel nodded. “I think that’s a fair way to decide.”

Orion wasn’t sure how to handle the response. Her expression kept slipping, exposing her grin. She just started explaining the game to Tam.

Tam was far too good at rock, paper, scissors. She won 2-1 against both Hazel and Orion.

Hazel and Orion cooked dinner that night. Hazel did far more than Orion, as he actually knew how to cook and use the proper herbs for all the small swamp critters that had been caught. The sun was setting by the time they actually started to cook.

Orion was waiting. She noticed small balls of light blinking around them, with even more in the swamp. There were fireflies, or lighting bugs, just like how there were in her memories of a home far away. It was comforting to see those small balls of light seemingly float around as the bugs flew and communicated with their kind.

Bas and Tam were catching them. While Bas’ hands were crawling with the fireflies, Tam kept one very carefully trapped in the middle of her hands and watched its glow.

Hazel had his goggles on again. He rarely went without them, even on the days it didn’t rain; he said his eyes were sensitive to light. The man turned one of the fish skewers around and glanced at Orion. “You can use both ice and earth magic without a mana stone. Would you happen to be from Ahan?”

Orion frowned.

Bas cut in. “What about you, Mister Hazel? Where are you from?”

“You knew more about the swamp animals than any of us did,” Tam pointed out, “Even though Bas is actually from Malamut.”

Hazel smiled; it was the sort that was practiced rather than natural. “That’s a long story, don’t really feel like telling it now . . . another day.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Bas promised. “You look like a man with a lot of interesting stories to tell.”

Something a bit more natural slipped onto Hazel’s face. “That’s true,” he agreed and crouched by the fire again. “Now, who wants jei-jei and who wants fish first?”

A/N

I had fun making up random fish.

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