This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Now,” said Hannah, placing her hands on her knees. “I’m goin’ to give you a bit of time to yourself, to collect your thoughts and such, but Mizuki has some lunch bubblin’ away, and I doubt you’d want to miss it. There’s some strawberry bread to go with it, fresh baked this mornin’.”

As Hannah left, Verity was going for her lute, ready to sing a song to herself.

“How is she?” asked Alfric once Hannah came back downstairs.

“Never mind that,” said Mizuki. “Look at this cat.”

Sitting on the kitchen counter like a proper gentleman was Tabbins, an enormous black cat with a white belly and white paws that looked a little like mittens. He was nominally Mizuki’s cat, though he spent most of his time outside, and Mizuki only ended up feeding him once a day. He caught his other meals, usually mice, but occasionally a rat or a bunny, and he sometimes left pieces of them outside the door for Mizuki to find. On balance, this felt like it was better than having mice in the house, but Mizuki wasn’t always so sanguine about their relationship.

“Look at him!” said Mizuki.

“Yes?” asked Hannah. “You have a cat?”

“Kind of,” said Mizuki. “I would say it’s more like there’s a cat who uses the home from time to time. More in the winter than the summer, and sometimes I don’t see him for days.” She stroked his head, and he tilted it back, closing his eyes. “Look at him though! Isra is a woods witch, she told him to jump up, and he did it, just like magic.”

“It is literally magic,” said Alfric.

“This cat has not listened to a single solitary thing that anyone has ever said,” Mizuki beamed, as though she was proud of that fact. “But he listened to Isra.”

“Isra might be a druid,” said Alfric.

“Woods witch,” said Mizuki. That was the term she’d grown up with. ‘Druid’ didn’t sound right to her ears. It was like something having to deal with ‘dru’, whatever that was. “Which is neat, but not really something that needed to be kept from us, I wouldn’t think.”

“It came up on our walk,” said Isra, who was looking at the cat. “I’m not certain. Most cats don’t listen to me though.”

“Most cats don’t listen to anyone,” said Mizuki. “But if you can get a cat to listen to you ten percent of the time, then you’re a woods witch for sure.”

“You’re all saying that what I can do is… not the same sort of thing you can do,” said Isra. “You’re saying that it’s not… natural?”

“Well, if it’s what you are,” said Hannah. “And I won’t say that it is what you are, not until I’ve seen some better evidence. Some might say it’s the most natural thing you can be. It’s a power, certainly, but bein’ a druid is almost like bein’ a cleric, though not quite so much and without the power of a miracle.” She didn’t seem entirely sure about that.

“I’m not sure that I am a druid,” said Isra. The frown hadn’t left her face since Verity had gone upstairs. “I don’t feel like a druid.”

Hannah nodded. “You just feel like yourself. It’s common for druids, or so I’ve heard, since most of ’em get raised in the woods, away from others, and all the talkin’ to animals and finding forage without lookin’ is no more an extra power to them than havin’ a second arm is to me.” She paused. “Can you find forage?”

“I forage,” said Isra, crossing her arms. “When you say that I find it without looking—” She shook her head. “I don’t think I understand what being a druid is. Alfric didn’t explain it well.”

If that was a slight, Alfric didn’t react to it.

“So,” said Hannah, always happy to be an authority. “As part of the seminary, we did some comparative studies, lookin’ into other gods and other things that are like gods. Other clerics, but also alienists and druids. Formally, a druid is someone who, first off, is born some five miles away from anyone else aside from their mother and doesn’t come within five miles of anyone else for the first three years of their life.”

“Which isn’t the case for Isra,” said Alfric. “She’s insistent—and I believe her—that her mother died in childbirth, and her father raised her alone. Also, I heard one mile instead of five.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “either way, that’s a mystery for later, but it might just be a corner case. Anyhow, a druid becomes attuned to nature, far more than you or I, and has a sixth sense for all kinds of things, which eventually blossoms into bein’ able to influence the natural world.” She snapped her fingers. “Isra, what’s the weather going to be like tomorrow?”

Isra stared at her. “Cloudy in the morning, then clear around lunch, and some light rain in the evening. You’re saying that you don’t know any of that?”

“Nope!” said Hannah, beaming. “You probably know all kinds of things that someone like myself or Alfric or even Mizuki doesn’t know, and you know them just by knowin’ them, without havin’ the faintest clue how you know. More likely than not, you never even thought about it, it just felt natural.”

“According to the census, she’s a ranger,” said Alfric.