"Want to play tag?" Stella teased with a smile. She remembered some of the street kids played tag, but she had always been too scared to play. What if one of those big boys caught her?"Oh, please! You would destroy me!" complained Joseph.
Stella knew she would, but she was determined to be more playful. They were kids and Joseph was being far too grownup. Thinking quickly, the only thing she could come up with, was a rabbit. He had a thing for rabbits on one of the islands…maybe she could use that?
"What if I give myself a handy cap?" She wasn"t sure he would accept.
"Like what?" he asked suspiciously. It was a bit odd for her to offer, so she wasn"t surprised he was suspicious.
"I"ll only hop like a bunny." Pulling her hands up to her chest, she tried her best to imitate a bunny. It wasn"t very good in her opinion, but his eyes went wide with delight.
"Alright, you"re it!" he cried, lunging out and tapping her hands.
Grinning wide, she hopped like mad to catch him, noting that she was way faster than him even when hopping, and slowed down. After thirty feet, he almost tripped, when he turned to look at her, and she tagged him.
Wiggling her b.u.t.t like it had a bunny tail, she started hopping away from him. She made sure to pause long enough to wiggle her nose, or her imaginary tail, when ever he seemed to be lagging behind, but she kept them going in the same direction. They made about the same time, honestly.
After lunch, and a brief break for him to catch his breath, they played some more, until the snow slowed them down. It wasn"t keeping her from being a bunny, but he was having trouble running. He really needed to get more exercise. All that sitting all the time couldn"t be good for him.
She was surprised as she lay down to sleep, at which muscles ached. She would have to work on that. Nothing should keep her from doing anything physical. If those muscles felt they hadn"t been used right, she would work on them to keep them from getting sore again.
"Stella."
His voice had her instantly awake. There was something in it that cried danger. There were winter wolves with dire wolves leading. She remembered them from her previous life. As she told him about them, she was running scenarios through her mind on which ones to kill first, and whether or not she could keep them alive.
When he caught one on fire, she almost jumped. The wolves sure did. She hadn"t expected him to do that. They shouldn"t be flammable.
Taking advantage of their panic, she used her ability to jump short distances to appear next to two winter wolves that were close enough to each other for her to hit simultaneously. Their blood sprayed in the air, coating her. Moving through the pack, she focused on the ones she thought she could take out in one hit; jumping occasionally to miss being bit, or slashed at.
The winter wolf appeared before her and she focused on its weak spot. As it landed on her, she shifted lower so its teeth closed on where her head used to be, and used its own momentum to shove both her blades into its abdomen, under the rib cage and up into where the heart and lungs should be.
Crawling out from under it, she could feel its blood had soaked through her clothes to her skin. Glaring at the last dire wolf, she bared her teeth as the blood dripped down her face. It turned tail and ran, followed by the last of the winter wolves.
Joseph was sitting by the fire, looking very pale. She quickly started skinning the dire wolf she had just killed, and made sure to grab several large chunks of meat from some of the wolves he had burnt to death. The hide wasn"t the best, because she didn"t have any experience in this life skinning anything, but it would do.
"I wish I knew the spell PREPARE GAME," he said, taking some of the cooked meat.
"It"s alright, I"m sure you"ll learn soon enough." He learned so many things, she had no doubt he would learn that one too.
As he hungrily ate the meat, she sharpened her knives. There were way too many nice furs for her to just leave laying there to waste. Starting with the ones with ruined hides, she quickly figured out the best way to skin them. Keeping an eye on him as he slept, she skinned all of the dead wolves. Surely these hides would come in handy at some point.
"System, I need my purse to be bigger."
(THAT WILL COST 5 LIFE POINTS.)
"Allright, I will spend 5 life points for an upgrade to my purse."
("PURSE" SIZE INCREASED ONE SIZE INCREMENT. IT CAN NOW HOLD 1,000 POUNDS WORTH OF ITEMS.)
"Thanks!" she thought as she quickly stuffed the frozen hides into the extrdimensional pocket.
Turning to head back towards Joseph, she froze. There were three winter wolves sneaking towards his sleeping form. Pulling out her blades, she bared her teeth at them and sprinted across the top of the fallen b.l.o.o.d.y snow. They never saw her coming.
As their bodies slumped to the ground, staining the white snow red, she wiped the blood off her blades in the snow. Three more hides quickly joined the ones in her purse. Taking some of the meat, she cooked it over the fire and ate it. When he woke up, he looked refreshed.
Twitching her nose at him, she settled down for a nap. Her sleep had been interrupted and she needed to be able to protect him, when his magic ran out.
"What are you thinking, Master Joseph?" she asked as she stretched after the short sleep. He was watching her giggling. That couldn"t be a good sign.
"It"s a surprise. Don"t worry, I"ll love it."
Raising her eyebrows, she wiggled her tail and with a laugh he chased after her. Because he refused to tell her what had tickled him so, she refused to let him catch her.
"Come on. Master Joseph, you are a smart fox. Surely you can catch a little bunny?" She watched him pant from all his breathing. Then he used his brain and realized he could use magic to recover.
"I feel more like a coyote, trying to catch a roadrunner," he said.
"Does that make me a roadrunner?" she remembered some of the people talking about a cartoon of a roadrunner that jumped into the air and beeped whenever the coyote got close to it. It was teasing the coyote, she had always thought. It seemed perfect.
"No, you"re still a bunny."
"Beep, beep," she said, hopping in the air. She would be whatever she wanted to be, she thought, sticking her tongue out at him.