NaNoWriMo 2012

Whatever the honchkrow's concerns might have been, either no one had told Hjálmarr or he didn't care— he could feel Brynja sagging underneath him, growing more and more tired and by now unable to fight her way out from under him. An uncharacteristically wild laugh tore from his throat as he drew back his fist again, ready to drive it into her head one last time—

— and then his fist connected with empty air as an unseen force ripped him off of Brynja and threw him backwards as easily as the chair from before. The prince hurtled clear across the throne room and crashed soundly into Thormodr's abandoned seat, then fell sideways into the glass case placed carefully by its side—

Everyone gathered in the throne room fell silent the instant the glass shattered and the case's contents smashed right along with it. Charmion's gloating and Delyth's complaining cut off abruptly; Ragnvaldr's eyes went wide in disbelief; Brynja and Hjálmarr froze where they lay on the ground, too stunned to fight against their pain and fatigue and attempt to rise.

Ragnvaldr moved first, the rush of his wings finally breaking the silence as he flapped over to the shattered case. He landed next to Hjálmarr's still form with a clatter of talons and gingerly rooted around in the glass with his beak, carefully shifting the fragments aside until he found what he was looking for, and the others waited with bated breath as he got a good grip on the object and hauled it forward to inspect it.

"You've *ruined* it!" Delyth shrieked as soon as she laid eyes on the badly chipped half sphere in Ragnvaldr's beak. "Wretched savages, barbarians, you've *ruined* Thormodr's God Stone!"

"I haven't ruined a thing, woman," Hjálmarr snarled, finally levering himself up on an elbow and wincing when he accidentally leaned on a shard of glass.

"You smashed the case, idiot," Brynja retorted, getting to her feet at last and leering at her half-brother out of her one good eye. "You knocked everything over and smashed the God Stone on the floor. Stupid clumsy oaf! What kind of king smashes the only god-monster relic he's ever going to get his hands on, hm, the only source of the power that will guarantee him the respect of— "

"I haven't ruined *anything*!" Hjálmarr repeated. "*You* smashed the God Stone when *you* threw me into it! For all of your and Delyth's ranting and calling us clumsy savages, *I* don't recall being the one who was throwing chairs around and swinging people into Father's priceless relics!" He stuck his bleeding wrist into his mouth and sucked at it petulantly.

"Actually..." Ragnvaldr mumbled around a beakful of broken relic.

Delyth rounded on Charmion as though she hadn't heard the honchkrow. "Now I *know* you two aren't trying to pin the blame for this on my daughter," she said, laughing mirthlessly. "It was hardly Brynja's idea to start this ridiculous fighting, and right here in the throne room at that! If you two bloodthirsty *creatures* had been able to [curb] your urge to maim something, we could have settled this in *any other way* that would have left the God Stone in one piece!"

Ragnvaldr dropped the piece of God Stone he held behind Thormodr's throne, and then backwinged away from the case's remains, his eyes growing wider again. "Excuse me!" he squawked, balancing on one talon and pointing at the leftover mess with the other. "Look, look!"

"No matter how we tried to 'settle' things, the outcome would have been the same," Charmion snapped. "Complain as much as you like, Delyth, but your daughter will never have the right to be the queen of [Thormodland] and she never did!"

"I am every bit as much Thormodr's child as he is, and as the oldest I think I have every right to— "

Charmion heaved her wine glass at Brynja's head and only narrowly missed her target. "*I* think that you're nothing but a weasely, filthy whore and her ungrateful bastard brat who had absolutely no business marching into *my* husband's kingdom and bringing all of this nonsense and misery down on me and my son!"

"Enough, enough!" Whatever comment Hjálmarr was about to add to his mother's was cut off as Ragnvaldr flew up and landed squarely on his head. "You'll all stop this childish bickering at once and listen to what I'm saying or I'll just have to vent my frustrations a little more forcefully!" Hjálmarr held very still as the honchkrow raised his tailfeathers meaningfully; Brynja snorted derisively.


(different thing from later)

"Do relax, would you, human?" the young woman said, rolling her eyes as she settled back in her chair. "You're *fine*. Well, mostly fine. Someone or other did a rough patch job on those gashes in your side, anyway— and just those bandages will have to do, by the by, since it's not as though we're going to waste perfectly good healing magic on the likes of you— so you're not likely to bleed out any time soon. Or, at least, not likely as long as you don't undo the bandages with all of that irritating wriggling around."

Didier stopped and sat still, then leaned over to look at his side. Upon closer inspection there did appear to be bandages there after all, soaked a dark-reddish brown with his blood though they were. Hardly the sort of careful medical treatment he would have received back at home in Chiennaud, of course, but then again considering where he was he supposed he should have been thankful that anyone had attended to him at all.

"And besides," the young woman continued, now smiling cheerfully and reaching casually for a wine glass that sat on a tray beside her, "we'd hardly be able to question you if you were all full of holes. Not very productive, is it, trying to get information out of people who are all preoccupied with bleeding all over the place."

The phrase "trying to get information out of people" sent an involuntary shiver up Didier's spine, one that the young woman was quick to pick up on. "Now, now," she said softly, still smiling at him over her glass of wine, "there's no need to get upset. Just because my father happened to detest you humans and my half-brother wants to continue his crusade to kill all of you, that doesn't mean that I'm incapable of having a reasonable discussion with you! You look like an intelligent man, sir; surely you know better than to jump to such hasty conclusions."

The [advisor] nervously returned her smile but did not relax; he knew better than that. If he'd had a genuine reason to trust the woman— princess or queen or something, he supposed, assuming that the father she referred to was the late king of [Thormodland]— then she wouldn't have been addressing him from the other side of a dungeon cell door, and she wouldn't likely have had such reservations about "wasting" perfectly good healing magic on "the likes of him", either.

The woman's smile never faltered. "Well, if you're going to continue to remain skeptical then I suppose that's your decision," she said calmly, shrugging a little. "I don't suppose I can blame you for being a little suspicious, given... well." She waved an arm at their surroundings. "I'm hardly going to pretend that I'm fond of your kind, of course, because I'm not. But that doesn't mean that I can't be courteous, you know. I do have reason to believe that you know things that are of interest to me, human, and I'm going to find out what I want to find out by any means necessary... but I'm not some brutish orc or half-orc, like that oaf Hjálmarr and his tiresome mother. If we can do this the civil way, rather than the hard way, well, that would make things much, much less painful for the both of us, would it not? Think of it a little less like an interrogation and more like a simple conversation, let's say. So! My name is Brynja Thormodsdóttir. I don't believe I ever caught yours...?" She paused, still smiling, and watched him through the bars with a politely inquisitive expression.

His name... would it really hurt anything if he told her that? Or, perhaps, the more pertinent question, how much would it hurt if he didn't? She'd gone as far as to admit that she wasn't his friend, but she'd also put forward the suggestion that, at least for the time being, this didn't have to be too unpleasant. He just had to cooperate and the whole affair would remain relatively painless... but how far did that mean he would have to go?

"You might as well tell me, you know," said Brynja, a slight sing-song lilt to her tone. "As I've said, I'm more than happy to be a courteous host, or at least as courteous as the current situation allows. But if you want to draw this out, you should know that I *will* get precisely what I want, and if that means that things take an unfortunate turn for you, well, then, so be it. So, Mister Human, how do you intend to dictate the flow of this conversation, hm?"

Didier sighed. He did have to give this Brynja some credit; so few dignitaries he'd dealt with were capable of getting to the point so quickly. "My name is Didier," he said softly.

"There!" Brynja said cheerfully, raising her half-empty glass in his direction. "That wasn't so bad, now was it? It's very nice to meet you, Didier. I have to say, given the other imbeciles I'm constantly surrounded by, it's refreshing to deal with someone so cooperative."

"Fine, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to," Isaac says with a confident smile. "But I'm telling you, Garet, I can do it. Eyes closed, five seconds flat, all ten of them, just like I said."

Garet yawns and slouches against the bushes behind him, still as unimpressed as ever. "Isaac, the last time you tried to catch ten apples in five seconds you managed to grab all of *three* of them in four seconds and then give yourself a splitting headache in the one second you had left. And since that 'last time' was only a little more than a week ago..." He smirks. "You'll forgive me for being just a tiny bit skeptical of your claim, there, pal."

Isaac does not stop smiling. Garet can say whatever he wants, and it's not going to bother him in the slightest. He's been *practicing*, after all, staying up late and catching all sorts of things in his room and in the rest of the house, and except for that one time when he dropped his mother's good dishes in mid-cast and she chased him out of the kitchen, he's doing pretty well if he does say so himself.

His mother, when she isn't busy cleaning up the messes from his latest impromptu practice sessions, says she doesn't really understand the point of training to become "the fastest catcher this side of Mt. Aleph", and that she doesn't see when on earth that sort of skill might ever be of any use to him. She says that a sensible young man would be better off spending his time learning to be "the most efficient and thorough roof-patching catcher this side of this house so that I don't have to come up there behind you every time you attempt to 'fix' a leak and I don't want rain in the house again, honestly Isaac it's not that hard if you just apply yourself". She says that was more or less why she'd agreed to help him learn Catch in the first place, and then she usually heads off to do chores while muttering to herself about Garet and Kraden putting *ideas* in his head again.

It's not just an *idea*, though, Isaac insists mentally, and he didn't need Garet or Kraden's help to come up with it. If he's honest with himself he doesn't know *exactly* when becoming the fastest catcher this side of Mt. Aleph will be useful, but that doesn't matter because one day it *will*. He knows it. And just that knowledge is reason enough for him.

Garet is absent-mindedly plucking leaves off of the bush he's leaning against at this point; Isaac needs to act quickly, then, or lose his audience and his chance to show off how he totally is not going to give himself a raging headache this time around, no really he's not. "Pay attention," he hisses, elbowing his friend in the ribs. "All ten of those apples, five seconds. You'll see. Ready?"

"If you are," Garet sighs, rolling his eyes but holding up a hand to count off on his fingers anyway. "Ready... steady... go! One!"

Isaac concentrates harder than he ever has before, his mind jumping from one low hanging apple to the next and giving each the hardest mental pull he can muster. One apple snaps free of its tree, then another, the third is a little trickier but comes loose with a bit of extra work, all three of them fly back in the boys' direction one by one—

"Two!"

The fourth apple is stubborn like the third, and he ends up dropping it instead of pulling it back, but he doesn't care because Garet has already said "Three!" and he has to hurry and move on to the fifth. A dull, throbbing pain is starting up somewhere around his temples, but Isaac tries his hardest to push through and ignore it. Come hell or high water he's going to prove Garet wrong this time—

"Four— oh, hey, Jenna!"

Jenna has just strolled into view. She stops where she stands and turns around as if to wave at them, and the sudden appearance catches Isaac's attention just long enough that when he reaches out to grab something with his mind—

"Hey, guys— eeeeeek!"

An [invisible] force misses the sixth apple entirely and instead hoists the hem of Jenna's skirt straight up in the air, then releases it immediately when it realizes what it has inadvertently done, and also just how furious Jenna is going to be about it.

Isaac wonders if maybe later he can claim that it was a case of mistaken identity. After all, at the moment Jenna's snarling face is about as red as any apple he's ever seen.

"All right," Jenna says, her voice dangerously low and menacing. She glares back and forth between Isaac and Garet, one hand holding her skirt in place and the other balled into a fist. "Who did it? Which one of you two slimy jerks thought it would be funny to look up my skirt, huh? Who gets the stuffing beat out of them, huh?"

Neither Isaac nor Garet says a word, instead looking first at one another's frightened expressions and then back at Jenna's clenched fist.

"Or maybe," Jenna continues, moving closer and waving the fist right under their noses, "the question should be 'who gets the stuffing beat out of them *first*', because if neither one of you fesses up in the next three seconds I swear I'll knock *both* of your blocks off!"

Isaac is at a loss. Of course he can't pin the blame on Garet... but like heck he wants to get beat up by Jenna. He remembers that one Incident with Garet and the Great Healer and the squirrels all too well; he's seen Jenna's handiwork and wants absolutely no part of it.

Unfortunately for Isaac, it seems that Garet remembers the Squirrel Incident every bit as well as he does, and is in no mood for an encore. "Isaac did it!" he blurts out, pointing at his best friend with both index fingers. "Isaac did it, Isaac did it, I even told him he couldn't I mean shouldn't but he did it!"

Garet turns, grins apologetically at Isaac, and then vacates the orchard at top speed.

"N— No, Jenna, no," Isaac stammers, stumbling backward and holding his hands up to keep some distance between himself and the irate Jenna. "No, you don't understand! I— it was an— I didn't mean— the *apples*, Jenna, over there, see— no, Jenna! Isaac didn't do it! Isaac didn't do it!"

Then he turns and sprints in the opposite direction when Jenna takes a swing at his head anyway.

At the very least, though, Isaac thinks to himself as he ducks beneath the blast of fire that Jenna flings at him from behind, there is one upside to this mess. He's seen that best-friend–sellout rat practicing his Psynergy before, seen how his face turns red when he tries to push things around, seen how furious his sister gets when he knocks a heavy log right onto her favorite part of the garden. Stupid Garet's really no better at any of this than he is— and, if nothing else, he bets Garet wouldn't have been able to lift up a girl's skirt.

Whatever the honchkrow's concerns might have been, either no one had told Hjálmarr or he didn't care— he could feel Brynja sagging underneath him, growing more and more tired and by now unable to fight her way out from under him. An uncharacteristically wild laugh tore from his throat as he drew back his fist again, ready to drive it into her head one last time—

— and then his fist connected with empty air as an unseen force ripped him off of Brynja and threw him backwards as easily as the chair from before. The prince hurtled clear across the throne room and crashed soundly into Thormodr's abandoned seat, then fell sideways into the glass case placed carefully by its side—

Everyone gathered in the throne room fell silent the instant the glass shattered and the case's contents smashed right along with it. Charmion's gloating and Delyth's complaining cut off abruptly; Ragnvaldr's eyes went wide in disbelief; Brynja and Hjálmarr froze where they lay on the ground, too stunned to fight against their pain and fatigue and attempt to rise.

Ragnvaldr moved first, the rush of his wings finally breaking the silence as he flapped over to the shattered case. He landed next to Hjálmarr's still form with a clatter of talons and gingerly rooted around in the glass with his beak, carefully shifting the fragments aside until he found what he was looking for, and the others waited with bated breath as he got a good grip on the object and hauled it forward to inspect it.

"You've *ruined* it!" Delyth shrieked as soon as she laid eyes on the badly chipped half sphere in Ragnvaldr's beak. "Wretched savages, barbarians, you've *ruined* Thormodr's God Stone!"

"I haven't ruined a thing, woman," Hjálmarr snarled, finally levering himself up on an elbow and wincing when he accidentally leaned on a shard of glass.

"You smashed the case, idiot," Brynja retorted, getting to her feet at last and leering at her half-brother out of her one good eye. "You knocked everything over and smashed the God Stone on the floor. Stupid clumsy oaf! What kind of king smashes the only god-monster relic he's ever going to get his hands on, hm, the only source of the power that will guarantee him the respect of— "

"I haven't ruined *anything*!" Hjálmarr repeated. "*You* smashed the God Stone when *you* threw me into it! For all of your and Delyth's ranting and calling us clumsy savages, *I* don't recall being the one who was throwing chairs around and swinging people into Father's priceless relics!" He stuck his bleeding wrist into his mouth and sucked at it petulantly.

"Actually..." Ragnvaldr mumbled around a beakful of broken relic.

Delyth rounded on Charmion as though she hadn't heard the honchkrow. "Now I *know* you two aren't trying to pin the blame for this on my daughter," she said, laughing mirthlessly. "It was hardly Brynja's idea to start this ridiculous fighting, and right here in the throne room at that! If you two bloodthirsty *creatures* had been able to [curb] your urge to maim something, we could have settled this in *any other way* that would have left the God Stone in one piece!"

Ragnvaldr dropped the piece of God Stone he held behind Thormodr's throne, and then backwinged away from the case's remains, his eyes growing wider again. "Excuse me!" he squawked, balancing on one talon and pointing at the leftover mess with the other. "Look, look!"

"No matter how we tried to 'settle' things, the outcome would have been the same," Charmion snapped. "Complain as much as you like, Delyth, but your daughter will never have the right to be the queen of [Thormodland] and she never did!"

"I am every bit as much Thormodr's child as he is, and as the oldest I think I have every right to— "

Charmion heaved her wine glass at Brynja's head and only narrowly missed her target. "*I* think that you're nothing but a weasely, filthy whore and her ungrateful bastard brat who had absolutely no business marching into *my* husband's kingdom and bringing all of this nonsense and misery down on me and my son!"

"Enough, enough!" Whatever comment Hjálmarr was about to add to his mother's was cut off as Ragnvaldr flew up and landed squarely on his head. "You'll all stop this childish bickering at once and listen to what I'm saying or I'll just have to vent my frustrations a little more forcefully!" Hjálmarr held very still as the honchkrow raised his tailfeathers meaningfully; Brynja snorted derisively.


(different thing from later)

"Do relax, would you, human?" the young woman said, rolling her eyes as she settled back in her chair. "You're *fine*. Well, mostly fine. Someone or other did a rough patch job on those gashes in your side, anyway— and just those bandages will have to do, by the by, since it's not as though we're going to waste perfectly good healing magic on the likes of you— so you're not likely to bleed out any time soon. Or, at least, not likely as long as you don't undo the bandages with all of that irritating wriggling around."

Didier stopped and sat still, then leaned over to look at his side. Upon closer inspection there did appear to be bandages there after all, soaked a dark-reddish brown with his blood though they were. Hardly the sort of careful medical treatment he would have received back at home in Chiennaud, of course, but then again considering where he was he supposed he should have been thankful that anyone had attended to him at all.

"And besides," the young woman continued, now smiling cheerfully and reaching casually for a wine glass that sat on a tray beside her, "we'd hardly be able to question you if you were all full of holes. Not very productive, is it, trying to get information out of people who are all preoccupied with bleeding all over the place."

The phrase "trying to get information out of people" sent an involuntary shiver up Didier's spine, one that the young woman was quick to pick up on. "Now, now," she said softly, still smiling at him over her glass of wine, "there's no need to get upset. Just because my father happened to detest you humans and my half-brother wants to continue his crusade to kill all of you, that doesn't mean that I'm incapable of having a reasonable discussion with you! You look like an intelligent man, sir; surely you know better than to jump to such hasty conclusions."

The [advisor] nervously returned her smile but did not relax; he knew better than that. If he'd had a genuine reason to trust the woman— princess or queen or something, he supposed, assuming that the father she referred to was the late king of [Thormodland]— then she wouldn't have been addressing him from the other side of a dungeon cell door, and she wouldn't likely have had such reservations about "wasting" perfectly good healing magic on "the likes of him", either.

The woman's smile never faltered. "Well, if you're going to continue to remain skeptical then I suppose that's your decision," she said calmly, shrugging a little. "I don't suppose I can blame you for being a little suspicious, given... well." She waved an arm at their surroundings. "I'm hardly going to pretend that I'm fond of your kind, of course, because I'm not. But that doesn't mean that I can't be courteous, you know. I do have reason to believe that you know things that are of interest to me, human, and I'm going to find out what I want to find out by any means necessary... but I'm not some brutish orc or half-orc, like that oaf Hjálmarr and his tiresome mother. If we can do this the civil way, rather than the hard way, well, that would make things much, much less painful for the both of us, would it not? Think of it a little less like an interrogation and more like a simple conversation, let's say. So! My name is Brynja Thormodsdóttir. I don't believe I ever caught yours...?" She paused, still smiling, and watched him through the bars with a politely inquisitive expression.

His name... would it really hurt anything if he told her that? Or, perhaps, the more pertinent question, how much would it hurt if he didn't? She'd gone as far as to admit that she wasn't his friend, but she'd also put forward the suggestion that, at least for the time being, this didn't have to be too unpleasant. He just had to cooperate and the whole affair would remain relatively painless... but how far did that mean he would have to go?

"You might as well tell me, you know," said Brynja, a slight sing-song lilt to her tone. "As I've said, I'm more than happy to be a courteous host, or at least as courteous as the current situation allows. But if you want to draw this out, you should know that I *will* get precisely what I want, and if that means that things take an unfortunate turn for you, well, then, so be it. So, Mister Human, how do you intend to dictate the flow of this conversation, hm?"

Didier sighed. He did have to give this Brynja some credit; so few dignitaries he'd dealt with were capable of getting to the point so quickly. "My name is Didier," he said softly.

"There!" Brynja said cheerfully, raising her half-empty glass in his direction. "That wasn't so bad, now was it? It's very nice to meet you, Didier. I have to say, given the other imbeciles I'm constantly surrounded by, it's refreshing to deal with someone so cooperative."

"Fine, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to," Isaac says with a confident smile. "But I'm telling you, Garet, I can do it. Eyes closed, five seconds flat, all ten of them, just like I said."

Garet yawns and slouches against the bushes behind him, still as unimpressed as ever. "Isaac, the last time you tried to catch ten apples in five seconds you managed to grab all of *three* of them in four seconds and then give yourself a splitting headache in the one second you had left. And since that 'last time' was only a little more than a week ago..." He smirks. "You'll forgive me for being just a tiny bit skeptical of your claim, there, pal."

Isaac does not stop smiling. Garet can say whatever he wants, and it's not going to bother him in the slightest. He's been *practicing*, after all, staying up late and catching all sorts of things in his room and in the rest of the house, and except for that one time when he dropped his mother's good dishes in mid-cast and she chased him out of the kitchen, he's doing pretty well if he does say so himself.

His mother, when she isn't busy cleaning up the messes from his latest impromptu practice sessions, says she doesn't really understand the point of training to become "the fastest catcher this side of Mt. Aleph", and that she doesn't see when on earth that sort of skill might ever be of any use to him. She says that a sensible young man would be better off spending his time learning to be "the most efficient and thorough roof-patching catcher this side of this house so that I don't have to come up there behind you every time you attempt to 'fix' a leak and I don't want rain in the house again, honestly Isaac it's not that hard if you just apply yourself". She says that was more or less why she'd agreed to help him learn Catch in the first place, and then she usually heads off to do chores while muttering to herself about Garet and Kraden putting *ideas* in his head again.

It's not just an *idea*, though, Isaac insists mentally, and he didn't need Garet or Kraden's help to come up with it. If he's honest with himself he doesn't know *exactly* when becoming the fastest catcher this side of Mt. Aleph will be useful, but that doesn't matter because one day it *will*. He knows it. And just that knowledge is reason enough for him.

Garet is absent-mindedly plucking leaves off of the bush he's leaning against at this point; Isaac needs to act quickly, then, or lose his audience and his chance to show off how he totally is not going to give himself a raging headache this time around, no really he's not. "Pay attention," he hisses, elbowing his friend in the ribs. "All ten of those apples, five seconds. You'll see. Ready?"

"If you are," Garet sighs, rolling his eyes but holding up a hand to count off on his fingers anyway. "Ready... steady... go! One!"

Isaac concentrates harder than he ever has before, his mind jumping from one low hanging apple to the next and giving each the hardest mental pull he can muster. One apple snaps free of its tree, then another, the third is a little trickier but comes loose with a bit of extra work, all three of them fly back in the boys' direction one by one—

"Two!"

The fourth apple is stubborn like the third, and he ends up dropping it instead of pulling it back, but he doesn't care because Garet has already said "Three!" and he has to hurry and move on to the fifth. A dull, throbbing pain is starting up somewhere around his temples, but Isaac tries his hardest to push through and ignore it. Come hell or high water he's going to prove Garet wrong this time—

"Four— oh, hey, Jenna!"

Jenna has just strolled into view. She stops where she stands and turns around as if to wave at them, and the sudden appearance catches Isaac's attention just long enough that when he reaches out to grab something with his mind—

"Hey, guys— eeeeeek!"

An [invisible] force misses the sixth apple entirely and instead hoists the hem of Jenna's skirt straight up in the air, then releases it immediately when it realizes what it has inadvertently done, and also just how furious Jenna is going to be about it.

Isaac wonders if maybe later he can claim that it was a case of mistaken identity. After all, at the moment Jenna's snarling face is about as red as any apple he's ever seen.

"All right," Jenna says, her voice dangerously low and menacing. She glares back and forth between Isaac and Garet, one hand holding her skirt in place and the other balled into a fist. "Who did it? Which one of you two slimy jerks thought it would be funny to look up my skirt, huh? Who gets the stuffing beat out of them, huh?"

Neither Isaac nor Garet says a word, instead looking first at one another's frightened expressions and then back at Jenna's clenched fist.

"Or maybe," Jenna continues, moving closer and waving the fist right under their noses, "the question should be 'who gets the stuffing beat out of them *first*', because if neither one of you fesses up in the next three seconds I swear I'll knock *both* of your blocks off!"

Isaac is at a loss. Of course he can't pin the blame on Garet... but like heck he wants to get beat up by Jenna. He remembers that one Incident with Garet and the Great Healer and the squirrels all too well; he's seen Jenna's handiwork and wants absolutely no part of it.

Unfortunately for Isaac, it seems that Garet remembers the Squirrel Incident every bit as well as he does, and is in no mood for an encore. "Isaac did it!" he blurts out, pointing at his best friend with both index fingers. "Isaac did it, Isaac did it, I even told him he couldn't I mean shouldn't but he did it!"

Garet turns, grins apologetically at Isaac, and then vacates the orchard at top speed.

"N— No, Jenna, no," Isaac stammers, stumbling backward and holding his hands up to keep some distance between himself and the irate Jenna. "No, you don't understand! I— it was an— I didn't mean— the *apples*, Jenna, over there, see— no, Jenna! Isaac didn't do it! Isaac didn't do it!"

Then he turns and sprints in the opposite direction when Jenna takes a swing at his head anyway.

At the very least, though, Isaac thinks to himself as he ducks beneath the blast of fire that Jenna flings at him from behind, there is one upside to this mess. He's seen that best-friend–sellout rat practicing his Psynergy before, seen how his face turns red when he tries to push things around, seen how furious his sister gets when he knocks a heavy log right onto her favorite part of the garden. Stupid Garet's really no better at any of this than he is— and, if nothing else, he bets Garet wouldn't have been able to lift up a girl's skirt.