"You know… you could talk about what's bothering you or whatever," I said, trying to put forward my best therapist impression. "Let it out instead of steaming on it and being snappy."

She stared at me and then tapped a hexagram on the booth we were inhabiting with her card, activating the privacy ward bubble. The hum of the hall fell silent, the view blurring like frosted glass.

"With whom do you expect me to talk about my problems?" She scoffed. "I don't effin' trust anyone in this damned place. I have a reputation to keep."

"A professional therapist?" I suggested.

"Not happening," she shook her head. "My sisters will eat me alive if they find out that I went to therapy."

"Then here's your best next option," I pointed at myself.

She stared at me like I'd just suggested we go skinny-dipping in lava.

"You?" She laughed, a sharp, humorless sound. "A half-dead human who smells like a dumpster, who I met literally one hour ago, and who my sisters are already plotting to destroy? That's your suggestion for a confidant?"

"Precisely," I nodded, slurping another mouthful of noodles. "The perfect confidant. I know no one here, have no social standing to speak of, and will probably be dead by the end of the week anyway—either from my injuries, your sisters, or the Advanced Dungeoneering curriculum."

"You're in Advanced Dungeoneering?!" Her eyes widened. "How? Why? That's—"

"A death sentence for a level three human?" I finished for her. "Yeah, Principal Kerberos seemed pretty excited about that part."

Kristi's mouth opened and closed a few times before she gave up and let her forehead drop to the table with a solid thunk. Her elaborate emerald head feathers splayed out across the tabletop like an exotic flower arrangement.

"You… you have to switch out of it!" She sputtered.

"Aww, it almost sounds like you care for whether I survive," I grinned.

"No—you—Argh!" She made frustrated raptor noises. "Why the fuck did Kerb put you into that program?! That's for…"

"Someone like you?" I offered. "That's convenient. Guess we'll see each other in class often then."

"You're so fucking dead," she let out.

"Been there, done that, got over it," I agreed cheerfully, savoring another spoonful of broth. "Also, which dungeon are we heading into for our practical? The sheet didn't clarify that part."

"The Superstore, if we pass the sim first," she gritted her teeth. "And you didn't answer my question."

"Kerberos was impressed because I made this," I showed Kristi my bracelet.

"The fuck?" She stared at the blue flowers. "He was impressed with your friendship grass bracelet?"

"First of all," I said. "It's a healing bracelet. And second of all, after I made it I was accosted by the Magnetic Lynx. We chatted for a bit then she went back into her dungeon."

Kristi stared at me like I grew a second head. "What?! No! You're lying. You couldn't have met her. If you did, we wouldn't be talking right now!"

"Eh," I shrugged. "She seemed nice, if a bit weird."

"Alec," Kristi said. "Stop making shit up to impress me. The Magnetic Lynx isn't 'nice'. She's a legendary-tier, unstoppable abomination that obliterates anyone who looks at her wrong. She doesn't stop. She doesn't listen, she executes delvers and corpo contractors alike. She doesn't just come out to… talk."

"I'm not trying to impress you," I smiled at her. "I really met the Magnetic Lynx… she told me 'Come back when you remember me, if you wish to punish me for what I did.'"

Kristi chortle-choked. "What?!" She lifted her head just enough to glare at me through her fingers. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I'm enjoying this soup," I corrected her. "And your lovely, if somewhat crotchety company. The rest of my day has been a dumpster fire. Literally, in one case."

"Come off it! Stop fucking with me! Being half-brain dead is no excuse to make stuff up!"

I sighed, leaning back in my seat. I didn't have the energy to convince her of something she was determined not to believe. My body ached, my head was swimming, and the warmth of the soup was making me drowsy.

"Look, whether you believe me or not doesn't matter," I said with a yawn. "Principal Kerberos believes me, and that's why he shoved me into the… deadliest dungeonery or whatever."

Kristi's expression shifted from skepticism to something more contemplative, eyes studying me with renewed interest.

"If—and that's a massive if—you actually encountered the Lynx and lived... that would explain Kerberos's interest," she admitted grudgingly. "But it still doesn't explain why you're not dead."

"I'm not dead because the Lynx confused me for some other unkillable bastard whose pack she killed or something."

"Riiiight. Anyways, I'm done humoring your Butcher of Delver delusions," she finally snapped, pushing her empty bowl away with a clawed finger. "You're either the luckiest idiot in the Western Reaches, or you're lying through your teeth to get a rise out of me." She crossed her arms, a gesture of finality, leaning back with such force that her track jacket rode up slightly. "Please pick a less ridiculous topic to discuss."

A line of violet-scaled scales was exposed between the hem of her jacket and the waistband of her uniform skirt. It was a landscape of perfectly toned abs and right in the middle was a small, perfectly formed navel.

"Ah! I do have a question," I said, my brain latching onto the detail with the tenacity of a drowning man grabbing a life raft. A much simpler, more understandable mystery than legendary dungeon Sentinels and tree-souls.

"What now?" she sighed, her expression suggesting she was preparing for another outlandish claim.

"...Why do you have a belly button?"

She blinked slowly, as if rebooting. "What?"

"You hatched from an egg, right?" I clarified, pointing vaguely with my spoon. "So... how come you have a belly button?"

For a solid ten seconds, she just stared at me. Then her feathers fluffed up in a wave of pure, unadulterated aggravation.

"Are you serious?" she finally exploded. "Of all the idiotic, brain-damaged, non-sequitur questions you could possibly ask... that's what you're focused on?! My belly button!"

"It's a valid biological inquiry," I said, trying to look scholarly.

"You think I want to talk about my navel with a stranger?!" she growled, her face flushing a deep shade of violet beneath her feathers. "You know what? Fine! You want to know? Since you're clearly too stupid to Pawdle something so basic, it's because of the vitellus, you ignorant knob! The narrow vitelline stalk acts like an umbilical cord in the egg. The embryo's mid-gut is directly hooked into vitellus and its blood vessels run across the yolk, siphoning off nutrients as they're needed. Once a raptor hatches they snip the vitellus with their claws and eat it as their first meal. This makes a belly button. Happy now?!"

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She was panting by the end of her rapid-fire tirade, glaring at me as if I'd personally insulted her entire evolutionary line.

"Aiiiight thanks for the anatomy lesson," I yawned, stretching.

"My father made us memorize the entire pradavarian phylogenetic tree by the time we were ten, you know. He'd grill us at the dinner table! 'Krysanthea, what are the three primary clades of the Canis-Lupus genus?' 'Katherine, explain the function of the gular pouch in Pelicanus Pradavarius!' It was exhausting! He thinks knowing this stuff is what makes us superior, but it's just... stuff! It doesn't make you a better delver or a better person, it just makes you good at trivia nights that no one ever invites you to!"

Her words tumbled out in a rush of long-suppressed frustration. She was no longer just talking to me; she was venting at the universe, and I just happened to be in the splash zone.

I leaned back, my own eyelids suddenly feeling immensely heavy. The rich soup sat warm and comforting in my stomach, a pleasant weight that was pulling me down into a state of deep lethargy. The pain in my body was a dull, distant hum now, easily ignored. Her voice, stripped of its aggressive edge and now just a torrent of annoyed ranting, began to blur at the edges.

"...and that's not even the worst of it! He expects perfection, always! 'A Strand does not fail, a Strand excels!' As if I can control every little thing! And now with this whole ranger thing, it's even more pressure, because Nurse Redstriss is right, I have to learn to talk to people, but how am I supposed to do that when everyone is either terrified of me or trying to use me to get closer to my father? It's all just so... so… infuriating and…"

Her words became a rhythmic, soothing drone, the privacy ward's distortion making the world outside look like a pleasant, blurry dream. I tried to follow what she was saying. Something about pressure and expectations of being born first. Unfortunately, the sheer exhaustion of the day was a tidal wave, and the soup was the anchor dragging me under.

My head tilted to the side, my cheek finding the cool surface of the booth's leather upholstery. My body shut down automatically, begging for sleep I had been skipping out on for about a week, relying on power naps.

When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't sure how much time had passed. My head was tilted back against the booth, a small pool of drool had collected at the corner of my mouth, and my neck had a crick in it that promised future misery.

I glanced at my hand. My blue flower healing bracelet was gone, decayed into ashes, its power spent on healing me.

I turned my head.

The privacy curtain was still active, the outside world existing as blurry shapes and muffled sounds. Across from me, Kristi was hunched over the table, her talons manipulating what appeared to be... food?

I blinked, trying to focus my sleep-addled vision. She had assembled an assortment of items from an order of several meals—bread, meat slices, vegetables—and was meticulously arranging them into a small, humanoid shape.

As I watched, she carefully placed two olive slices for eyes and used a sliver of carrot for the mouth. The little bread-and-meat figure had ragged hair made from shredded lettuce and even wore a tiny hoodie fashioned from a folded slice of ham.

"Is that... supposed to be me?" I asked, my voice still rough from sleep. "Or another random human in a hoodie?"

Kristi yelped, her feathers flaring in surprise. In one swift, panicked motion, she scooped up the elaborate food sculpture and shoved it into her mouth.

"What? No!" she spluttered through a mouthful of sandwich-man. "You didn't see anything! Just having a snack waiting for your busted up ass to wake up!"

I stared at her in bewilderment as she chewed frantically, her cheeks bulging and crumbs and meat bits falling to the table. Her scales had darkened to violet with what I now recognized as a blush spreading across her face.

"Pretty sure I did." I yawned. "Was sandwich-Alec delicious?"

"Shut up," she hissed after swallowing with difficulty. "I was bored! You just fell asleep on me mid-conversation like a narcoleptic sloth!"

I couldn't help it—I started laughing. It hurt my ribs and pulled at my healing cuts, but I couldn't stop. The absurdity of the situation, of this fierce raptor predator caught making a food doll of me and then panic-eating it, was just too much.

"It's not funny!" she protested, but her indignation only made me laugh harder.

"It's pretty funny," I managed between wheezes.

She glared at me, but the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.

"I used to make art too," I said when I'd finally regained my composure. "Drawings and such. And little figurines out of whatever I could find—clay, paper, wire. Even tried animating them with my Depictomancy."

"And how did that work out for you?" She asked snarkily.

"They didn't animate very well and fell apart quickly. Pretty sure it requires really magical materials to work, I think," I said. "Anyways, my reload rate is absolute shit, plus I didn't have anyone to show it to, so I gave up on it."

Kristi's expression shifted, the embarrassment of stuffing her mouth with sandwich-me fading into something more somber. "Hrm," she said finally. "I thought that I had it bad but you're just a case of pure depresso."

"You have it bad?" I arched an eyebrow. "The Strand princess? Really? I've seen your Pradstagram, you know."

Kristi's eye twitched as I had seemingly hit a nerve. "Go fuck yourself," she growled. "'No one to show my art to, boo-hoo.' Little whiny knobfold human!"

"Poor little raptor princess, trapped in her tower of privilege," I fired back. "Look, if you're going to be mean, I'm just going to go. I appreciate the soup and the medical attention, but I don't need your name calling on top of everything else I'm dealing with."

I wiggled out of the booth to leave, but her voice stopped me.

"Wait."

I glanced back. Kristi was staring at the table, her claws leaving small scratches in the surface.

"I didn't mean..." She trailed off, then tried again. "That came out wrong."

I waited, one eyebrow raised expectantly.

She made a frustrated noise. "I'm not good at this, okay? The whole... talking to people thing. Especially humans."

"I noticed," I said dryly.

Her amber-gold eyes flicked up to meet mine, and to my surprise, there was no anger in them—just a weary resignation with a pitch of pure despair that looked out of place on someone so young and privileged.

Guess money really couldn't buy happiness.

"So," I asked to fill in the awkward silence between us. "Did you really just watch me sleep for however long it took you to build a food mini-me? Don't you have classes to go to?"

"Nah," she said. "This is my last year of Advanced Dungeoneering. The first day was general assembly and teacher re-introductions and today is mostly team coordination and general delve prepping. I don't need to do shit for that—I already have a team and got all of my gear updated with a private instructor during summer."

She looked me up and down. "Wait. You don't have any gear, do you?"

"Nope. Can't afford it."

"And no delving team?"

"Don't know anyone except for you."

"Slayer damn it! Have you ever even been in a dungeon?"

"Nope."

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck," Kristi rubbed her face. "What the fuck Kerb?! What did he even tell you before he gave you your schedule?"

"He said I had potential that needed to be bathed in infinite hellfire in order to bloom," I recited. "Then he told me to enjoy campus and make friends."

Kristi's eyes widened. For a moment, she simply sat there, frozen in shock. Then something seemed to snap inside her. She began to laugh—a high, slightly manic sound.

"Make friends?!" she repeated, her voice cracking. "Make. Friends. The principal of Ferguson High, the guardian of the school's sacred traditions and an absolute monster of a prad, told you—a level three human with no equipment, no team, and a gang claim mark—to make friends?!"

"Is that... unusual?" I asked.

"Kerberos hasn't used the phrase 'make friends' in the fifty years he's been principal," she said, her laughter dying into something more akin to a whimper. "He once expelled a student for suggesting the school host a friendship festival."

I shrugged as a reply.

She buried her face in her hands again, her emerald feathers drooping. "This is it. This is how my life ends. Not in a glorious battle with high level dungeon monsters. No, I die of embarrassment when my 'assigned human' gets eviscerated because Principal Kerberos has finally lost his mind."

"Actually," I said, the reality of my situation finally sinking in, "Yes. How am I even supposed to go delving? I have no gear, no team, and I certainly can't afford a dungeon ticket."

Kristi stared at me, mouth slightly agape. "You're just now thinking about this?"

"I've been a bit preoccupied with the whole tag thing and not bleeding out," I pointed out. "The logistics of dungeon delving seemed like a problem for the tomorrow me."

"Tomorrow is the first day of class," she said slowly, as if explaining something to a particularly dim child. "Advanced Dungeoneering starts with a practical session."

"As in going into the Superstore dungeon?" I asked nervously.

"Pffff no," She shook her mane, sending light reflections from her scales across the booth. "Just a dungeon sim in the gym."

"Oh good," I relaxed. "Then I'll be fine."

"You're not going to be fine you effing knob!" She barked. "They'll murder you!"

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