Book 3: Chapter 58: Meeting Old Friends
The next two weeks were nearly the slowest since I’d arrived in Erd. I took Aqua’s advice seriously, and put extra effort into talking to the team about my past. About my family, and the home I’d left behind. Richter was by far the most interested, and fell in love with Earth science. He wanted to know more about concepts like relativity, dark matter, and the periodic table. I told him that Erd physics worked completely differently, but he still thought there were parallels that could be explored.
In my off time I continued to work on my gluten transformation spell. As soon as it was complete, I’d start on some kind of a fireball spell, swear to Gods.
I continued to take weekly therapy from Aqua. We talked about my past, what I found easiest in this new world, and what I found hardest. Where my frustrations lay and what I wanted to change the most about myself. We also revisited my memories, both from Earth and from here. I was surprised how much fear I had in my early memories of Erd. My months in the reform mine were especially clouded with rage and terror. And not all of it was gone either. I was still angry at the cancer for taking me from my family, at Barck for dropping me into the shitter, at the Guild for their sabotage and ham-fisted throttling of beer, at goat shit for existing.
Yup. I really needed that therapy!
We finally brought Rosie and Darrel into the fold, but only after they agreed to keep it a secret from Bando. It would probably hurt when he found out that everyone in the tavern knew this great big secret except him, but he just was too big of a liability. Besides, old dwarves were used to keeping secrets from young dwarves, so it wasn’t that out of the ordinary. Rosie didn’t even find the news surprising. She claimed it was pretty much impossible to keep secrets from the person washing your underwear.
Annie blushed when she said it.
Which brought us to mid-afternoon the day before the release of our Dragonator. When Berry walked through the door with an elf on her arm.
Or rather, her on an elf’s shoulder, given the height disparity. With Joseph nearly the size of a human, and Berry rather short for a gnome, it was kind of hilarious. She was practically hanging on his arm like a koala.
“Berry.” I nodded at her and gave a closed fist bow to Joseph. “Ambassador.”