Chapter 96: 14: Upwelling Spring

Danika landed beside her little tree and pressed her ear against its thin trunk. She gave Shrubbery a questioning look.

"Well, you probably can't hear it because it's a tree," Shrubbery explained.

"Do you think that means that at least it's happy here?" Danika questioned after a moment.

"Probably?" Shrubbery replied uncertainly. She reached out and touched her fingertips against one of its little branches and closed her eyes and stood very still for a moment. "Yes, it's happy here, but it won't start to make apples until it's at least three years old," Shrubbery informed her after she opened her eyes.

"That's a long time," Danika replied. "Even if you mean game years?"

Shrubbery nodded. "Yeah," she agreed. A few minutes later she said, "I need to go soon, do you think she'll be much longer?"

"I don't know, they talked for a long time yesterday," Danika replied.

Danika had just pulled up her menus and started a new message to Kit when Kit appeared beside the center stone and took a startled step backward away from Shrubbery.

"Um, hi?" Shrubbery said shyly. "I can't stay long but I was hoping I'd get a chance to meet our new party member before I have to go."

Kit gazed at Shrubbery with wide eyes and asked nervously, "You don't have anything against druids do you? Since you're a player?"

Shrubbery and Danika both gave her a confused look and exchanged glances.

"No?" Shrubbery replied uncertainly.

A thought occurred to Danika and she asked, "Does the description of Dryads in your book say that they don't like Druids? I'd have thought Druids and Dryads were almost the same what with worshipping trees?"

"We don't worship trees," Kit protested, "we just respect them because they are resistant to the powers of the God of Separation. It takes a really powerful lightning strike to hurt one, and they resist separation skills. They don't respect boundaries either, so we have to work around them. And yeah, my book says Dryads hate Druids for placing limits upon forests for settled races to have more farmland."

Shrubbery giggled and Kit gazed at her worriedly. "It's ok, I don't know anything about that, I've only worked with my own garden. What book?"

Kit brightened and withdrew her book. She approached the tall brown skinned dryad without any remaining trace of reluctance as soon as Shrubbery asked about her book. Shrubbery was thrilled by the enchanted book and enthused, "I wonder if there are enchanted books like this about the plants in Living Jade Empire too? That would be so cool to have!"

Danika let them flip through various articles on the creatures in the game together and checked her post on the forum. There were already several junk replies, a surprising number of people wanting to know the location she'd found the mountain guardian at, and one question that read: "What are you offering in exchange?" It was written by Xander.

Danika searched for Xander and saw that their location was listed as Kalunay but they weren't online. Since they were in the same region they might actually know something, so she sent a friend request.

Shrubbery announced reluctantly, "I really have to go now."

"Oh, ok," Kit replied.

"Can I send you a friend request first?" Shrubbery asked.

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Kit held out her hand and said, "Let's be friends."

Shrubbery smiled and shook her hand lightly and replied, "Yeah."

Danika said, "Good luck with your pile of assignments."

Shrubbery laughed and replied, "Thanks! There are a mountain of them." She vanished a moment later.

Danika shrugged. Aishin's location was still set in her garden too. She wondered if there was an easy way for her to wear her pebble when she didn't have clothes with pockets.

Kit said, "I only have another half an hour too, can we try to reach the upwelling spring?"

"Of course," Danika replied with a smile.

They exited the garden and Danika lifted the pebble, and then set it down again. Kit looked at her questioningly. "Let me try something first," Danika replied.

She withdrew her spool of spider thread and used her Binding String skill. It formed a sort of net around the pebble and she trimmed the string with her Claw Swipe, leaving a length free on either side of the pebble. Then she pulled the strings around her waist, so that the stone hung in front of her belly, and tied them.

"Ok, ready," Danika announced.

Kit snickered. When Danika looked at her questioningly she explained, "It's nearly the same color as your belly, and the strings don't really show so now it looks like your belly button is sticking out."

Danika decided that she should probably not wear her stone this way in front of SaltySiamese but at least it worked for now. A little while later she also decided that she had never realized that following a brook upstream could be like trying to choose the right corridor in a dungeon.

They followed a number of the streams that fed the brook back up the mountain to find that they apparently originated as snow melt. Kit was almost out of time when they finally reached the upwelling spring. It was a rippling round pool with no apparent source, although the ripples indicated that the water probably came up underneath the center of the pool.

Kit startled Danika by dashing forward and diving to the bottom of the pool. But after a moment Danika realized that she'd transformed into her silvery fish form on the way down. Danika couldn't see exactly what she did at the bottom of the pool, but she heard the soft distant chime of a skill, and Kit surfaced a moment later and announced happily, "I unlocked the next tier of separation skills!"

"Separation skills?" Danika questioned.

"Yeah," Kit replied as she resumed her human shape and waded out of the pool. "The first tier skill can separate things like types of grain from a mix by type. I mean, you could do that by hand too, so it's not that cool, but now I'll be able to separate liquids! The higher tier skill most smiths use lets you separate metals. The Traveling Merchant said there are even higher tiers that will let you separate gases."

"Oh, that sounds pretty useful," Danika replied cheerfully. "What was the riddle part?"

"Oh, I had to answer that to find out that I needed the map to the place to drink a mouthful of pure water, it was not too hard: It can sparkle without facets, it can run without legs, it can fall but never be hurt," Kit replied.

Kit remembered to transform into her other shapes before she logged out, and Danika watched intently, but still hadn't learned the skill when Kit logged off. Danika searched the area around the spring hopefully, to see if any of the profitable items the traveling merchant had mentioned to Kit were easily found in its vicinity.

She spotted a patch of plants with what looked like pale little paper lanterns, and used her Identify Plant to verify that they were indeed the Goldenberries the merchant had mentioned. She gathered them all and stored them in the embroidered pouch, and then touched the pebble tied to her belly and entered her garden.

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