Dear Risa,

  We’re back on the road! I missed traveling, seeing the world slowly pass by. The planet we live on is quite pretty, must say. I’m glad it wasn’t totally destroyed in a giant earthquake, or washed away by a tsunami.

  And who does everyone have to thank for that tsunami not killing everyone? That’s right, me. And Luke. Aaaand like a hundred other people who joined the spell and helped out in other places. But I did a big part of it!

  Since everything is over, the Goddess removed my access to water magic. Meaning my eyes aren’t blue any more, they’re back to their normal, boring red. Oh well, such is life.

  It took her a while to do it, though. She must have been super busy with other things. I was kinda hoping she’d forget about it, but no luck.

  So far, we’ve only passed towns and villages. Tomorrow we’ll get to Clover, a real city, and I’m… not sure I want to. The towns are totally flattened, with only a handful of buildings being rebuilt so far. I know cities must have been equally flattened, but I’m hopeful that the craftspeople and mages have all been organized into groups for serious rebuilding. Every city has its own government, and they won’t all organize in the same way, but I’m hopeful that Goldvale will be back to almost normal when we get there.

  I asked Echo what she thought about it all, and she didn’t want to talk about it. At all. So I won’t be discussing infrastructure with her.

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  Cali was surprisingly willing to talk about everything. She’s worried about trauma, and how basically everyone alive right now will be terrified of earthquakes until the day they die. Which is true. If I never feel another earthquake again, it’ll be too soon. Even if it’s a mini baby earthquake. I don’t want to. Sure, Cali was thinking mostly about how it’ll affect animals, but it applies to people, too.

  When I tried talking to Maki, he just said he was sure cities had prepared rescue groups, and everyone was probably fine. Then he quickly changed the subject by asking if he should keep the psychic magic, and Echo was very adamant that he should. I left them to it.

  And Luke is of the opinion that we aren’t in charge, so we shouldn’t be worried about it, and we’ll see how things look when we get there. Which is a little disappointing. It is a valid opinion, but he’s almost mad about it. Like he should be in charge, but he isn’t, so he’s saying he doesn’t care.

  Maybe in Clover we’ll be able to read reports on how everyone is doing everywhere. That’d be nice.

  I wonder what they’ll have us do next. Somehow I doubt finding corrupt town mayors is high on anyone’s priority list. Unless they’re sending out supplies, and need someone to double-check that the supplies aren’t being double-ordered or something.

  Well, we have a wagon. We’ll probably be asked to take things somewhere. Maybe take note of what all is needed.

  We were asked to take a report to the city from Innsnose, but we aren’t going to the city that has jurisdiction over them. So yeah, we apologized for being useless.

  Hopefully we won’t be useless for much longer.

  Useless Regards,

  Maeve Zee