Quailbrook was a perfect fantasy vilge. And I mean that literally. Perfect. The whole area was absolutely ft; I’d have bet that a ball set on the ground wouldn’t move the width of a hair. The streets were broad and even, without cracks or potholes, despite looking like hard-packed dirt rather than any kind of paving. At least, mostly. It seemed to slope downwards some way ahead of us, but I saw a sparkle of sun on water in that direction.

  The buildings were each distinctive but all very much the same kind of style. The roofs were straw-like thatch. The walls had an organic earthy look, which I thought vaguely might be called cob—I watched a documentary on its use in old UK buildings some night after a bad shift when I was exhausted and needed to fall asleep but couldn’t. The walls had been washed with pale colours in several tints, and painted, but not all over. One had a row of flowering pnts painted around the bottom couple of feet, behind actual long boxes of flowers; one had colourful birds scattered across it in flight, but with a lot of barely-blue between them.

  Businesses had neatly-painted boards out front bearing picture representations of what they offered or symbols that were a mystery to me.

  Wandering freely I saw chickens in white and red and a mixture of the two, and geese that were white with or without grey markings. Housecats of all the colours and fur lengths owned every comfortable lounging surface. The dogs leaned overwhelmingly towards mid-sized leggy narrow-muzzled collie types in a rainbow of colours and coat variations. There were a handful of little beagle-like ones in the mix, though, and a couple of rge poodles, one red and clipped to a moderately short length overall, one a striking asymmetrical bck and white and clipped much shorter except for the ankles and tail and ears. All the animals looked healthy and calm, going about their own business, and collectively there were quite a lot.

  And yet, it was clean, without a sign of trash or biological waste or so much as a drift of dead leaves anywhere to be seen.

  Residents walked about doing whatever they were doing, dressed in styles that I would consider to be edging towards fanciful although probably still functional, and often in bright colours; builds varied wildly, and so did hair and skin colour. Hair, in fact, came only in colours that I would normally attribute to creative dying.

  Unlike game worlds, which tended to minimize or avoid the presence of children, here they were quite visible. I saw infants worn in slings and toddlers riding in wooden wagons. I didn’t see any older children, but for all I knew, they were in school or something.

  I saw one smallish person that I would have sworn had sleek grey fur under their clothes, and I think a tail as well. Another, also on the low end of what I’d consider average height, had very white arms but I was sure I saw an orange tail, even though I didn’t get a good view of their face.

  I think there were half a dozen people, a pair and a trio and one with a human but not all at once so I might have counted someone twice, who had scales across part of their skin, mainly areas most exposed to the sun; most clothing was loose but transparent or had cutouts and probably offered little protection.

  I saw two centaurs together, hard to miss since they were considerably taller than anyone else, a male with a dark brown horse-body and simirly-toned skin and hair, the female a lighter reddish with dark tail and hair and paler skin. A long-legged white dog with bck spots kept pace with them, and the female reached down absently to fondle its ears.

  There were three, together, and one alone, who looked sort of like the centaurs, but their lower bodies weren’t horses. Deer, maybe? They had four slender legs and what I thought were split hooves and short tails, often with fur in some shade of brown but the patterning varied. They were around the upper height of the humans around them, though proportionally perhaps a little smaller. One of the trio was visibly much younger than the other two, the equivalent of a toddler. They had a sleek bck dog with them that was just all legs and narrow muzzle, like a greyhound but rger; its ears were a lustrous cascade of wavy fur, and its tail a matching plume.

  The centaurs and deer-people were dressed on their upper bodies much the same as the humans around them. Some had bnket-like or harness-like things on their lower bodies—both centaurs had webs of brightly-coloured straps with lots of shiny bits, for one thing. They were the only ones I saw with hair in colours that looked natural to me.

  The solo deer-person had a simple blue symbol painted or dyed on her haunches, behind the harness supporting what looked like saddlebags; the symbol was two triangles touching at one point, like an extremely stylized hourgss, but tipped ninety degrees onto its side. She had the same symbol on a neckce pendant. That one paused to take a closer look at us, but Serru greeted her calmly, and the deer-woman returned it and went on. Local authority of some kind, maybe?

  Every human I saw took for granted the presence of the people who were clearly not human as I understood the word.

  I tried to ignore the curious looks that came in our direction. Okay, mostly my direction. That wasn’t a surprise, since I must look seriously strange to them, maybe as strange as the centaurs and deer-people and scaled people and furred people looked to me.

  Serru led the way to a shop with a sign depicting a simple five-petalled flower in white on dark brown wood. The building itself had been washed with pale yellow and had a multicoloured geometric pattern painted as a border twice the width of my hand all the way around it at about my shoulder-height.

  The door was about half again as wide as I was used to, and considerably taller. The ceiling also turned out to be quite high. Accommodating those centaurs I’d seen, maybe?

  The interior of the shop was brighter than I expected. The walls were lined with even wooden shelves, rge wooden crates on the floor beneath them. I suppressed a sudden urge to strike a crate and see if I acquired any goodies, or to venture through the doors at the back and the side to explore.

  In the centre of the room was a simple three-sided wooden counter, but there was no one behind it; the proprietor, an older man with greying cornflower-blue hair who was nonetheless visibly fit, was fussing about the shelves. Possibly he was restocking them, although I couldn’t see any boxes or anything in reach, so maybe he was just straightening, organizing, cleaning, something like that. He looked immediately in our direction, though.

  “Buying or selling today, Serru?” He asked it while already on his way to the counter.

  “Both, perhaps,” Serru said. She reached into her satchel, and began to produce items she id on the counter. Oddly, the leafy things still looked fresh and green; berries in yellow, violet, and orange varieties were loose but she brought them out in perfect single-coloured handfuls. And it just kept coming, to the point where I couldn’t imagine how she had all that in a simple bag that showed no signs of bulging or weight.

  While they haggled amiably over what she was offering, I wandered around the shop, looking at the things on the shelves. There were jars that had pictograph bels on thee corks, the contents liquids of various colours, and the jars came in several shapes but simir sizes; there were rolls of what were obviously bandages, though they were all the same size and woven and exposed to the open air, which made me wince. I saw jars of what must be some kind of ointment or salve, and sanded ft lengths of wood with rounded ends that came in pairs and in several sizes, which might be splints if the rest of this was medical, and there were scalpels with shiny bck bdes, and what could only be trauma shears, heavy scissor-like things with one fttened side.

  It was both familiar and strange, and I wasn’t sure which made me more uncomfortable.

  “Nathan?” Serru said. “Could you come here, please?”

  “Sure.” I joined her at the counter.

  Serru looked at the shopkeeper. On the counter between them were two ft red cases, each with an embossed white heart; in the centre of one heart was a simple interced pentagram, but the other was bare.

  “Could you please expin the advanced kit’s items for Nathan? He’s a trained paramedic but he’s from very far away and their supplies take a different form sometimes, and he got here empty-handed and disoriented. I think the basic one will be fine.”

  That was not a sentence I would have expected to have a positive reaction. It wasn’t like I had any ID I could pull out to prove any of it. Did they even have ID here? And I wasn’t at all sure that the basic kit would be fine.

  The shopkeeper’s expression shifted, brows drawing slightly down and in, mouth pulling briefly to one side. “I didn’t realize there was anywhere we weren’t in contact with and sharing the same standard formury.” Still, he shrugged, and flipped two small metal tches on each case, opening them swiftly and smoothly.

  Everything was neatly secured, quick and easy to find. Each side was actually two yers, with the upper one attached at the centre and flipping outwards one-handed without disturbing the potion bottles in their loops to allow access to the compartments below.

  “All potions are highest quality, no halfway measures on these. This one is a basic field kit, the kind frequent or cautious travellers keep on hand in case anything unfortunate happens on the road, and wardens typically have the same on them to help with an emergency until a paramedic or doctor can arrive.” That was the pin heart box.

  “So you have Quickheal potions, of course, which will prioritize anything life-threatening and go from there. I can’t think how Bandages could be different.” He pointed to several of those. “Cleanse, Ointment, Splints in the three sizes most commonly used around here, the new kind of Tourniquets that adjust their own pressure with no pinching and the stripes will change to show time, just check the book for details. Shears and Tweezers. Water Bnkets. Essential potions, Anodyne, Panacea, Antidote, Recovery, plus one each of Soce and Lulbye and Refresh just in case because you never know.”

  I really wanted more information on those. Anodyne was an old word for a painkiller, and Panacea was the thing Serru had given me that cured illness. What were the others?

  “Then we get into the advanced kit to supplement the basic one for those with the training to safely use treatments that can have consequences.” He paused, a hand above the box with the pentagram on it. “Which could be tricky without any diagnosis equipment unless you have abilities in that direction. I don’t have that in stock, I’d have to request it and it would take the better part of a week to get it.”

  “It won’t be a problem,” Serru said, “and I’m arranging for a backup, since we can’t stay that long. Thank you, though.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. The Scalpels will remove anything that’s under the skin without introducing anything new and they’ll minimize the damage. Hardcure for bone and connective tissue, Softcure for everything else, but if there’s nothing for them to do you can get some problematic growth. There’s an Elixir for emergencies, in case you’re also using your own abilities and you wear yourself out. ”

  Clearly we weren’t talking about just gulping one red potion to restore hit points and fix anything from minor blunt trauma to having limbs lopped off, or healing potions plus a handful of items that fixed specific status conditions. There was some kind of actual medical practice here, just one that was unfamiliar to me. I wasn’t going to learn the entirety of local pharmacology in a matter of minutes.

  “That’s a pretty complete range.” It wasn’t everything I usually kept in reach, diagnosis equipment and personal protective gear were completely cking, but it was about a million times better than being empty-handed.

  “They should cover the vast majority of injuries likely to turn up between settlements for anything short of a deep-wilderness warden rescue team. If you’re out of other options, there are two more things in the advanced kit. Last Chance is a tablet that goes under the tongue of someone who can’t swallow for one reason or another.” He tapped a ft transparent pillbox with a porous bright-orange tablet in it. “It’s a mix of Quickheal, Refresh, and Anodyne, but not enough of any of them for long. It’s going to wake your patient up and it’ll try to make sure they can swallow but that’s it. It’s only going to buy you a very short window, but you’d better have a pn because Last Chance does some damage and when it wears off, patients might crash hard. If they’re not breathing, there’s no point, and your one hope is this.” He slid a thing that looked like a Valentine’s heart made of smooth blood-red gss or crystal or something out of a pouch. “These get wasted far too often because people using them think they can be delicate about it. If someone’s breathing or heart stops, sm this into their chest, directly over their real heart, and it’ll start again. But for it to work, it has to be over where their heart actually is, and you can’t just set it in pce and tap it, it has to be hammered hard. There are going to be broken ribs afterwards, is what I’m saying, but it’s that or death.”

  “There are... we have something simir. I’ve cracked a few ribs before, to save lives.”

  “Then you should be all set. The basic kit...” He closed it and flipped it over. The bottom had an edge-to-edge yer of something that looked like leather, and tucked into it was a booklet that he slid halfway out to show me briefly. “Both have their reference guides. Everything in those cases is top quality.”

  “And worth every penny,” Serru said, setting the smaller case with the pentagram on top of the other and scooping both up into her arms, cradling them against her. “Any other questions, Nathan?”

  Many. Too many, by far.

  I wanted to ask about gloves and masks, about specific medications that I used frequently for familiar situations, about diagnosis gear and other ways to get that, about local scope of practice and standard procedures for common emergencies and what the common emergencies were.

  That could take all day and would almost certainly wave a big red fg. I hoped those guides would help.

  “No, I’ve got it, thanks. I think I can manage in a crisis, although I hope we don’t have one. Isn’t that expensive?”

  “I can afford it,” Serru said, with a smile. “And any variety of healer should always have the correct equipment, because that’s in everyone’s best interests. Thank you,” she added to the shopkeeper. “Have a good day.” She gnced at me, and tilted her head towards the door.

  “We have other stops to make,” she said. “Since you have nothing with you.”

  “I can’t think of any way I can pay you back.”

  “It’s all right. I have plenty of coin. I’m very good at gathering and my needs are fairly simple, so it tends to build up. Besides, I think you might feel better. First I want to get you something to carry these in, because otherwise, they’ll be awkward and in danger of being dropped or lost.”

  That was hard to argue with. “And it all works the way he said? Even those heart things?”

  “Yes, of course. He wouldn’t lie about that. I know how to use everything in the basic kit and I can show you, although much of it I’ve never had reason to use. It’s considered a good idea for anyone who is often on the road to take the training for it and refresh that now and then. It’s meant to allow you enough time to reach or summon help, with the expectation that you will then get proper healer care as soon as possible. The advanced kit is meant to offer paramedics additional general-purpose tools, although I’ve noticed that many have their own lists of items they prefer to have.”

  “He didn’t ask me to prove being a paramedic. Not even over not knowing the local gear.”

  “Why would you or I lie about that?”

  I really didn’t have an answer.

  We went into another shop, this one with a sign bearing a stylized shirt.

  Unsurprisingly, instead of shelves, this one had racks of clothing.

  The woman inside smiled and came out from behind the counter, which was three-sided and in the middle of the room. Serru handed me the two cases so she could trade warm hugs.

  This woman looked older than Serru, a bit more solid in build but she was showing it off with no particur modesty in that blue dress with the ces at the sides and the low neck; her eborately-braided hair was orange. Her ears had points too, but they were more rounded and less pronounced.

  “I haven’t seen you in forever, Serru!”

  “Wandering far and wide to gather even the rarest,” Serru said. “I have a few that are your kind of thing, and I need to buy something.”

  The shopkeeper’s eyes flickered to me. “Of course. New friend? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you travel with anyone since your grandmother retired.”

  “Special circumstances,” Serru said. “Nathan’s lost and I’m helping. What do you have for travel bags?”

  “Which style?” The woman escorted us to a corner with shelves and rge hooks, bearing bags of varying shapes and sizes and styles, all neatly folded and compressed.

  “Large enough for heavy use between settlements.”

  “That would be these two.” She indicated a shelf that held two rainbow stacks of mid-sized backpacks, and a hook next to that with satchels simir to Serru’s in several colours.

  “Nathan? Which would feel the most comfortable for you? You can try them. Those will fit, with plenty of extra space, in either.”

  I took her up on it, and set the two medical cases on the counter to investigate. I wasn’t at all convinced about the capacity, but I preferred the backpack’s two wide straps and bance to the satchel’s one anyway. “This one.”

  “Which colour?” the shopkeeper prompted. “That one has several.”

  I’d have liked a red one, but the most readily visible was a vivid buttercup yellow with bright blue trim, and I chose that one. Fashion mattered less than being able to immediately locate the bag containing medical supplies.

  Serru nodded. “It’s yours now. Put the cases away in it.”

  The backpack mouth was wide and fastened with several small metal tches that could be quickly opened, then a fp rested over that with a csp to keep it in pce. I tucked the boxes inside and slung the bag over one shoulder, where it rested in exactly the right pce against my back but I could adjust it with metal sliders if I wanted to.

  Psychologically, it made an enormous difference, knowing that I had the local version of basic supplies.

  Even if they were unfamiliar, and apparently worked off logic that should not exist in any kind of reality. Within a game, sure, but on living people?