Hey Diary,

  This part of the planet is very flat. There aren't any real hills or trees, just big fields of crops. It’s calming, being in this big open area with nothing around for miles and miles. It’s a good place for introspection.

  Unfortunately, introspection gets really boring after two days.

  There's birds around, but they don't make for good conversation. None of the rodents or snakes want to come within smelling distance of the liondrakes, so I can't talk to them.

  I wonder what it would be like to grow up on one of these farms. I mean, at least I grew up in a town. There weren’t a lot of people around, but we got to see a good variety of personalities. And I’ve met people of different races when they came to eat at Mom’s diner.

  Here, there’s a group of like three houses, and then after an hour of travel there’s another couple of houses, and then an hour later there’s five houses around a single store. It seems very… isolating. If ever there's an emergency, help is several hours away. That would scare me.

  Tomorrow we’ll be in Cuff, and I can't help but wonder what that city is like. If it still feels isolated.

  Maeve says she suspects it will be a very formal and practical city. She thinks that the reason people get fancy things is to impress our neighbors, and if we don't have neighbors, we wouldn't feel the need to have as many fancy things. If people go to the city and only feel the need to buy practical things, then there won't be many shops with fancy things.

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  Last night we stayed on a little road between two houses. The families looked like elves, but they were changelings. As payment for using a bathroom and showering, they asked that Luke fill up their water cistern in the morning, since he has water magic, and also that we help them unlock neko as a race they can turn into. To do that all we had to do was hold their hands for like a minute. It was a little awkward at first, but then just became boring.

  They were all super excited about unlocking it, but then they didn't change. I was kinda curious about what it would look like when a changeling changes races, but even the next morning everyone was still in elf form.

  Maybe there’s some kind of cultural thing that applies. Like it would have been rude or something.

  Maki suspects that the further into Bestest we get, the more people will want to hold our hands for that. Right now we’re still pretty close to Owonyan, so most people have probably seen a few neko in their life. Once we’re a month into the country, we’ll probably be some of the only neko around.

  That might be a little weird. I wonder if people will stare at us or anything. I’m usually not super shy, but being the only people with tails in a city would make us stand out.

  But that’s a problem for later. For now, my main problem is keeping the liondrakes fat and happy.

  Sir says he’s tired, so I have to change them.

  Signing off,