Xyla flitted from tree to tree alongside me as I rode the rest of the way. Sometimes she ran, and I could usually outpace her, but at other times she seemed to simply enter one tree and come out from another, and when she did that she’d get a good lead again. Either way, there was something joyful about her movements.

The crypt looked so deserted. There were a bunch of zombies hanging around outside, but with no orders, they were like statues.

“How’s the forest recovering from the battle?” I asked Xyla. I should have asked her before.

“The forest is resilient,” she said. “Like me, it can take a pounding and come out of it vibrant and green.”

“Wait, who has been pounding you?” I asked, suddenly concerned.

She stared at me and waited.

“Oh,” I said, after a moment. “That kind of pounding.”

“Yes. Tell Val that I want to bind her in my vines soon, and she should come visit.”

I smiled. “You have a radio. Tell her yourself.”

She pouted at me. “I don’t like the radio. It’s like a disembodied voice. It’s spooky.”

“Fair. But it means you can arrange a time, because you can have some back and forth. I need to go inside and get some things now.”

“I’ll wait outside.” She paused. “And I’ll use the radio, I guess.”

I smiled.

I got out the lawnmower, and told a couple of zombies to carry it back to Breezehaven. I tried to be quiet, but Kathy ended up getting up. She wore a bathrobe, and her hair was a mess.

“I told you I’d take care of it,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I felt like a ride. And I’m not seeing Xyla as much, since I’ve been working outside the forest.”

“Glad my sleeping until a reasonable hour gave you an excuse for a booty call.”

“It wasn’t –” I started to protest, but of course it had turned into one, and I just ended the sentence with a grin on my face. Or maybe it was a smirk.

“You got a bunch of leaves and stuff in your hair, Abby,” she said. “And no bruises or scrapes, so it’s far more likely you had a tumble with Xyla than that you had a bike accident.”

I chuckled. “Sherlock Kathy. Next you’ll be saying ‘elementary, dear Abby.’”

“Sherlock. Hmf. An arrogant ass with a cocaine habit. I’m Nancy Drew.”

I nodded. “I’d make a horrible narrator, anyway, so it’s better I not be your Watson. Anything I need to know before I go?”

She shook her head. “You know, sex with a man who is worried you’ll feel deserted because he might have sex with another woman can be – intense. He was extra attentive, in some very delicious ways.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that happens sometimes, but it’s not sustainable. There are advantages though. Sometimes people get ideas from one partner that the other gets to enjoy. It’s got its ups and downs, and it’s not for everyone.”

“Jill talks about making sure Abbyland is ‘polynormative.’ And you know what they say about ‘when in Rome.’”

“No one has to be poly,” I said.

“I don’t think I have much interest in non-humans,” she said. “Does that make me racist?”

I shook my head. “It depends on your reasons, I suppose, but if it’s just about who you find sexually attractive, I don’t think so. I knew a guy in college once who only dated redheads.” I shrugged. “It reduced his potential dating pool, and there was a hot brunette who was into him at one point. Really nice girl, too. His preferences had a cost that to me didn’t make much sense, but that, too, was his choice. People are into what they are into. And I’ve never had the sense that you treat Xyla or Gren or anyone as less than.” I paused. “Except when you were a dragon, but even then, you didn’t single out the non-humans.”

Kathy nodded. “That was weird. I was me, and yet I wasn’t me.”

“You were,” I teased, “a little more like Sherlock Holmes in your arrogance than Nancy Drew.”

She made a face at me. “Do you think I’m attractive, Abby?”

I grinned at her. “Didn’t we have this discussion once before? Maybe just before I slept with you? You’re a sexy woman, Kathy. I’m not making a pass at you, but yes, you’re attractive.”

“Why aren’t you making a pass at me?”

“Because you’re just trying to even the score, at this point, for one thing, and for another, I don’t think you and I are a good fit romantically. There are a lot of people I don’t make passes at, who I think are sexy. Meta, for instance.”

“She was certified evil.”

“I don’t put a lot of stock in that. It’s somebody’s definition of evil, L’shan’s maybe, if He even exists. But my definition might be different.”

“Was Meta sexier than me?”

“Kathy.”

“What?”

“Stop being so insecure. You’re a beautiful blonde who can fly.”

“Hmf,” she said. “But yeah. There is that.”

I walked back out and found Xyla. “We’re on for the night after tomorrow,” she told me.

“You and Valeria?” I asked, just to be clear.

“Yep. By the way, Valeria thinks Blowhaven is a great name. You’re so good at naming things.”

“Don’t you think that Breezehaven might be a little less, um –”

“Oh, definitely.”

I smiled. “Good.”

“It’s totally less. In every way.”

I sighed. We chatted for a bit about the forest, and then I decided I’d spent enough time not getting stuff done, and got back on my bike. We had a very nice kiss goodbye, and I promised to visit often.

I heard her use the radio when I left, but I couldn’t tell what she said.

I got back to find the sign painted in white, and Jill and Gren around it. Gren was using a gouge to dig out the shapes of letters, leaving them the color of the wood in contrast to the white paint. She’d gotten as far as “Blowha.”

“Hey Abby!” Jill said cheerily at me. “Some vandals messed with your sign. I’m thinking it was probably Captain Hornung, or one of his paladins or whatever they are. Anyway, we’re fixing it, and I’ve asked him to tell his men not to mess with it.”

I stared at Jill. She stared at me. Jill was not a ditz. The vague “paladins or whatever they are” was not her at all. Not to mention the fact that she could recognize my writing as well as I could recognize hers. She knew and I knew, and she knew that I knew, etc.

“Everyone thinks it’s a great name,” Gren told me, taking a break from her work. “Even though it doesn’t alliterate. I argued for Sex City, or Vixenville. But I was outvoted, so I’m being a gracious loser and helping with the sign.”

I choked. “Good of you.”

“I’m leaving space on the side so that we can get a friend of mine in,” Gren said cheerily. “He’s really good with this stuff, and I think a little silhouette of a sexy woman getting head from another sexy woman could really help convey what this is all about. Tastefully done so you can’t tell who exactly the people are, of course.”

Tasteful. Uh-huh. “No silhouette.”

“No? Why not?”

“We’re raising our kids here.”

Jill rolled her eyes. “Every time someone engages in a little self-expression, that’s what the censors always do, is clutch their pearls and talk about the children.”

“Okay, fine. Then for the other reason.”

“What’s that?” Gren asked.

“Because I said so, and I’m the Queen.”

Gren’s eyes widened.

Jill smiled. “Her majesty has spoken. No silhouette. For now. A shame, really. I was looking forward to modeling for it.”

“Like you, on your knees, right here?” Gren said.

“Well, you know, for the sake of Blowhaven.”

“Fearless fellatrix,” Gren said. “Abby, what if you had a silhouette of two of us going down on you? Because I’d happily model along with Jill, as a conscientious citizen and all. It’d probably be pretty hard for most people to tell what was going on at that point in the silhouette, but we’d know.”

“I’ve lost completely on the name thing, haven’t I?” I asked.

“Yep,” Gren and Jill said at once.

I admit a little of me was tempted to ask Jill to start giving me head right then and there, if she liked the name so much. It wouldn’t be much different, in some ways, from the exhibition I’d put on with Zargaza. My shorts were feeling a little tight.

Instead, I touched the sign. The quick-dry paint was very dry, so it had been on for a while. It was remotely possible that they just happened to be in the middle of gouging out the name when I walked by, but it seemed suspicious to me, given that they could have started on it some time ago. “Xyla radioed you to let you know when I was on my way, so that you could be here as a welcoming committee?”

Jill laughed. “You’re like Sherlock Holmes,” she said.

I wanted to retort that I was more like Honey West, but I thought that might be too obscure for even Jill to get. “Right. Well, take care, and make the letters nice enough that I don’t feel like replacing this sign with a different one.”

“Of course,” Gren said. “Um, would you like one of us to take care of that for you?” She pointed to the bulge in my shorts.

I was tempted. But there was so much to do. “I wish. I need to see if I can train zombies to use a lawnmower. I think it’s simple enough to just hold the handle and run it over an area.”

“She’d rather hang out with zombies than us,” Jill said. “I do believe we’ve just been insulted.”

“There’s a lot to do,” Gren retorted. “Don’t you have things to do, too?”

“I do,” Jill agreed. “I brought five sewing machines, old manual ones, and I’m teaching a class in our living room. Could you put building a school on your list of things to do?”

I hadn’t even thought about sewing machines. “A one-room schoolhouse, maybe. Interior walls are gonna be a challenge with the wood shortage, but if one room is good enough, I can set some workers and zombies on it. Simple is good, because then I don’t have to be involved and can do something else. What about fabric? I don’t think a sewing machine needle is made for furs and leather.”

“I got a lot of fabric, too. Along with some swimsuit patterns, for men and women. And minikilts, for all genders. Fabric being at a premium, we don’t want to use too much on one garment, and as far as I can tell it doesn’t get that cold here. But Gren says there’s some sheep-like animals that are sometimes harvested for wool, so… we may be able to get more. Scratchy, maybe.” She sighed. “If only I had thought to bring underwires. The girls need their support. But by the time my bras wear out, we’ll figure out something. Carved bones or something.”

“Great.”

I managed to get a zombie mowing the lawn, with occasional supervision from a wight to move the zombie from section to section, change the batteries, and restart the lawnmower as needed. Then I set some more zombies using line trimmers to clear the roads that led to the orc and troll village, as well as the north south road that went to the forest in one direction, and dead-ended at the edge of Blowhaven in the other.

Now even I was calling it that. Well, if you can’t beat them, join them.

I ordered some more zombies to gather stones to pave the roads with. I had a crew of them to lay them down, too, although a troll and an orc wandered behind them, making sure the stones lay as flat as possible and adjusting them as needed. I got a report from Gruush that work on a second windmill was going smoothly.

Breezehaven. Named after the windmills that were key to our electrical grid. Didn’t it make sense? And who wouldn’t want to live in a place called Breezehaven? I pushed the thought aside. I’d lost that battle, but elsewhere, on things that mattered, I was making satisfying progress.