Dear Dad,

  I was right. We’re heading out of town after Grace’s last check-up. Ben doesn’t like that we’re leaving so soon and thinks we should give everyone a little more time to recover, but after everything and with how long we’ve been gone, they just want to get home. I want to just get home. But it’s probably not going to happen any time soon, and I think it’ll be a miracle to get out of here without too many more scars than we’re starting with.

  I told Riley about the little city, and she thinks it’s a good idea for us to head there next, too, even if it is slightly off the path that we wanted to go. But if it’s a way home, if it’s a faster way home, it’s more than worth it.

  When they got back from the monster hunt, a lot of people were bloody, and some of it was their own blood, but a lot of it was the monster’s blood. They put it on themselves intentionally “to gain the strength of the owlbear,” Zunair told me later. He says that it’s a common belief back home that the furs, claws, etc., of the beasts, carried their power, so maybe it wasn’t too weird to think that the blood could too. Personally, I find it a little gross, and I guess Zunair did too cause he came into the healer’s hut pretty quickly and was washing it off even when he told me about it.

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  But the beast is dead, and Reese took one of its talons, which are like, really, really long, and he says he’s going to make a necklace out of it. It is kinda cool, but it seems really brutal to me to do that.

  But it’s not for me. It’s for Reese, and he likes it.

  Gotta go, I’ll write when I can, but we’re going to be on the road, so it’ll be a little harder.

  Love, Jack