9

Kaz turns the key and starts the engine. It takes a few tries, but eventually the electric engine rumbles and sparks to life. They begin to accelerate towards the direction of the town. Kaz was thinking to himself, “I better not drive too close to the town, I don’t want to know what the people would do if they saw my car. What Saphana did was already enough.” He looks to his left at Tasi, who has her head out the window like a golden retriever. He reaches one hand over to poke her to get her attention, “Tasi, hey. Tasi!” he shouts. She brings her head back into the vehicle, “This is really amazing Kaz! We’re already almost to the Capital of Vance! It would’ve been about two hours on foot, your car is fast!” she happily hisses. “Oh, we’re almost there? I'm surprised we haven't had any issues driving with no roads.” he says in a relieved tone, then he stomps on the brakes as he realizes a problem.

“Wait Tasi, you said the Capital right? As in, big town, guards, lots of people?” he asks nervously. “Yes, you heard me correctly. The capital is the closest human settlement that is guaranteed to have someone to help fix your roof.” Tasi replies as she brushes through Kaz’s hair with her fingers. She then puts her finger to her mouth in thought, “Well, plenty of other villages and towns would have smiths, or masons. But they would definitely not have the right tools, I’d imagine.” She smiles at Kaz as she says this in confidence. Kaz begins accelerating again, “Wow, she actually put a lot of thought into where we should go. I’m surprised!” he thought with a smile. “Alright Tasi, tell me when we’re close enough to see the capital. We’ll stop nearby and hide my car…” Kaz gets cut off, “We’re there!” Tasi eagerly shouts over him.

Kaz slams the brakes again and pulls into a shady column of trees and turns his car off. Kaz does a mental checklist before they get out, “Armor, sword, coin pouch. That’s everything.” he checks everything off in his head before he has a thought. “Heya, Tasi. Let’s look through the stuff in the back seat. Maybe we can sell some stuff for a little extra money.” Kaz tells her as he points at the back of the car. Tasi nods in agreement, before rummaging through a bunch of cheap things you’d find on the end caps of grocery stores, along with several genres of books. Tasi holds up almost every single item to show him, inquiring as to what random thing she was holding was, or actually did. “That’s a keyring flashlight, you shake it to charge it up. It’s like a torch, but it fits in your pocket…” another idea popped into his head. “Actually, pile up all those you can find in there Tasi. I have an idea for those.” Kaz says with a grin on his face. After she finishes finding all the flashlights and piling them up, she holds up another item to ask about. “Yeah, that’s a magnifying glass. Open it up and look through it , it’ll be faster than explaining.” He tells her.

Tasi rips open the paperboard packaging and holds up the magnifying glass to peer through it, she looks stunned. “You look a lot bigger.” Tasi saya. Kaz laughs, it was fun to see her playing around with all the items he brought. “Older people use them to read books and labels.” As he says this, he remembered how Ishvara was having a difficult time with her vision. Kaz smiled yet again and asked Tasi to toss him two of the magnifying glasses. Kaz tears both of them open and unscrews the handle off of both of them and holds them up to his eyes, “Yeah, this’ll work!” he mumbles. “Alright Tasi, grab those flashlights and let’s head to the gate. We have a lot to do today!” he orders.