Dear Dad,

  Good news! We haven’t left the town yet, but Grace is going to be okayish. It’s still going to take a while for her to recover, but Willow showed me that she’s still got some reflexes in her feet, and apparently, that’s a good sign.

  Also.

  There’s something new about this place that I didn’t think was going to be real, and I guess that’s magic. Or maybe the gods, or maybe something like the gods, or a god, or really something that gives an otherwise ordinary man the ability to magically heal someone.

  Because Ben managed to magically heal Grace.

  Not all the way, of course not. That would be too easy.

  No, Ben managed to partially heal her, a little bit at a time. Apparently, when we got her here, that’s why I couldn’t be in the room. In case I distracted him when he needed to spend all his time focusing on her to give her the best chance of healing her wounds, at least enough so she didn’t bleed out all the way.

  But he saved her, at least. Healed her enough for now. We’ll have to be careful, but Ben says it’s only a matter of time. Everyone else is walking on eggshells. They don’t want to risk making it or her worse, so I’ve been the only one really in the room with her.

  The others have been planning something, a hunt, I think, to go after the monster. I guess Grace isn’t the only person who’s been hurt by it. But hopefully, she’ll be the last. Or, I mean, technically, Reese was the last, but my point stands: Hopefully, no one else gets hurt by this thing. I think they plan on going out with half the town tomorrow or the day of art and doing whatever needs to be done.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I’m going to stay here. Grace needs someone here cause Ben the Healer is going to be going with the group. He hasn’t said much to me, and other than having me hold Grace upright while changing the bandages once. He hasn’t really spoken to me, but I don't know if I offended him or something. He seems a lot more comfortable as well when Willow helps him. They’ve shooed me out of the room for that and he seems to talk a lot.

  Grace hasn’t really woken up a lot since we got here. I don’t know if it’s cause she needs her rest to recover or what, but the couple of times she’s woken up, I’ve had to remind her of where she is and what happened. Willow said it’s not too unusual, and apparently, the healer said it might happen as a side effect of whatever pain/infection/relief medicines she’s on. When she's with it enough, Grace asks me to tell her stories when she wakes up.

  When she was in the hospital after a car accident as a kid, she’d been allowed to watch all the TV she wanted to, and now she couldn’t even lay on her back.

  I've been doing my best, but I’m not really a storyteller. I’m going to ask the healer guy if he has any books I can borrow to read to her when he shows up again.

  Reese hasn’t been healed at all. When he got in, I guess the healer had used all his magic on Grace. Reese did get some of the gross-smelling ointment, though, and he’s been sleeping around here whenever the healer is out. Riley has been by a couple of times, but mostly just to make sure we’re all still alive. She’s going to lead the townsfolk to the place we were attacked to see if they can find a trace of it or where it might be hiding.

  It’s a little scary to be here and pretty much the only person Grace can turn to if she’s in pain. The healer left some stuff for if she woke up, food, medicines, and other things, and when he goes with the others, I’ll be the person in charge of Grace, which is scary.

  I mean, really not that scary. All I have to do is take care of her if she wakes up, right? But I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t even want to risk it.

  I’ll write to you if anything changes. Right now, we’re just waiting for Grace to make a turn one way or the other or for the monster hunt to end.

  Hopefully it doesn’t take too long,

  Love, Jack