Dear Dad,

  It's been a couple days since I last wrote to you. We've gotten further on our trail. Luckily, no more evil mayors are making us do their dirty work.

  We haven't been to any more smaller villages. We passed what Willow called a hamlet the other day. I don't know the difference between a village and a hamlet, and the others couldn't really explain the difference. Willow said it was probably something to do with the size cause she'd always been told that a hamlet was smaller, but no actual numbers made their way in.

  We stopped in a little village today, I think it's called Malivita. It's mostly just a few houses, and then another little castle that's basically empty that we're being allowed to sleep in. I guess it's usually their meeting hall, but they figure, as we're mostly kids and no one wants to keep all of us in their houses, that the meeting hall is okay for us to sleep in.

  A few women in the village also decided we were all inappropriately dressed, so they gave Riley, Willow, and Grace dresses. Zunair, Reese, and I got coats and some weird scarf things.

  It was nice to change out of the clothes I've been wearing for weeks now and get into something more comfortable, even if it was actually less comfortable. But at least it was all clean, and they let us use their tubs for bathing, so it was nice to be clean for the first time in a while!

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  Everyone actually looked really nice in their new clothes. I don't think I've ever seen Grace look so girly before, either. Whenever I've seen her around, it always seems like she'd just been rolling in mud or something, but the dress looked really nice on her and was a pretty pink color.

  She also looked like she wanted to murder someone more than be in the dress, but since her clothes, her normal clothes, weren't dry yet, she had to hold off.

  I didn't realize I was getting cold as often as I was without the coat. It's nice to sit up a little longer and talk to people without ducking into bed cause I'm cold.

  We won't be able to stay here more than tonight, though. While trying to convince some folks to let us stay a little longer, Zunair apparently decided to make some jokes at the expense of this one dude with a weird hat. It turns out the weird hat dude was in charge and also magical?

  Because somehow he made Zunair's hair blue! It would be cool if every time Zunair showed his face, the townsfolk wouldn't hiss at him. It's really, really weird.

  They like the rest of us just fine, though, so we can't be in too much trouble, and they still let us stay overnight.

  There's a nice fireplace in the wall that's super warm. One of the people was nice enough to feed us dinner, too, a weird but delicious stew that apparently had, like, wild mushrooms and stuff in it. She said that it would make our tongues black, and it did! It was so weird, but fun.

  I'm sad we'll have to leave tomorrow because everyone here is so nice, but we probably don't want to overstay our welcome.

  One of the people we talked to said that we shouldn't be too far away from the city at this point, only a little more traveling. We'll be home soon!

  Love, Jack.