Sow the Wind

  Pen didn’t cry.

  She did something much, much worse. In the smallest voice possible, she asked, “Was it my fault?”

  I’d decided that I was not a good person, but that didn’t mean I wanted to become a mean one. I bit back the urge to yell, throw things, and stomp out of the sunroom up to my bedroom. Just because I had a teenager in my house didn’t mean I needed to regress back to my own teenage years.

  Instead I asked, “How so?”

  Pen gestured toward her face.

  I looked at Gus, sitting regally in her lap, and asked the silent question. Did he know what she was talking about?

  He blinked at me. Stupid cat.

  I glanced at Zelda, sitting at my feet. She heaved a doggie sigh and lay down, a clear no idea.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” I said.

  Pen gestured at her face again, a little impatiently, as if the answer was obvious. “I sinned. And he died. Is that God’s punishment?”

  “You sinned?”

  This time Pen pointed at her eyes, her finger almost touching the long, dark lashes.

  The long, dark, mascaraed lashes.

  After she and Gus had killed the bugs with Bear’s supervision, they’d wandered the Dollar General. Pen had washed up and found some clean clothes. She’d snacked and given the animals treats. She’d explored the toys in the toy aisle, curious about the things she’d never seen before. And then, like a moth to a flame, she’d made it to the beauty section, where she’d been experimenting with the make-up when I came back.

  It still took me a minute to get it, but finally I did. The make-up was the sin. She thought God was punishing her for playing with the lipstick and eyeliner. By killing her father.

  “No!” I almost jumped off the sofa, I was so horrified. “Reaping, sowing, something—I don't remember how that saying goes.”

  “Galatians 6:7, Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap? Or Hosea 10:12, Sow for yourself righteousness, reap steadfast love? I like Hosea 8:7, too. For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. That one's my favorite. But that's probably not what you meant.” Pen seemed eager to change the subject.

  I sighed. “Right. I meant the one about getting what you give. Your father tried to take over my mind. He tried to control me. And the System…” I paused. I hadn't gotten graphic in my explanation of her father's death. I'd just said he’d died. Did she need to know the details?

  Did I really have to tell her?

  But I didn’t want her carrying that guilt around with her. Maybe it would always linger a little. Guilt could be an unruly emotion, and people take responsibility for the oddest things. For a second, I almost spiraled down into memories, but then I dragged myself back.

  This was now. The real world, not history. And Pen needed to let go of that guilt if she was going to survive.

  That… actually might be true for me, too. I added that idea to the long list of things I was going to think about later.

  In a tone that I tried to make extremely calm and precise—okay, it wavered a bit—I said, “Your father tried to use a mental control ability on me. The System had given me a trait called Try Me, which causes physical damage to anyone who tries to attack my mind.”

  I hesitated, but Pen didn’t speak, so I continued. “Your father died... faster than you can blink. If it's any comfort, he didn't suffer.”

  “Oh.” Pen stroked Gus's fur, thoughtful. “How can I get that?”

  I half smiled. That was not the answer I’d expected. “You'll need 40 points in the Will stat.”

  “Forty?” Pen's eyes widened. “That's a lot.” But she nodded before frowning. “I’ll get there. Maybe gonna take a while, though.”

  “You’re not going to say anything else? Your father’s dead because I killed him.”

  Pen looked into my eyes, looked away, looked back again, looked down. Staring at her lap, she said softly, “I think maybe he’s dead because he tried to do something bad and it didn’t work out for him.”

  A sting in the back of my nose wasn’t sufficient warning for me to stop the tears. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to prevent their overflow.

  I wanted to sob. I wanted to go upstairs and hide under my covers and cry until every last bit of water in my body had turned into tears and snot.

  Okay, that’s not really true. But I felt like I could cry for hours if I just had the space and privacy for it. Not in front of Pen, though. I was supposed to be comforting her, not the other way around.

  It took me a minute, maybe two. Or three. But I finally got my tear ducts under control and my breathing even. I dropped my hands, uncovering my face, and picked up my tea. It was cold now, but I swallowed a big swig of it anyway before setting the mug down gently.

  “Do you want to go home now?” I asked Pen.

  “What…” she started, then bit her lip.

  I waited, just as she’d waited for me. This was apparently going to be a conversation of long silences. That was okay. I liked people who could manage silence.

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  “What happened to my brothers?” she finally asked in a rush of words. “Are they…”

  “I think they’re all—” I stopped before I said the word ‘fine,’ to consider what I knew and whether that was actually true.

  “I think they’re all okay,” I eventually said carefully. “One of the other people who was being mind controlled by your father reacted pretty badly when he died. He attacked one of your brothers. I don’t think he killed him, though.”

  “Which brother?” Pen demanded.

  “Mark.”

  Her eyebrow twitched. [Uncanny Insight] did its thing, and I knew instantly that Pen didn’t like Mark much. That eyebrow twitch might as well have been a verbal, “Serves him right.”

  I successfully fought the urge to smile. “Matthew was standing next to your father when he, um, passed, and I think he might have been in shock. He didn’t move while I was looking, just stood there. But nobody attacked him. He oughta be okay.”

  This time it was a twist of her lips. She didn’t think much of Matthew, either.

  “John jumped the guy who was attacking Mark, so he was in the fray, but it was two on one then, so I’m guessing he’s fine.”

  A hint of concern passed over her face. Okay, she was at least fond of John.

  “Robbie ran away, so he oughta be good, and Luke…” I stopped talking, contemplating Luke.

  “He’s okay, isn’t he?” Pen’s tone was urgent and her face—so subtly expressive—had gone from subtle to worried in a heartbeat.

  “I thought Robbie was your favorite?”

  “Robbie’s the nicest,” Pen corrected me. “Luke’s my favorite. Luke… he don’t say much. But he’s never mean and he…” She hesitated and then decided against whatever she’d been about to tell me. “Is he okay?”

  “He should be fine. He was at the back of the crowd, stayed out of the fight, stayed calm. And he’s higher level than any of the rest of them, so if the fight did get bigger, he could probably handle himself.”

  She let go of the breath she’d been holding.

  We were sitting in the sunroom. I was on the sofa with my blue cashmere throw wrapped around my shoulders, despite the warmth of the late-afternoon sun streaming in the windows. Don’t judge me; it had been a hard day.

  Pen was sitting in the overstuffed armchair with Gus on her lap. I’d had to clear it off for her to sit down; it was usually a repository for… stuff. A wide-brimmed straw hat, a baseball cap, a sweatshirt. It was right next to the doors, so it was easy to just drop things there when coming in and out. It was so familiar that it didn’t count as mess; it just was.

  But the stuff was piled on the coffee table now, and I was finding it irksome. I wanted to get up and clean. Maybe wash some dishes, do some vacuuming to get rid of the dog fur that always accumulated in corners and under furniture.

  Distract myself from the apocalypse and go back to normal.

  No one ever sat in the sunroom with me. It wasn’t a room that I invited people into.

  “So do you want to go home?” I asked again.

  She stroked Gus, thoughtfully.

  I didn’t know what I wanted her to say.

  Obviously, I wanted her to go home. I didn’t want to be responsible for a teenager. I wanted my house to myself, and I wanted to be alone with my dogs.

  I glanced at Bear and Riley. They were both curled up on Riley’s bed, Bear half draped across his neck. I think she’d had fun in the rift, helping Gus kill bugs and getting snuggles from Pen, but she’d been very glad to see us when we arrived. She’d danced around Riley like a six-year-old telling her dad every detail of her day.

  But looking back at Pen, I knew she shouldn’t go home. Her father might be dead, but those Murder Hobo brothers were bad news. Robbie might be the nicest, but he didn’t get the Murder Hobo title because he was a good guy.

  I wondered what the title actually meant. All of my titles came with lovely bonuses: to experience; to stats; to abilities, in a way, with Rift Keeper. They were prizes. But the System’s warning about killing people suggested that whatever the Murder Hobo title granted was probably not as nice.

  “If it was just Luke,” Pen finally said, sounding miserable, “I would. I’d go home. But I don’t want to keep healing people so they can go out and kill. It’s… it’s wrong. I don’t care what they say, they’re breaking the commandment and it’s not, it’s not… Jesus wouldn’t like it.” She finished with determination.

  “Okay.” I rubbed my forehead. “Well, you can’t stay here.”

  Pen leaped from her seat as if it were on fire, grabbing Gus so he didn’t fall to the ground. “Oh, oh, of course. I’ll go. I don’t mean to impose. You’ve been so kind. And I really appreciate all you’ve done for me. But I’ll go.”

  She looked down at Gus, who looked ruffled at being treated in such an undignified manner, and then held him out to me. “Would you, could you, do you think it would be all right if Gus stayed with you? I truly don’t mean to impose, you’ve been so kind already, but…” Her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears.

  Teenagers.

  I gestured to the chair. “Sit back down and stop torturing poor Gus. You’re not leaving him behind. And I’m not sending you out into the wilderness. But we’re too close to your family here. Your brothers aren’t going to stop looking for you. I’m sure they’re all a little freaked out now by your father’s death and maybe they’re trying to figure out what comes next, but they’ll be back. You’re not safe here. Unless, obviously, you’re okay with me killing all your brothers when they show up at the door.”

  I wasn’t okay with that and I definitely wasn’t going to do it. But if they tried to drag her away? I wouldn’t answer for what might happen then.

  “Oh.” Pen sat back down. “I…yes. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  We shared another long silence while I thought.

  Alma had offered me shelter in her daughter’s house. Would she be willing to do the same for a Barrow? Maybe. She seemed like good people to me. They both did, she and JJ. But she’d also said the house would be crowded. And how would we get there? I’d closed the rift. Another would open, but it could take a while. The Barrow brothers might have been roaming around like a gang of thugs, but they’d been on foot when they approached my house. If we tried to leave, we’d have to walk right past their house.

  Okay, Alma and JJ were out.

  My best friend, Jules, would totally take in a teenage girl for me, no matter what her circumstances. She’d roll her eyes, but we were ride or die friends, bury-the-body-together friends. She was my “Whose car are we gonna take?” friend. Sheltering a teenage girl? No problem.

  Too bad she lived in California.

  But did that matter?

  I’d had the thought earlier when I was dragging my shovel along the ground that I could close off the whole house, build a defensive perimeter all the way around it, because I could use the rift to get in and out. Walk into the Thorn’s Edge rift, walk out at some other rift’s gate.

  I had a map with rifts all over the world. Thousands of them, maybe more. Given the density, there had to be one near Jules’ address in California.

  “I have a possibility," I said. "It'll put you out of reach of your brothers, definitely.”

  “Anything is fine,” Pen said politely.

  “Have you ever been to California?”

  “California?” Pen squeaked. Her smile spread across her face. “No.”

  Teenagers, I thought again, but this time the thought wasn't an invisible eye-roll.

  Pen's excitement was like a crack of sunshine in a hurricane. The reminder that things would get better, because they always did.

  True, I knew that moment usually just meant we were in the eye of the storm.

  It wasn't over. Things might get worse. Maybe much, much worse.

  But if we left now, I could be sitting in Jules’ kitchen, drinking tea with my closest friend in the world, before dinner.

  I wanted that more than words could say.

  Thank you for reading!

  I started this story in the summer of 2025, thinking I was going to write a short story in between paid jobs. It took over my brain and very rapidly became something slightly longer than a short story. (Ha. 150K words and counting.)

  It was my first time writing on Royal Road, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but I knew I wanted to share the story somewhere. It has been a delight. I’ve loved the comments and questions, the corrections and conversations.

  This feels like the natural end of Book Two, so I'm going to call Taming the System complete here. It's not actually done, though!

  I'm going to re-post. First, because I’m changing the name. Olivia didn’t become a tamer, and “Taming the System” stopped making sense about thirty chapters ago. The new series name is Thorn’s Edge. Book One is Challenge Scenario; Book Two is The Rift in My Backyard. Book Three, already underway, is called Finding J.

  And I'm going to start a Patreon. Going forward, new chapters will release there first. It'll function as early access and direct support—a kind of tip jar plus read-ahead option. I’m also planning to add a few interludes over there. I generally hate interludes in stories—it’s so annoying to expect the main character and get someone else—but some of my side characters would very much like a chance to have their say. (Jack has Opinions about how the Challenge Scenario went.)

  Under its new name, I'll be posting chapters daily on Royal Road for a while, so new readers can discover it and longtime readers can revisit if they’d like. This will also let all the edits I’ve made in my master files show up here online. Those edits were pretty minor in Book 1, but kinda big in Book 2. Big enough that they are the main reason I've decided to repost. That said, nothing about the plot or characters really changed, so you won't be confused if you don't reread. I just cut, tightened, added... overall, there's less Chelsea, more Riley. Same story, though.

  If Patreon isn’t your thing, that’s completely fine. The story will continue here on Royal Road too, just under its new name. I’m not going anywhere. I’m simply trying to build a slightly more sustainable structure that will let me keep writing about Olivia, Zelda, Bear, and Riley regularly, instead of only when I should be looking for paying jobs.

  “But wait,” I can hear myself saying, if I were my own reader. “Does that mean that if I can’t afford Patreon, I’m going to have to wait two months to read the next chapter?” (If it were me, some unkind words might follow.)

  No. For the time being, the free membership on Patreon will include two new chapters a week, starting on Sunday, March 15th or as soon as I figure out how to make the stupid Patreon page appear. (So frustrated right now. So, so, so frustrated.) Challenge Scenario and The Rift in My Backyard will also be available to buy as ebooks there. And nowhere else for the time being.

  When I get the Royal Road version almost caught up with the Patreon, I'll switch to the new chapters being early access. This might seem complicated, but I do think it's simpler than updating previous chapters, especially because I'd be deleting and merging and... yeah. I guess I'll find out!

  Anyway, thank you so much for being here, and I hope you’ll come along for what happens next.

  Patreon link might be cw/wyndes. Or not. (So, so, so frustrated...)