Toga! Toga!

The two of you leave the house--you almost dancing out the door, Mienna barely able to **** herself past the threshold. She has a set of drapes wrapped around her body, held in place with some creative folds and the one random safety pin you found in the broom closet. She's obviously uncomfortable leaving the house like this. And maybe she's still a little wary of the men that had been chasing her last night.

"Come on!" you urge. Unable to wait yourself, you spin back and scoop her up with both hands. Despite her cries of protest, you begin to twirl the girl around you. Then you stop and pull her in close for a warm hug. "It's so bright out here! And this! This is grass under my feet!"

"I thought you put on shoes," she mumbles into your chest.

"It just looks like shoes," you correct her. Regardless of appearance, technically you're butt naked right now. The grass under your feet, the wind against your skin, the sun on your face--it's all so fresh!

"Well, since your so eager to anyway, I guess you'll just be carrying me through the woods."

"Don't mind if I do," you reply happily.

First is scaling the hill around the valley. Mienna points you in the direction she'd like to go (best chances of avoiding strong monsters, she says) and you set off. With a girl in your arms, it's a little harder than you expected; but ultimately this little slope is nothing against your determination to leave your prison valley once and for all. And when you reach the top, you aren't even winded. With a laugh, you leave that place behind and strike off into the forest.

The trees around you are enormous. They must have been growing for centuries, if not millennia, to be as big as they are now. You come up to one that would take a dozen of you to wrap around. It feels like detouring around it takes a full two minutes (though that might have just been because you were walking slow, dragging your fingers along its rough bark).

A loud roar in the distance brings a sudden question to mind. "What will we do if we run into a monster?" you ask Mienna.

"Run away, I guess. Make sure it can't hit me, and just use those ludicrous defensive stats to null all its attacks."

"If it's like that, maybe I could nearly kill a monster and let you finish it off?"

"I thought about it, but neither of us has enough attack to actually hurt the monsters around here. Seriously, if you fought any of these it would probably be like two castles shooting arrows at each other's walls."

You spend a moment picturing that. "Sounds like a waste of time."

"Pretty much. Let's just keep moving."

You can't tell how long you walk for, but the good news is you don't tire in the least. Endurance must be more than just physical defense. Mienna, on the other hand, nodded off somewhere along the line. She's leaned up against your shoulder, eyes closed and breath rhythmic. She really is just the cutest little girl in the whole world; that sleeping face probably brought her CHA up another ten points!