Chapter 16 (1/2)

“Can I go fight the zombies too?” Tafel asked her father.

Her father glanced at his wife and answered, “I think you should ask your mother.”

“No,” her mother said as she continued cutting her steak without looking up.

“But, Mom,” Tafel said, her purple lips pouting, “Gabel and Loffel are going.”

“And that’s all the more reason you don’t need to go,” her mother replied.

“But I want to get experience too,” she said. “Dustin thinks I’m strong enough. I’m even starting to grow more horns, see?” She pointed at her forehead. Two small bulges were protruding above her eyebrows.

“You can get more experience from Prim. She tells me you’ve been spending more time with Dustin than her,” her mother said as she cut another slice of steak.

“You didn’t even look,” Tafel said with a frown. “Dad?” she asked.

“Your mother said no,” he said.

“But if you say yes, that means I can go right?” she asked. “Mom has to listen to you, right?”

“Oh, honey,” he said and sighed while shaking his head, “you’re sadly mistaken. I signed away my rights when I married her. You’ll understand when you get older.”

Her mother smiled.

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“What’d your parents say?” Dustin asked Tafel after she finished lunch.

“They said I can go,” Tafel said with a smile.

“Really?”

“Yeah, Dad said I needed experience and mom surprisingly agreed.”

“Huh, I wasn’t expecting that honestly. Your mom seems like she’d be pretty strict.”

“Yeah, she is. But she thinks this is important.”

Dustin nodded. “Alright then. Since you have their permission, we’ll head over there now. I’ll call in a favor from a teleporter I know. We have to get there first before your brothers kill everything.”

“Right now? Let me leave a letter for my parents first. I didn’t think we’d be going so soon.”

Tafel took out a piece of scrap paper and grabbed a quill. She dipped it in ink and wrote out in curvy script,