“I don’t know, maybe we should switch to Vitality?” asked Brin.

“Nah. Today feels like a Dexterity kind of day,” said Hogg. “Let’s get some more of that low-hanging fruit before we move on.”

Brin shrugged. This was more help than anyone had ever offered with gaining attributes. He wasn’t going to turn his nose up at it, even if it wasn’t in the exact order he would’ve chosen.

Hogg took him through the ne’er-do-well masterclass. How to walk down the street without seeming suspicious but also not letting anyone see your face. How to case a house or a business. How to tell if someone was home. The psychology of stealing: how to get yourself in the right frame of mind. How to predict where someone would hide their most precious possessions. How to steal enough to get by, but not enough to get caught.

Then they moved on to more practical applications. First was pick-pocketing. It started with a game. Hogg put two gold coins in his hand, one on top of the other and then close his eyes. Brin’s job was to take the one on top without letting Hogg feel it. If Hogg felt something, he’d close his hand and Brin would lose.

It wasn’t easy, and after several hundred tries over the course of two hours, Brin started to get frustrated.

Hogg called a break. They ate dinner; Hogg cooked, and it wasn’t stew. He made a roast, covered in a spicy rub, with steamed vegetables on the side.

After dinner, Hogg brought out a finely carved wooden barrel. There was a smaller barrel on the inside, and Brin was surprised to see he recognized the device. This was an ice-cream maker!

Hogg filled it up with saltwater and ice, and filled the inner barrel with heavy cream and sugar. “What flavor?”

“Not pork,” said Brin.

“Not really a fan of savory ice cream, either,” said Hogg. He suggested blueberries, which were actually baby-blue berries in this world, that tasted more like blackberries. Brin agreed.

Making ice cream wasn’t a fast process, and Hogg didn’t go out of his way to speed it up. Instead, they sat and chatted about normal things. About Davi’s obvious and inexplicable crush on Myra. About Marksi, and how cute he was. They talked about town gossip, the safe stuff, who was going to marry who, and what businesses had recently leveled up.

The ice cream was transcendent. It was perfect, thick and creamy, like the good stuff from an Italian Ice Cream parlor, not at all like the crap he’d had the few times his parents tried to make it at home.

Generally, he tried not to get nostalgic about things from his old world, but this broke down a few barriers. He was back again, and it felt oh, so good. How long had it been since he’d had a treat? Something good, just because he wanted it? Had he even done it a single time in this world?

It almost broke him down and made him tell Hogg to forget training and that they were in vacation mode. But he didn’t. Vacation could wait. He still wanted those achievements.

After the ice cream, Hogg had Brin put the two coins in the palm of his hand and close his eyes. Brin said “Ok, I’m ready”, and prepared to close his hand at even the slightest brush of air. Hogg immediately answered, “Open them.”

He opened his eyes, and both coins were gone. He hadn’t felt a thing. He found himself rubbing the palm of his hand with his thumb, just to check it hadn’t gone numb.

Hogg put the coins back into his own hand and closed his eyes.

Before trying again himself, Brin had an idea. Marksi had been getting antsy, wanting to join the fun. Brin picked up the snake and carefully brought him near to Hogg’s hand.

The snake watched his target with full concentration, the way he looked at a dragonfly he was planning to snatch out of the air.

Brin wondered what he would try? His mouth wasn’t quite big enough to grab the coin front-wise, and he couldn’t imagine being able to grab it from the side without bruising Hogg’s hand.

Marksi delicately let out his tongue. It twitched back and forth, testing the currents, and stuck out further and further. He had a really long tongue. It just kept coming.

He delicately brought it around the rim of the coin, propped it up, and then in an instant it was in his mouth and the snake was retreating up Brin’s shoulder.

“No way,” said Brin.

“Did you finally get it?” Hogg asked. “See, it’s like I keep saying, you have to think about pressure and–”

“Marksi got it,” said Brin.

Hogg stared at the snake with his mouth open. He finally gathered himself and said, “Well of course he did! I told you Marksi didn’t need this lesson. He’s already a master of stealth.”

Marksi preened, and they had to take a break for snake-appreciation time, but when Marksi finally got his fill of scritches Brin was ready to go again.

It was possible. This wasn’t some weird kind of punishment; there really was a way to do it.

He reached out slowly, feeling the pressure of the air the way Marksi had. He felt the slight body-heat from Hogg’s hand, the slight movement in the air. Slowly, delicately, he reached down. His fingers were on the rim of the coin and starting to pull it away when Hogg pulled his fingers shut.

“Keep trying,” Hogg ordered.

Brin kept at it, until finally, finally he managed to pull the top coin from Hogg’s hand.

Hogg immediately jumped into the next lesson.

This time, it was about pulling coins out of a pouch that Hogg kept at his side. No one had external pouches like that to keep their money in, especially not with a dangling flap that would come right open. Most people had pockets sewn onto the inside of their clothes, and rarely carried more than coppers around. Shopping would usually involve running up a tab to be paid off monthly, or swapping credit.

Still, he understood the assignment. Just for fun, he had Marksi go first, and the snake leaned down to the pouch from on top of the table and immediately came up with a mouthful of gold coins. The little guy was a natural.

Brin didn’t find it too hard either. Compared to pulling a coin off Hogg’s hand, this was a lot easier to manage. He just had to make sure he didn’t move the pouch at all. Harder was taking without changing the way the weight applied pressure against Hogg’s side, but it didn’t take him too long to figure out.

Even after succeeding, Hogg had him keep trying. He needed to be able to do this quickly. No one would sit still and let him pick their pockets over the course of thirty seconds. He kept practicing, getting better and better. A notification interrupted their exercise.

Through training you have increased the following attribute:

Dexterity +1