Sophie was out in the front yard of Havenfield, beyond the pastures, somewhere where she had a good view of the stars. She positioned her stellarscope so it went straight to Achromian. She adjusted the knobs, then adjusted it again, and changed the angle she positioned her stellarscope, and—

"Does it always take you this long?" Grady asked, startling her so bad she knocked the stellarscope over. "Oops, my bad. I thought you would've heard me walking over. Here, I brought you some rippleruffs." He set down the plate next to her universe assignment.

Sophie set up the stellarscope again, and managed to get it aligned a lot quicker, with Grady's help. She focused the stellarscope, and . . .

ZAP! The starlight flew into the tiny bottle, and Sophie quickly sealed it and carefully placed it with her assignment, then sat down to enjoy her rippleruffs. Grady left after he'd helped her, so she picked up her things once she finished and headed toward Havenfield, deciding it was too cold to continue eating outside.

As she walked by the pastures, the verminion decided to charge at her. Sophie casually strolled on, not noticing the giant creature barrel towards her until she could feel its hot breath on her neck and it pounced on her, making her release a scream. She could hear something in her leg crack! as she face planted onto the dirt.

Grady and Edaline came running as fast as they could to the source of the sound. When they reached her, they stopped, horrified, but only for a second. Edaline conjured up a rope and tossed one end to Grady. Grady jumped up and grabbed it before it even came down, and jumped over the verminion, catching the other end as Edaline threw it to him. He managed to veer the beast away back to its pasture, and went off to find the gnomes to help replace the lock system on the enclosure, as the verminion had broken it.

"Wow, he really dislikes you, doesn't he?" Edaline laughed, in an attempt to make Sophie smile, but received a scowl instead. "Here, take your Foxfire crystal and see if Elwin has some marrow regenerator. Don't worry," Edaline said, catching the very worried look on Sophie's face, "it's not bad. You can still walk. It just crumbled a bit on places, like these rippleruff crumbs." She picked up the plate, and whatever crumbs had attached themselves to the plate fell off. "It's still edible with or without the crumbs. Just as you can walk with or without those tiny bits—just don't put too much pressure on it. Oh, and also get some extra. We used the last bottle up on you." Edaline laughed, but Sophie just frowned and glittered away using her Foxfire crystal.

She appeared in front of the grand pyramid a second later. Sophie slowly limped inside, heading towards the Healing Center. She looked down at her feet as she walked, careful to make sure her leg didn't bump anything, but adding more reasons to why she was clumsy. She was so focused on her leg that she didn't notice the Healing Center's door was open a crack, and lost her balance and pushed into it. A small and sudden spike of pain flared up her leg as she blinked her eyes open and found herself lying nose to nose on a boy with a crooked smirk and ice blue eyes.

Keefe.