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Sorry that its so late, but my mom took forever to let me back on to add this. rolleyes Man, its times like this that really make me want my own laptop. Anyway, back to the subject, here's chapters 3 and 4!
Total words to chapter 4: 8,412
Total words I've written so far: 10, 667! Yay!
Sorry! I don't have time to fix it to make it easier to read! My bad!

Chapter 3 Kera
The man looked up as she walked out of the grass surprised. “You’ve found it already?” His eyes flashed down to the stone and back up to her face.
Kera looked down at the stone and back at his face, “Yes,” she held the stone out to him, “Here it is.”
The man reached down uncertainly his face determined as he grabbed the stone. For a split second Kera could swear she saw the stone flash, but she just assumed it to have caught the light of the sun. “Thank you very much, that was a great help!”
Kera shifted uncomfortably, how could she approach the matter of payment politely? “I’m very glad that I could help you…”
The man stared at her and then his face lightened in understanding, “Oh! You want payment I’m sure! Well…” He looked around, laughing amiably, “…how about you take this grass?”
Kera glanced over at it, it was much more than she could have ever expected to have made during a regular day, and this grass was lush and green, she was sure to get a very handsome price for it, but… “All of the grass sir, are you sure you don’t need some?”
He laughed again, “No, no, it’s perfectly fine, you really helped me out, you should take it all, please I insist!”
“Thank you very much!” Kera beamed and pulled out her knife to begin cutting the grass. She cautiously ran her thumb across the blade…it was dull again, this was going to cut the price quite a bit, she wasn’t going to get a clean cut with this knife, but it was all she had.
As soon as she put the blade to the grass the man’s shout stopped her short, “Wait! What’re you doing with that dull blade? Let me cut it for you!” He swiftly moved over and with four or five quick swipes of his long sword he had cleanly cut all of the grass. “All you have to do now is stack it and carry it.”
“Thank you again…” She paused realizing she didn’t know the man’s name, “Do you have a name sir?”
He seemed startled at the question but he answered nonetheless, “I’m William, and you are?”
“I’m called Kera,” She answered with a small bow of her head.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, I must take my leave now, but I hope to see you again…” He smiled and began walking away.
Kera watched him walking away until she could no longer see him, he was quite strange, but she wasn’t going to complain about the nice reward she had just gotten, it was much better than she could have expected. She grinned and began stacking the grass into piles.
After all the grass was stacked she waved her fingers twice in a circle and then flourishing her hand up, enchanting the grass to float along side her so she could take it with her to sell to the owner of the field. She knew this grass was good quality; they would be able to make lots of medicines and charms with it.
Kera walked up to the field owner’s tent and walked happily inside. Without even looking up the owner said, “Sorry, no more spots available on the field I’m all full, please try to get here earlier if you would like to get a spot.”
Kera found herself smiling; she was in such a good mood! But, she knew that it wasn’t okay to mock the field owner when he would be paying for her grass, she had to be polite to haggle for the best price. She cleared her throat lightly, “Actually sir, I’m here to sell my grass…”
The field owner finished scribbling some last numbers as he talked, “That’s ridiculous no one could make a good harvest this soon, I don’t even want to take anything that’s shorter than a foot today.” He looked up at her impatiently and then stopped short. “Is…is this your…grass?” His voice cracked on the last word.
Kera nodded wordlessly, walking closer to the field owner’s desk and waving her hand smoothly causing the grass to float easily onto the desk.
As soon as the grass touched the desk the field owner greedily began pawing through it. “This grass is amazing! It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything of such good quality! And in such a short time too! How did you…?” He finally looked up and took a good look at her, his face dropped slightly, “I suppose you’re just here to sell your parent’s grass…I’ll give you-“
“No sir, its mine, I grew it this morning.” She corrected him, she knew he would be trying to give her a lower price if her thought that she hadn’t grown it, she was used to the field owner’s haggling, they wanted to make as much money off the grass as they could.
“How could you have…?” He caught himself as he looked at her determined stare, and he seemed to decide that she was telling the truth. “Did you, well then, I’m very impressed.” He glanced down at the grass again appraising it. “I’ll pay you 2 gold caravets for it.”
Kera stared at him; she had more money than that in her pocket, maybe not in gold caravets, but in silver and bronze together. 15 bronze caravets to a silver caravet and 25 silver caravets to a gold caravet. She knew that her grass was much more valuable than that it was worth at least 20 gold caravets, but she was unsure if this owner would be willing to go that high… “I think its worth more than that sir.” She prodded, staring straight back at him. 70 gold caravets was enough to buy a new house so even just getting 22 was amazing!
He smiled, “You’re a smart one, yes you’re right, I’m going to cut this short, I can tell that you’re not going to take anything less than 22 gold caravets, that sound fair?”
She was overjoyed, “Yes sir, that sounds like a very fair deal to me, thank you.”
They then exchanged money and Kera left the tent feeling the happy weight of her new money. She now had lots of extra money to buy whatever she wanted! She decided to head to the marketplace to see what she could buy, she knew she had to buy food first, otherwise she knew she would forget.
After buying several loaves of bread, a few wheels of cheese, and two small cakes she began walking through the clothes and jewelry areas of the marketplace. Kera had never owned any fancy clothes, or even any clothes that didn’t have patches in them, and she decided that now she wanted to change that. While she was putting an anti-thievery enchantment on her food she had a sudden idea, she could get a chain for her stone, and instead of hiding it in her pocket she could put it onto a chain and show it off. It was a dangerous prospect if Sharron saw it, but she was willing to risk it, she could always look up some spell to keep it safe if she needed to. Sharron wouldn’t be that desperate to steal it from her if it was protected by a strong enough spell.
Kera walked through the clothes looking for anything that appealed to her, and eventually she found the perfect things. A small leather skirt that went down to her knees with a belt that had compartments for small objects- perfect for all the traveling she did- a red travel blouse made of wool so it would be very warm, and small thigh high traveling boots. Everything was a huge step up from what she was wearing, her cotton skirt had been patched so many times it wasn’t the same color for more than three inches across, her thin shirt was becoming too small and she saw several rips forming along the sides, her shoes couldn’t be considered very good quality, they were held together by rope that she had made out of old thread.
Eagerly Kera bought the clothes, it was only one gold caravet for them all, and she had only spent 10 silver caravets for the food. After she had bought the clothes she rushed over to one of the jewelry carts and bought a chain for 10 bronze caravets, after that she rushed back to the town gate.
Once she arrived at the gate it began opening with several loud creaks. Despite her distrust of the gate she rushed out as soon as it had opened enough for her to duck through, she just had to get home and change into her new clothes!
She arrived back home much quicker than she ever had before. Sharron hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said that it took three days for her to get back, it normally took that long or longer. Now she was getting back a few hours after she had left the house! It surprised Kari too, so she could only imagine how Sharron was going to react when she saw Kari show up home.
Without even knocking Kera burst into the house and ran upstairs into her room, the clothes and food trailing slowly after her. After everything had safely floated into her room, Kera waved her hands twice in the air releasing the floating enchantment and all the food and clothing dropped slowly to the floor.
“Who is that?” Sharron’s voice rang up the stairs. Kera could hear the distant sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
Kera poked her head out the door, grinning from ear to ear, “It’s just me Sharron.”
Sharron’s face broke with relief and disbelief, “It can’t be, are you really Kera?”
Kera continued grinning, “In the flesh!”
Sharron came all the way up the stairs and hit Kera across the back of the head. “Don’t scare me like that! How was I supposed to know it was you?”
“Ow! That hurt! I live here don’t I? You should expect it to be me!” Kera shouted back, sticking out her tongue.
Sharron laughed and pushed Kera aside, striding into the room. “Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad you decided to come back, I was going to have to go without food for the next couple of days if you hadn’t decided to come back.”
Kera stared sadly at Sharron, going without food was really serious and here she was joking about it. “Sharron…”
Sharron sat on Kera’s bed and patted the spot next to her. Kera joined her, “Don’t worry about it kiddo, it’s not your job to worry about me when you already do so much to help out.”
“But…!” Kera protested.
“No, don’t argue with me, if you just leave it alone I won’t ask where you got so much extra money to buy those pretty clothes…” Sharron grinned and picked up the food. “I’ll go put this away while you change, I can tell you want to.” She winked as she left the room.
Kera smiled after her, it was just like Sharron to move past something like this as if it was nothing. Once again Kera wondered what Sharron was going to do when she left, because this adventure today had convinced her that it was time she got out to explore other places for real, she was missing out on so much by staying here. She wanted to learn new spells and see new places, she didn’t want to spend her whole life growing grass, and she knew she had the potential for so much more! Kera sighed, closing the door and picking up her new clothes, her new days of adventure began with these clothes, and everything was going to be new and fun!
She untied the old strings on her shoes and threw them into a corner of her room, “Ready world, here I come…”

Chapter 4 Sarila
Sarila woke up early the next morning to the sun shining through the window into her eyes. She grinned, stretching her arms lazily above her head looking up at the pale early morning sky. The grass was so cool and warm this morning it was amazing! After her mother had left last night she had snuck out her high window down to the forest, and she had spent the night outside. Somehow the night outside was even sweeter than usual because Sarila knew how much it would anger her mother. Her grin widened and she sat up, shaking out her arms and legs.
After she had finished waking up her muscles she began climbing the rope that hung out from her window. She knew she still had to finish the reading her mother assigned her before morning lessons; she wasn’t going to get away with it twice. It was such a bore reading about this Kera girl, so she had more magic powers than the average person big deal, she was just part of a story, what did that have to do with her? Sarila was never going to have to worry about what spells Kera could or couldn’t cast, so why did she have to learn about it? But, she knew that her mother wasn’t going to agree with her on any level, and if she wanted to live then she was going to have to learn the stupid legends.
Sure, she had thought about just running away into the forest, she knew she could survive just fine out there, but she knew that her mother would find her. One way or another her mother would hunt her down and drag her back, then, when that happened she would have even less freedom than she had now, bars on the windows and doors. It was stupid, Sarila knew that if she had more magic her mother wouldn’t be able to keep her down like this. If Sarila knew more magic she would be able to cover her tracks and make herself invisible like that Kera girl could. But no, Sarila’s powers weren’t going to come to her until later, Sarila was ‘slower’ as her mother had condescendingly put it. Sarila rolled her eyes climbing through the window at this point any kind of powers would be nice, and now that she was thinking, that might have been the reason why her mother had taken her out of public education. She knew that most people got their powers around her age and before and so now was the time they started teaching spells and enchantments in school…
It almost made her scowl; her mother took her away from any kind of social life for something like that? It was a stupid reason, but she couldn’t disagree that it was a t least somewhat considerate, which was more than she normally expected from her mother. Sarila quickly grabbed her clean clothes out of her closet and rushed into the shower, she only had a short amount of time until her mother’s lesson and she just knew that her mother would smell the pine scent on her. So, she had to swiftly take a shower and then read, it wasn’t the best way to do things, but it was her way.
After she had finished her shower and changed into clean clothes she sat down with the book sadly, she had escaped from this for a while, but it hadn’t been long enough. If only her magic would come, then at least she would be learning spells and enchantments instead of legends. She had been learning legends since she was little, and it was starting to get really old.

William walked through town, searching for the fields, he knew that Kera would be here soon he had only just managed to beat her to the gate. He needed to find the fields and grow the grass so that he could plant the stone in the grass. He also had to cast the enchantment to make it impossible to find in the grass, so that the only way for her to find it would be if she used a stone.
Eventually he found the field and let his magic out into the field in a rush so that the grass would grow quickly. It was almost sad how this town was so obsessed with grass, sure it was good for magic, herbs and enchantments, but that was about it, there were so many more things to grow! But he wasn’t going to complain, grass was quite easy to grow quickly for him, so it wouldn’t be a problem to get it tall enough to hide the stone in.
After the grass had grown to a suitable six inches he threw his stone into the grass, flinching once the stone left his presence, it still hurt him to have the stone leave his person. He had gotten so used to having the stone with him all the time, it was going to be a hard long wait if she couldn’t find the stone, he was already starting to get a headache. He almost felt bad as he was casting the enchantment, if this girl didn’t have a stone he was going to have wasted her entire day making her look for the stone. He knew from Petula that the girl was poor and just barely making her way as it was, and this wasn’t going to help. He amended that even if she didn’t find it he would give her some sort of reward anyway.
Once he had finished the enchantment he left the field to begin looking for Kera. It was amazing how hard it was to find someone on only a vague description, Petula was really the only one who had seen her. All he knew was that she was a teenager with crimson hair, and while that was a very helpful description as crimson was not a common hair color, there were a lot of people in this town today.
A sharp pain erupted in his stomach; each step took him further from the field and away from his stone. The bond between him and it was starting to be a bad thing. While having such a strong tie to his stone had given him more power when he needed it, it also made him weaker without it. The stone had become his greatest weakness as well as his greatest strength.
Finally he spotted a flash of crimson headed for the field, the pain in his stomach was mounting and spreading to the rest of him, so it was quite easy to look desperate as he caught up to Kera.

Sarila skipped a few pages, her mother would never know…

William breathed a huge sigh of relief when Kera at last found his stone, he could even see her stone gleaming in her own pocket. What a miracle! They had finally found someone with a stone! It had taken them so many tries, now they finally had completed their mission. Now came the hardest part, how was he to grab the stone without alerting her to its real appearance. Surely she would notice if his stone suddenly burst into joyous light at being reunited with him. He had to think fast, his head was searing with pain as the stone reacted to being in someone else’s hands…
He sent a sudden burst of power to his fingertips and grabbed the stone cautiously out of Kera’s hands. The magic was enough to cover most of the stone’s glow, but it still shone visibly, he just had to hope that she hadn’t noticed. He quickly covered up the stone with his hand and drew her attention away from the stone.
He was so happy about having the stone back with him that he could have given her anything, he remembered much worse times when he’d had to wait almost half a day through excruciating pain for someone not to find his stone. This was much better, and it would hopefully be the last time he would have to do this as well.

Sarila closed the book that was enough reading for her; she doubted she needed to know any more than the few passages she had read. Her mother never went too in-depth in her questioning and she had gotten away with skimming the legends before.
Sarila almost expected the knock at the door now, and she knew exactly what her mother was going to say, the same thing she had said yesterday, ‘Why did you miss breakfast?’ While Sarila didn’t have as good of a reason for missing breakfast today, and the reason wasn’t even true today, it would still work, as long as she managed to say it politely. She rolled her eyes, politely of course, that was going to help her so much…
She opened the door and let her mother in.
“I see you missed breakfast again this morning…” Her mother sniffed, appraising Sarila’s appearance carefully. Sarila wasn’t worried her mother wasn’t going to get anything from her appearance, but she almost laughed, she was only a couple of words off.
“I’m sorry mother, I must have overslept again, but I don’t usually eat much for breakfast anyway so I don’t really mind too much.” Sarila apologized.
“Well I mind, I don’t think that the cook should have to throw out your breakfast because you can’t be there to eat it.”
So what? It wasn’t like they really needed the food in the house anyway, Sarila knew for a fact that whenever she didn’t eat the cooks and maids were all extremely happy because they then got to eat her food. “I apologize mother; I’ll try to get down for breakfast in the future.”
“I hope you will, but enough on that.” Her mother sat down in her usual spot on Sarila’s bed, “Now, what did you think of last night’s passage?”
Oh boy, what should I make up and tell her now? She thought, almost rolling her eyes, she doubted her mother cared what ridiculous thing she came up with. “I-I thought it was quite odd how being away from the stone hurt William so much…”
“Ah, yes, I’m glad that you noticed that so well. It’s very important to remember that the greatest weakness of the stone holders is their stone, if you can destroy it, they are powerless, and the pain will render them useless for the rest of their lives.” Sarila shivered, her mother’s voice had gained a cruel chill, and she could swear she saw the hint of a cruel smile on her mother’s lips as she said the last words.
“B-but, why does it hurt them so much?” She asked fearfully, she had never seen her mother like this before…
“Well, you see,” her mother said, regaining her composure, “the stones create a bond with them, one that gives them great powers that only they can yield. The stones pick their owners most of the stone wielders find them on the ground somewhere, and they may have just been picking up a rock to throw in the lake, but as soon as they touch the stone, it bursts into light. As soon as that happens, the stone and person are connected, and as long as that connection stays strong the power shared between person and stone grows. Just as dangerous though, the longer that bond is held the harder it is to be away from the stone.”
“I see…” She nodded, trying to keep her mother talking; she didn’t want to be forced to contribute to the conversation.
“Was there anything else that you noticed?”
Sarila shook her head back and forth slowly, “Not really mother.”
“Good, I’m glad to see that you actually read the passage today Sarila, please read the next passage tonight.” As she stood from the bed she seemed to remember something else, “Oh, and please don’t be late to lunch or dinner tonight, we have guests that you need to be there to greet.”
“Yes mother…”