The village fountain was in the center of the main square, exactly where fountains belonged.
I sat on its stone edge and let myself stop moving, which my body received as extremely good news. The cobblestones around me were warm from the afternoon sun. The water behind me made a sound I had pulled from a royalty-free library and cleaned up in post, and it was, I had to admit, a good sound. Restful. The kind of ambient detail that worked.
I had sixty-three HP and ten copper coins and no immediate path to improving either number that did not involve going back into the forest in my current condition. My options were: wait and let natural regeneration do its one-point-per-minute work for the next several hours, or go back out there injured and under-equipped and hope the next encounter was
