Touchstone 1 - Stray

wary of pushing me too hard to do it in case I have another ‘excursion’.
    There’s been no suggestion whatsoever that I try and train or focus my ability to jaunt off to Earth, no matter what Maze said about finding Pillars.
    Castle Rotation
    Today was my last scheduled rotation with First Squad, though I think that may be because they haven’t decided yet how to allocate me next week. Tomorrow I have nothing scheduled and to my delight Ketzaren said she was going into the city and asked if I want to tag along. Then I have a training day and a few more squads to be tested with (Fifth, Seventh, Tenth), but no more Ena rotations listed, just blank days every second day where they’re probably going to put missions once they’ve decided what they will be.
    I feel strange about being a resource which is shared between dozens of people. There’s some teams I’m not looking forward to working with, but now that I’m not being kept in a box it sometimes feels like a positive way to live. I’m making their job a little easier, even if all I actively do is follow them about. I managed not to make an idiot out of myself this rotation, too, and First Squad were looking quite cheerful at the end of the day.
    Lohn says that Castle is his favourite rotation. It was definitely different from the ones we’ve already done, and for the most part made me feel more than ever that I’ve strayed into some kind of computer game. It had NPCs! Maze explained beforehand that there would be two types of Ionoth in the Castle space, and that one we would be attacking while the other we would avoid. This would require me to move quickly whenever Ketzaren told me to, and there would probably be occasional levitating to different spots so I needed to be ready for that.
    They didn’t warn me about the stairs though.
    Castle Rotation is literally that – a castle. On a cliff-like rock. And we started at the bottom and worked our way to the top, chasing a mass of invading shadow people and cutting them down wherever possible. There were defending shadow people fighting against the invading shadow people and I see why Lohn likes it because it’s like you’re helping them. They even react sometimes as if they’re surprised to see the Setari and one looked like it was thanking Zee.
    But, gods, we went up a lot of steps.
    I think Ketzaren did a lot of extra unnecessary levitating, for which I will be eternally grateful. I really don’t know if I can get as fit as everyone else, and talked to Mara about it afterwards, especially about the way I keep falling asleep after the testing sessions instead of doing the jogging I was supposed to. She pointed out that I’d been hospitalised twice the previous month, and that walking up all these stairs probably counted for more than the jogging anyway. The interface lets them monitor my heartbeat all the time, and they’re really more interested in keeping me alive than trying to make me into a watered-down version of a Setari.
    Not that this let me out of dodging practice the day after tomorrow. Mara says she’s planning to make sure I at least have a chance to survive if a bunch of children try and beat me up. I gather she thinks I’m pretty hopeless so far.
    Saturday, February 22
    Can I keep it?
    I’d made a list of things to look for during my trip to the city, like throw rugs for the lounges, and some snacks to keep in my apartment. Although I’d realised I could purchase most things through my interface and have them delivered, it was more the idea of going out and looking around which had me excited. Besides, I wanted a haircut, and Ketzaren hadn’t seemed at all bothered about the time involved in taking me to a hairdressers, even though it meant she would have to sit around waiting for me. She has long, shiny black hair which is super-straight and neat and makes my current collection of split ends look even worse by comparison.
    It was also nice to have a reason to wear something other than my uniform, and to see Ketzaren in a pretty dress. I often wonder if First Squad does much socialising outside of KOTIS. Do people not in the military seem annoying or refreshing? How do they get the chance to meet them? Are there rules about whether you can date someone in your own squad? I guess it must be okay to get married, since Maze was.
    I was toying with the idea of seeing how many of these mysteries I could unravel while spending a day just with Ketzaren, but when we met up she was