Ruger felt a roaring in his head, as though he had remembered something, yet it remained hazy and unclear.
When he came to his senses, a smiling woman was standing before him. He had no idea when she had appeared.
"M-my believer got bigger," Stray Hair One murmured dazedly.
Ruger blinked. This mysterious figure had suddenly appeared before him, yet neither the nearby Spirit Furs nor Stray Hair One right in front of him had uttered a warning. Instead, he, their master, was the only one who had been startled.
"Where's my gray robe, my amusing and daring Two-Ring Wizard?" the woman teased, standing there as though they were old friends.
Ruger froze, then instinctively took out a robe and tossed it to her.
The woman caught it with a smile, shook it out, and slipped gracefully into it. Then she stretched her body, giving a perfectly ordinary, languid stretch.
"That was a wonderful nap," she said slowly.
"Who... who are you, ma'am? I think we must be very good friends," Ruger ventured.
Only then did the normally alert, chattering Fuzzies react. Sensing their master's slight nervousness, they realized that this suddenly appearing stranger was not a companion they knew.
Ruger glanced at the little creatures, whose fur had abruptly bristled, and shooed them behind him to keep them quiet.
She had spent so long here as a strand of fur, and there was also that Faith Power so extraordinary that it had shocked even a god. That devotion had clouded the Fuzzies' perception. Though she was not fur of the same origin, they had still felt a natural affinity with her.
The woman smiled faintly, lowering the arms she had raised in her stretch as she looked at Ruger and the Spirit Furs.
"These hairs, so full of spirituality,