As we sat down for lunch, which consisted of some bread and a nice salad I said, “Hey Dad, I’d like to take some time off of harvesting lumber, I have something in mind that I think could save us a lot of time and effort, but I will probably need a about a week to get it done.”

Dad asked, “Okay… what exactly will you be doing with a week off?”

I said, “Well, I was planning on digging up the Northern field and turning it into a fish farm…”

Dad responded, “What’s made you want to start a fish farm? I’m not opposed exactly, but I don’t know how to raise fish and I doubt you do either… Is there any particular reason you want to try this?”

I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts and decide exactly what to tell my parents. I looked at my mother who was busy feeding my little brother. Auttaa had turned into an adorable little white wolf though he was definitely a picky eater. Sure he could feed himself at this point, but that didn’t mean he did a good job of it. If mom didn’t help him eat all his bread would be gone and the salad would probably end up on the floor. At two years old he was developing quickly, but like all two year olds he was a handful.

I smiled at the scene and said, “Well Dad, the reason I want to try and farm fish is so that I can make some extra money. I figure I could run the fish into town and sell them which would make a decent amount of coin, plus with the pond I am planning on building it would be easy to try my irrigation method. You remember the one I told you about last year. I figure that when I’m done with the pond we could give it a shot with one of the fields as a test of sorts. If it works out then we could eventually set it up for all of the fields and save ourselves a lot of time and energy.”

My father sat in silence for a few seconds thinking things over, which allowed my mom to chime in, “Well that’s an interesting idea… I think I like it, this way even if you can’t water the plants properly the work you do making the pond won’t be wasted. How do you plan on getting the water into your pond?”

I answered,” Well I had a little bit of inspiration today, the soil is relatively soft going from the river to our house, I know because I dragged a log for close to half a mile and you can see the furrow it left in the ground. I figure that it shouldn’t be too hard to remove it if I modify the earth wave a little bit. Then when I get close enough to the river I can build a gate and then connect the future pond to the river.”

Dad finally spoke up, “Why install a gate?”

I answered, “Well, that’s because I want to be able to stop the water from rising too much and keep the fish from swimming out of the pond and back into the river.”

Dad thought about the idea for a little while, he scratched an itch behind his ear and then said, “How will you feed the fish? They have to eat something, also, how will you keep the water clean, if the water becomes stagnant the fish will probably die. Plus a bunch of stagnant water will breed insects something our farm could do without.”

I answered his objections with the plan I had worked out, “I agree that we don’t want a bunch of stagnant water right next to the house which is why the pond will constantly have water entering and leaving it. I am going to build a drainage path for the water so that the excess ends up flowing back into the river. That will keep the water from getting stagnant and I will probably be able to build a water wheel if I set things up right.”

My mom arched her eyebrow and said, “Honey I don’t know a lot about water wheels, but I am pretty sure they only work with a river that flows quickly, there is no way you will be able to build a useful one with the amount of pressure you will get from a fish pond.”

I smiled and said, “I have an idea that I think might work, but I’ll have to experiment a bit with it first. Regardless of any potential water wheels we could use to grind up the Whim, I can promise if I do this right the water will not be stagnant and we should be able to get fish to live in the pond.”

Dad nodded his head and said, “Well, you have me half convinced, but how much land will this pond end up using?”

“It should take up most of the Northern field, so close to two acres. I figure since we haven’t been able to break ground on that field it will be perfect for me to use. Plus if we do decide to expand, there is still room to the south, so the pond shouldn’t stop our growth. Besides think of all the readily available fish we will have if I can pull this off.” I said in what I hoped was an enticing tone.

Dad considered my proposal for a second and said, “If you can pull this off in a week, then fine, if you can’t then it will have to wait until after the harvest. Just make sure you let me know before you start filling it with water, I don’t want you to have missed something and then we wind up flooded out of house and home.”

I exclaimed, “Yesss!” and did a fist pump which my little brother decided to copy. I beamed at him and said, “Thanks Dad, I’m going to go get started on it right now, if I only have a week, then I am going to be pretty busy. And don’t worry, I’m 98% sure I can do this without destroying our home.”

I ruffled the fur between my little brother’s ears and ran out the door. I heard my dad mutter something as I left, but I was already too far away to make it out clearly. It was probably along the lines of being 98% sure I’d wind up with a tanned hide if I flooded the house, or something like that. Who can say? But I will definitely reinforce the side of the pond that ends up facing the house.

What? It just a simple precaution, I’m not worried about the giant Wolfman that is my father beating me black and blue, it’s just a normal precaution.

I ran to the north a little bit and took a look at the future pond. While the 2 acres or so of land were relatively flat, there was a small depression on the eastern end. It should make the digging process a little easier, but I would definitely need to shore up the edges of the proposed fish farm as the winter rains might cause some flooding if I didn’t design things properly. I’d have to build the banks up at least two or three feet above the waterline in order to make sure we don’t lose our house to a flood. I’d also need to design a breakout point in case there is flooding so that the water has somewhere else to go.

I sat down in the depression and began cultivating. Magic was the only reason I told my father that I could do the job in a week, and my experiments this morning had depleted most of my stored mana. It took me twenty minutes to pull all that I could from my surroundings and the food I had ingested, which filled me up close to half way. I could have continued to cultivate, but it would have been slow as I had already pulled all the mana I could from lunch.

I got up and focused on my mana. I willed it into the earth and prepared it for my first spell. I say spell because frankly I don’t really know what else to call what I was about to do. I suppose I could call it a skill or a technique, but if it involves mana it should be a spell right?

Anyway my spell was a simple one, basically I created a wedge and put it in the ground I set it up to move in a particular direction, southwest specifically and I set it for a certain depth. When I released the spell it would begin moving forward for as long as it could. Based on the amount of mana I had infused into the spell it should be able to go for close to two hundred feet, I’d set the width for around ten feet. I stomped my foot which released the spell and a wave of earth could be seen moving toward my house.

I’d set the depth for around two foot down and as the modified earth wave progressed toward my home a path of rich dark earth was revealed. The earth wave acted as a bulldozer, tearing up the grass that had previously covered the field. A lot of loose earth and grass spilled over the backside of the earth wave, but by the end of the two hundred feet a four foot high earthen berm was left over.

It wouldn’t be easy moving the left over dirt out of the pond, but it would be a lot easier now that the earth wave had done all the hard work. I’d used up close to a quarter of my total mana releasing that earth wave, but if I managed my levels properly, ate a lot, and cultivated when I could, I should be able to repeat the spell at least 8 times per day. Looking at the land I planned on clearing out I’d need to perform the feat at least 40 times, which means I should be done with the initial clearing efforts by day 5.

My plan should work, but I might have been a little bit optimistic, on my time frame. Looks like I’ll be busy for the next week. I sent another earth wave out right next to the previous one, thus exhausting my mana. I ran to the barn and grabbed my wheel barrow and our biggest shovel. I pushed it back to the recently cleared land and started filling the wheel barrow up.

It took close to 100 trips to get rid of all the dirt from the first bit of land I had cleared, and it took close to three hours to accomplish the task. Frankly if I wasn’t a 6 foot 10 inch giant wolf man that had been training in martial arts and working hard as a farmer for the last 5 years of my life I never would have been able to accomplish all that I had. Fortunately I was all of those things, so while tired I knew I could continue after a short break.

I sat down on the now significantly enlarged earthen berm and began to meditate. I needed to recover mana and stamina as fast as possible, for which meditating was ideal. I spent close to fifteen minutes recovering and cultivating before I moved on to the next section.

…

I spent the next 5 days doing the same thing over and over again. My days consisted of waking up before dawn to clear two swaths of ground, followed by eating breakfast with the family. Then I’d clear another two sections, meditate for 15 minutes to recover stamina and mana, then clear another two sections. Then it was lunch with the family followed by more clearing and meditating. By the end of each day I was exhausted both physically and mentally. Then only reason I was able to keep up the pace was due to the training I’d been undergoing since I was a child.

When day 6 arrived I ended up digging a path the river. It might have been two miles away, but it was a cake walk compared to the work I had just put in. All I had to do was create a small but powerful earth wave, two feet across and two and a half feet deep. Each wave only took a fifth of the energy that my previous waves had taken, and since the wave was so much smaller most of the loose dirt ended up on the banks of the future stream instead of inside it.

I was able to get within two hundred yards of the river by the time night fell and while tired from using so much mana, my body was actually in pretty good shape. I jogged home that night stopping every hundred feet or so to drop some stones I had collected into the future waterway. When I got back I quickly ate some dinner and then went to my room, barely acknowledging anyone on my way there. I quickly removed my pants and flopped onto my bed, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

On the seventh day I rested…

Just kidding I worked my ass off. I got up before dawn again and finished advancing my little creek bed all the way to the river, now only 5 feet separated the river from having access to my pond. After cleaning out the channel of any excess dirt I then did something I had only tried a few times before. I fused a section of dirt into a solid mass. Basically I was taking all of the sand and silt in the soil and turning it into a mix of sedimentary rocks, sandstone and siltstone.

Now this process would normally take either a long time or a lot of mana but was hoping it would be much easier for me because I planned on cheating. Normally when a Mage tries to fuse the soil into a rock he simply applies manna, in the form of pressure and heat in order to complete the process. It kind of works, but frankly in my view it was inefficient.

That’s why yesterday I had dropped stones along the waterway, they were limestones, and my plan was to fuse them with the soil thus making it easier to form the rocks I needed as the limestone would act as a cementing agent. The first thing I did was crush up the limestone into a chunky powder, which was fairly easy thanks to a couple of rocks I’d taken from the river. Then I spread the bits and pieces along the trench I’d dug. I added my mana to the mix of limestone, sand and silt, I focused on forging a connection between the three elements and after only a couple of minutes and a small expenditure of mana I now had a siltstone riverbed.

I repeated the process every hundred yards and after close to three hours I was back home, hungry and tired. Breakfast was already over and my parents were working in the fields again so I made myself an omelet. When I finished eating I went back outside and examined the hole that would eventually become my fish farm. The original depression on the east end was now close to 8 feet below the expected waterline. The rest of the pond was somewhere between 4 and 6 feet deep, it might be too shallow, so I would have to watch the temperature of the water over the summer before trying to plant any plants or add any fish.

I was going to have to wait until the harvest was over before I tried to do anything serious with the fish farm, but I’d made an excellent start. Now I just needed to build a sluice gate and then I should be able to connect the pond to the river.

I grabbed my axe from the barn and then jogged back to the river. I’ll spare you the details of how I made the sluice gate, let’s just say it involved a couple of trees and a lot of chopping. When it was done it looked, well I guess crude would be the best way to describe it. I’d over engineered the thing so it would be unlikely to break, but it would also be impossible to operate for anyone smaller than me. I’d have to build a new one eventually, but for now it should work well enough.

I cleared away the dirt between it and the river and didn’t notice any water leaking past so at the very least my sluice gate was water tight and functional. I ran back home, dropped off the axe in the barn then went out to the fields and grabbed the family. I brought them to the northern field which was now a giant hole with thick banks surrounding it and said, “Well I’m basically done, now I just need to test it out and see where any improvements need to be made. What do you say Dad, is it good enough for a trial run?”

My father walked around future pond site, he checked the earthen banks, hopped inside and checked the depth then jumped out and said, “It doesn’t look finished.”

I nodded my head and said, “That’s because it isn’t. There are still a number of improvements I plan on making, like turning the banks into stone instead of earth, creating an exit for the water to insure it doesn’t become stagnant, planting some weeds and lilies. There is a whole range of things I need to do before it will actually become a viable fish farm, but I think it’s gotten to the point where I need to test it and see if it can hold water. Then I will need to see how hot the water will get without the addition of new water. After all, if it gets to hot the fish will die.”

My dad grunted and said, “Alright son, you can add some water, do you need our help with anything?”

I smiled and said, “Actually yeah now that you mention it, I could definitely use your help. We need to monitor the water flow, make sure it doesn’t eat away too much of the earth on its way to our pond, we need to manage the level of the water and be able to shut off the flow quickly if anything goes wrong. I could also use some help gathering a particular type of stone since it will speed up the process of turning the bank into stone instead of dirt. I will also probably need some help dredging out the pond since I think the water will be pretty muddy upon arrival.”

My dad laughed, and said, “Woah woah woah, that’s a lot of help, this is your project, I’ll give you some more time off to get it done, but most of that stuff is your responsibility. We will help with the initial filling of the pond, but the rest of that is on you. But because it is your project and because you are doing most of the work, you get the lion’s share of the reward. If we end up being able to use the water to irrigate our fields like you thought we could, then everything else that pond produces is yours. Sound fair?”

I nodded, “I can work with that, but what if I need help on a major improvement?”

My dad smiled, “You can pay us fair value for our labor. You said you wanted to make some money from this fish farm, which I am okay with. But if you want it to be a money maker for you then you can’t expect too much help from us.”

I smiled and said, “Okay Dad, then I guess all I will need from you guys is two things. First I am going to need you to work the sluice gate dad, it is heavy and I don’t think Mom is strong enough to do it on her own, so you will be in charge of opening and closing it. Mom, I will need you to watch the banks of the trench I dug, I just need you to make sure there isn’t any single point where the water breaks through. Autta and I will watch the pond, I will have a fire going, and as soon as you see smoke I want you to close the gate. Mom you need to come get me if you notice any big problems, and Dad you need to close the gate if the water starts to work its way around the gate. Does that work for everyone?”

My dad nodded and my mom said, “Sure son, just make sure Auttaa doesn’t get into any trouble. And make sure he doesn’t go into the water, I don’t want to have to deal with a mud covered toddler.”

I nodded then I took dad to the river and showed him how to operate the sluice gate. It was a simple design, in order to open it you just had to lift the logs out of the holder I had constructed. Simple easy, no problem for a fully mature Susi, anyone else though might have some issues since each log weighed close to 300 pounds.

I looked at my dad and I said, “Okay, give me twenty minutes to grab Auttaa and start a fire then open the gates. When you see the smoke close the gate, I imagine it will take a couple of hours so if nothing bad happens after the first twenty minutes of filling I’ll have mom bring you a spear so you can do some fishing while you wait. Sound good?”

Dad nodded and said, “Sure son, but if I get any fish you don’t get any. Think of it as a charge for my services today.”

I frowned, and whined, “Come on Dad, I give you this nice rest day where all you have to do is hang out by the river and you won’t even share your catch with me…”

My dad chuckled and said, “Of course I’m kidding son, your mother would never let me deprive you of good meat.”

My continence brightened a bit and I said, “Ha Ha dad, very funny, I actually thought you were going to take this whole working for me thing to some crazy extreme.”

Dad smiled and said, “I won’t… but your little brother might when he gets a little older and you want him to help you out. Just try and keep in mind that not everyone is as generous as your old man.”

“Sure thing Dad, now give me twenty minutes then open the gate” I said.

I ran back to the pond picking my little brother up on the way. I built up a medium sized fire and gathered some green leafy branches. All I would need to do is drop them on the fire and I should get plenty of smoke. Then we waited.

I let my little brother play around the outside of the empty pond, keeping an eye on him to ensure he didn’t make his way inside the giant pit. It took close to twenty minutes for the water to finally reach me and when it did I knew I was going to be here for a while. I’d been hoping that the water would come gushing forth and fill the pond in no time. Instead the water was slow, moving at maybe 6 miles per hour, it was like filling a pool up with a gardening hose, eventually it would get done, but it wasn’t going to be fast. Which meant I needed to get my dad, it would be a waste of his time to simply sit at the mouth of this new tributary.

I picked up my little brother and ran along the new stream. I met mom about a mile along the water course and stopped briefly. I said, “Hey mom, I don’t think I will need you guys any more, in my head the pond was going to fill up much faster, but at this rate it will take at least a day if not longer. So long as nothing breaks I shouldn’t need your help. Thanks though, I’ll go tell Dad he can head on home. Have you noticed any problems before I go?”

She replied, “Not really, it’s only been an hour so who can say, but so far the banks seem to be holding up just fine. The water is really muddy though so I can’t be certain how much of the banks are being eaten away.”

I thanked her, dropped off little Auttaa and ran the rest of the way to the river. When I arrived I said, “Any problems so far?”

Dad replied, “Nothing so far, lining the sides of the entrance with stone was probably a good idea. But I have to ask, why are you here right now? Shouldn’t you be watching the pond? Making sure the banks don’t overflow and ensuring there aren’t any problems, that might, you know flood our house?”

I gave my Dad a somewhat sheepish grin and said, “Well I would, but the flow rate of the water is so little that it will take at least a day if not two in order to fill up. I realized if there were any problems I could probably shut off the water flow myself and I don’t want you to waste your entire day here at the river.”

He smiled and said, “I figured it would take that long, but I will stick around here for today just in case. Besides I haven’t taken a day to relax and fish in a while so I don’t mind staying. You just go on back to the pond, and I will be here just in case you need me.”

I simply nodded, after all if dad wanted to take a day off, who was I to stop him? I ran back to the pond and started cultivating, after all even if Dad decided to take some time off, I couldn’t until this project was done.

It took two days to fill the pond, in that time I deepened some of the shallower parts and did my best to separate the dirt from out of the water. Thanks to my efforts the water was relatively clear, it would take a couple of days for all of the dirt to settle on the bottom. I’d also spent some time turning the section of earth facing our home into stone. It wasn’t easy, but with all the time I had to just gather mana it was mostly just time consuming.

With work on the pond finished for now my family celebrated by having a bit of a barbecue. We had the Taikas come over, cooked up some fish and just sat around the new pond. The good news was that even if the fish farm didn’t work out, at the very least we now had a swimming hole, so there was always that.

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AN: Sorry the chapter took so long, I got stuck writing about the sluice gate and literally got bored trying to write the scene. It took me a couple of days to get back into things and I ended up reworking some stuff in the process. Next chapter Raha is coming to visit and it marks the beginning of Swift's move out into the world beyond his farm. There will also be some action so stay tuned folks.