But first, food. Chips, dip, some diet soda, a few beers, and a couple cans of tuna. Perfect. I tore through those tuna cans. My body needed some raw material to heal with after the cats eating part of me. Just thinking about that almost made me hurl my meal. Fat, full and happy, I rejoined my lover on the couch. Maybe talking out loud to her wouldn’t help her, but it was sure helping me.

“So, how long are you going to leaf me like this?” Uhg, I couldn’t resist. The raw strangeness of the past hour wore on me. “Dude, there are a bunch of different ways to be ‘one with nature’ without being a freaking tree. You could have been a druid, a dryad, a woodwitch, a tree spirit. But no, you had to go balls to the wall and be an actual tree.” I leaned on her. “So what now babe. Shall I treat you like Wilson, talk my sanity away as your stare into space?” No response. Maybe, maybe she couldn’t talk. Or, maybe she just couldn’t talk out loud. Part of my magic was nature centric. Maybe this could actually work. I put both hands on her thigh trunk, and reached out with my senses. Green. When I close my eyes, I could feel green energy, cocoon-like. I didn’t sense conscious thought at the normal human level, but there was definitely something there. Potential. Sleeping potential. New, with an egg-like mindscape. “Well, you’re not dead. And you’re not awake, but you are a tree, therefore, you are alive. You can’t really defend yourself, but maybe that’s my job. How hard could it be to keep a tree alive? Don’t worry babe. I got this. Somehow.”

The sun was casting light shadows through the new windows. I wasn’t too sure, but I guess that it was somewhere a few hours after noon. On to my next idea. Batteries. First, I had to figure out how much mana I could store inside of myself. Experimentation time. I conjured a rock and banished it. The fist sized stone didn’t really cost much. I then did the same for a fist sized piece of ice. Also easy. Ok, harder things. Then I conjured a piece of bone, living bone. I mean, if my blood could spear a cat, then maybe I could do stuff with bones? Again, easy. I was able to conjure bone outside of my body and shape it to cover it, like armor. Now, my energy talisman had a decent outflow. Not more than I can handle, but definitely more over time than I need. Clasping my hands together, I concentrated on the excess mana being generated, and held it in. A few minutes went by, and my body started to shake. I was full. It felt like a full belly with a long day of long-division math problems on top of it. I then conjured a 6 inch hexagonal crystal in my left hand, and channeled the mana slowly into it. It was like pouring a cup of water down a well. That bulk of energy that was hurting me didn’t make a dent in this crystal. Perfect. I reached my mind into the crystal; the energy was still there, and I could pull it out. I then crafted an ambient mana collection enchantment on it. Within 5 minutes, I had an easy system. With these principles, I could definitely scale my abilities later. Now, while I’m not doing anything, once I’m full of mana, this battery will soak up the extra mana I generate and the extra from the mana generator.