Chapter 43

Giving the matter some more thought throughout the Afternoon and Night, you end up simply deciding that the next Morning would have to be reserved for a little experimentation. You were of course free of problems hailing from Fatigue, but you could still make some good use of such an Ability, and all these beautiful possibilities that Marie could open up to you were so very enticingly manifold in their nature as well, who wouldn't get a bit giddy? A Ship with a Crew that would never tire out from rowing would be absolutely awesome if you can't use your Statues for the Job, and a Unit of Archers that would never lose precision was also quite an enticing thing to have.

You had Thoughts of that nature a lot throughout the Night, as happens naturally when you find something so interesting, but you didn't really see your desire to use the Situation as a thing to avoid, so you simply focused on Marie instead. You were of course as tired of sitting around in the Rock as she was, but you were also stuck on how to guide your Friend on where to apply her apparent Talent, there was just too much Potential to simply go with the next best Solution that would allow you to escape the Rock, for your Duty to the future comes first.

And you were honestly unsure if Marie wouldn't simply stick to whatever you tried first if she found out about your little List of Experiments, or in other Words, rushing things out of boredom would be foolish in the extreme. Thus, you soberly chose to take your time with your newest Project, which after three Hours near the different Training Yards allowed you to gleam a few Rules of Thumb to your Friend's Ability. For one, there was no maximum Range to Marie's Ability, it simply affected a number of People around her, though you couldn't tell if the Ability changed between them as they finished the recovery or if all of them were treated at once.

In these three Hours of observation, it also became clear that her Ability was incapable of actually healing anything that wasn't on the Level of a Bruise, a Fact that you were honestly a bit disappointed with as you wrote it down. Though the last and greatest Observation was quick in refreshing your Interest, for you realised as you focused on the Pages of your little Book that Marie's recovery Magic, as weak as it was, wasn't at all restricted to just Humans and Animals, no, it affected the Plants around her as well.

This wouldn't sound like much to most People, at least on its own, but considering the lack of Range restrictions for her Ability, combined with your own Ability to manipulate Stone, you were sure that you could say that the massive Cultivation efforts were now nothing but a thing of the past. The Lands of your House were always fertile thanks to the Mountains, but sadly, the very same Mountains that guarantied a good Harvest were also the reason why the actual Farmland of the Westerlands was so very limited.

Hence, your House had invested heavily as part of their Duties throughout the Ages, trying hopelessly to secure even one more Acre of Land for the West, but very little of these efforts remained after each Winter had ended. For while the Magical Snow itself doesn't normally remain, the real Snow that comes with the Winter very much so does, hence when the Temperatures finally return to normal, everything that isn't a giant Tree or Bolder is simply swept away into the Sea by the Floods. These Events were a bother literally each Winter, and were leaving little but devastated Fields and Rivers now filled with Sediment of all sizes behind, thus many a Lord of the Rock that was just Years prior trying to return the Lands back to productivity simply abandoned it altogether, making it all the more difficult for coming Generations to even make the attempt.

Your Father and Grandfather both didn't bother dealing with the problem either, and with the Winter being so near, they actually didn't even spare the Possibility a Thought as far as you knew, it was like the Land didn't even exist anymore. But despite that you were still confident that if you and Marie were to work together on the problem that a Profit could be made from it. And at the very least your Father would be open to the Idea of investing into a possible Source of Foodstuffs on the Mainland, now that the Sea was filled with the raiding Fleets of the Ironborn.

And making it work would also solve one of the greatest problems your Father was having with creating his standing Army, that being the problem of Supplies, for even a small Army of let's say five-thousand would eat through the Reserves of several Villages for a simple Task like guarding the Border. Even a single Month with two Meals per Day would cost the surrounding Lands and Villages three-hundred-thousand Rations, and the Job of procuring the Supplies from the Locals would take up needed Manpower on the Border as well, meaning that despite the costs one wouldn't even have an Army of five-thousand Men anymore.

The Answer you had for the problem of your Father was quite simple, and amounted essentially to, give them Meat instead of Bread, it's overall better for the Morale, and it gives the Troops the Option of procuring Local Bread and Foodstuffs should the Supply lines actually be disrupted. There was also another big problem to feeding a standing Army with Bread, namely that it increased the Price of said Bread for the rest of the Population, and yeah, that isn't the kind of stuff the Commoners want to see, no matter how much they trust their Lord.

And here you saw the sweet Opportunity where Marie's little Ability could help out the Westerlands, for farming on the Land under the Mountains even after removing all the Stones would simply be futile, considering all the Wood in the Ground, and the coming Winters. Meaning that rather than try the same thing over and over again, you decided that the cultivation of Livestock would be the way to go. You really loved the Idea, for it allowed the two of you to get out of the Rock for a bit while also undeniably getting work done, you could focus on cleaning everything up with your Statues out in the Wild, and Marie could focus on healing the Grass once you spoke with her about her Ability.

Supporting the future War effort in that way while also reclaiming Land lost Decades ago was such an awesome Idea that you became all giddy again, you really lucked out with your Friend, didn't you? The Land was wanted by nobody, and with Marie's Range and so little in the way of Life around, House Lannister could use this little Spot in nowhere to support pretty much any number of Livestock the Armies of the Rock could possibly request.