With tremendous effort, and Ramus’ suddenly enhanced interest (seeing a way out from Larry’s ministrations AND a chance to practice his trade), they were able to start building a small glass blowing facility. As with much of her progress, it had to start out small. Oddly, Ramus actually had brought some of his equipment to put to use. Mainly a long metal tube and a small stand for using it on. Building the furnace itself proved a challenge, as did ventilation, but they were able to make use of another chunk of the mine that didn’t have any other use at the moment. Bit by bit they managed to make a heating area to mix together sand and wood ash heated by the coal they mined to start working small quantities of the glass.

When Len had broached the idea of making panes of glass, Ramus had warmed to the idea fairly quickly. He had a bit of experience in that department and looked forward to the chance to make it again. It was a difficult task, since there really wasn’t anyone available with the skill to be helpful to him, but once he got his area set up, he was able to begin making smallish cylinders of blown glass.

The first time she saw him making one, she asked him what the heck he was doing. He just winked at her, took out a cutting tool, and scored the cylinder lengthwise. He then took it to the second furnace he’d had constructed, one with a smaller fire, and placed the cylinder on a rack. From there, he took two rods and meticulously folded the cylinder out to make a proper pane of hand-blown glass. She decided not to question the artisan further after that and left him to his task.

It definitely wasn’t all success, though. Well over half of the panes he made shattered due to imperfections or mistakes in the cooling process (and one clumsy stumble from Weaver that almost cost him his head, and resulted in a dozen panes lost in one tragic instant). Still, as Ramus got more practiced at the task, the success to failure ratio improved, and even the failures weren’t a large problem, since the glass could just be melted as many times as needed. A week and a half after the delivery of the precious sand, Len was able to make the next move on her plans to turn the Hovel into something resembling a sustainable fortress.

“All right, Marble, I want you to see this,” she said with a grin.

She’d actually insisted that Marble be away for the building because she wanted the surprise to catch her off guard. It wasn’t a massive structure, barely six feet wide and just under six feet tall, but it was a totally enclosed house of glass, held together by solid wood paneling that had been assembled with clumsy but effective workmanship. Marble stared at it in confusion.

“What… is this?” she asked, somewhat warily.

“A greenhouse!” Len replied, giddy with herself. “Let’s go inside.

It was cramped with the two of them in there and they’d had to duck to cross the threshold, but once inside, they were able to stand up facing each other. The dirt itself was still frozen solid, but the air itself had a pleasant warmth to it that Len hadn’t been able to experience while the sun was in view since she’d gotten here, and Marble looked genuinely shocked.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing, how’d you come up with it?”

“Oh, they’re pretty common back where I’m from,” she said with a grin. “You’ve been here your whole life, haven’t you? There are a whole lot of cool things that folks have come up with. I mean, this one’s not perfect. Frankly, it’s more of a proof of concept than anything, but I thought you might like to have it to try out while we work towards building a better one. Hopefully it can keep your plants alive at least a little longer, maybe make the whole process a bit easier on you?”

“It will,” said Marble, still a bit in shock. “The ground will still freeze over time, but this might last a bit longer. Perhaps we can come up with something to slow that further.”

Len could see wheels spinning in the young Orc’s head as she pondered what this new situation meant for her garden. It was always exciting to see what someone could do with new information that was presented to them. For the moment, though, she bade her goodbyes. She’d gotten what she wanted out of this task, and hopefully Marble would be able to take it from here. With instructions to bring any further thoughts on the matter to her directly, Len headed into the mine to give Ramus the good news.

The interior of the mine was coming along well. They were working on reinforcing areas and hollowing out sections of cave that could be used for housing, storage, and crafting duties that weren’t well suited for the above ground placement. They now had a crew of six miners in total, counting the still-surly Weaver, and the work went a bit more smoothly with that number of hands. The daily hauls hadn’t exactly risen exponentially, they still had large amounts of junk stone to haul away, but they were still producing quite a bit more than they had been.

As promised, Fenris had returned with another shipment of goods. Mostly smaller foodstuffs, some berries, a couple bits of baked goods. He’d also arrived with some cooking tools that Cookie had been happy to snatch up. They’d been able to send him away with a decent haul of iron ore while not completely depleting their stockpile this time. It was a good exchange all around and Len had been pleased with the results.

All in all, Len was really starting to believe that they had a chance with this place. Moe and Larry had actually been fairly successful at bringing the various Orcs into something resembling discipline. The only one who didn’t seem particularly interested in changing his routine was Valkar, who mostly stuck to the job of watching the gate. She didn’t rush to change his mind on that, though she somewhat wondered if there was any point.

The first problem arose on the day that Kila and Curly were expected to return. Len woke up early, as she’d been tending to lately, and wandered outside to get the blood flowing. Marble’s little greenhouse had collapsed, the glass panels shattered to pieces and the tender crops it had kept safe were crushed. Either something had given out in the construction, or they’d just had a particularly strong wind that night (though she kind of figured that she’d have woken up if it had been that loud), but the work up to that point was wiped away, leaving nothing but a tedious work of picking up the pieces. Larry and his team took care of that, gathering up what they could to return to Ramus’ workshop.

It was discouraging, but not a complete defeat, so Len did her best to brush it off. Even worse, though, it turned out that the panes that had been set aside for the next project had also fallen over in their storage. It had been decided to avoid doing anything with them until they had enough to take the next construction step, and they’d actually started to have a decent stockpile. Now? All of that had been ruined as well. This part was tougher to shrug off as bad luck and Len was beginning to worry that that bad fortune Pitch had mentioned was starting to rear its ugly head.

When Kila did arrive, nearer to evening, she was greeted with the sight of an angrily pacing Lenore Wraithwhisper.

“Kila! You’re here!” Len exclaimed. “Fantastic! It’s good to have someone else that I know I can trust. You would not believe the amount of shit that I’ve had to deal with since we parted ways.”

Kilareth Bloodsipper regarded her friend with a bit of a smirk. Len hadn’t bothered to clean herself up since dealing with the initial challenges of the day and looked a downright mess. More than that, she wore her frustration on her sleeve and looked about ready to strangle something. To her credit, Kila kept her voice even when she responded.

“I’m just glad to be here. I mean, old Kenar didn’t much care for having his star pupil snatched out from under him, but I’m not very well gonna leave my oldest friend in the lurch.”

Kila was the only living soul that Len had told about her unfortunate circumstances as a hitchhiker in someone else’s life. That she had, in fact, somehow assumed the life of Kila’s actual friend Lenore Wraithwhisper through some bizarre event that she still didn’t understand. Somehow, this amazing woman had not only accepted it as truth, but had devoted herself fully to the task of getting Len back to her real life without any complaints. She was Len’s only real friend in this strange world and it was an immense relief to have her back, even if it’d be a lot harder to mooch food money off of her here at the Hovel.

“Thank you,” Len said simply. “So anyway, I’m pretty sure that someone here is actively trying to sabotage my efforts here. We need to track them down and put an end to it one way or another.”

“Cool, I’m always up for a good witch hunt,” said Kila with a grin.