“What in the gods’ names happened here?” Amez exclaimed.

Rum smiled, gesturing at the new HUGE bed taking up practically all available space in Amez’s shop backroom. “You mean this thing? Let’s just say I made a new friend, and that friend wanted to help me out with a little gift.”

“A little gift?” Amez raised his eyebrows. “That thing is by no means little. And for a gift, it looks horribly expensive.”

“I helped him out, and well, he was exceedinly grateful. What more can I say?”

“What about: who is this guy?” Amez interrogated.

“Mmm. It’s difficult to explain, so I’d rather just keep it a secret, if possible.”

“Not even I own a bed like that.” Amez shook his head at the humongous piece of comfort. “Although now that I’ve seen it, I kinda want to get one.”

“They sell them at Gnomiture” Rum shrugged. “Easy to get, if you got a good bit of money.”

Amez put a hand to his face, still stunned by Rum’s new luxury. “I have got to give them a visit it seems.” The little brother, entranced by sight before him, stood still for a few more seconds, all thought captured by the bed. Eventually, he shook his head lightly, trying to shake off his trance. After a few more lingering seconds, the younger brother managed to take his eyes off the thing, and went back into his workshop. Rum followed, finding the mecha-gnome customer from yesterday splayed on the board in the same position as last time, ready for the finishing touches of his body enchantment.

“What’s got your face so interested?” The little man asked as Amez sat next to him, starting to pick up his tools.

“I’m just stunned that now my barely employed big brother, sleeps better than me. And also, I just found out that I need to make a trip to Gnomiture soon.”

“Aaah” the gnome replied, “then you may want to do that soon though. Heard this morning that many of their seller furniture broke down over the night. A few of them have even been giving away furniture for next to nothing to the morning customers. One guy I saw on the street on the way here, even claimed he got a whole table for free!”

“What? Really!?” Amez’ already astonished face took on another wave of astonishment, although this new surprised expression soon washed away, as he forcibly normalized his expression, his practiced mind rather wanting to concentrate on the serious craft in front of him. “I’ll have to visit the place real soon then.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you they’ll close down today though.” The gnome went on. “If I managed to hear it from some random dwarf on the street, I bet you it won’t be long until Miss Boss catches wind of what’s happening.”

“Miss Boss?” Rum interrupted their conversation. “Who’s Miss Boss?”

“You don’t know Miss Boss!?” This time it was the half-naked mecha-gnomes’ turn to be surprised. “Where have you been for the last few years? Under a rock!?”

“He’s been travelling” Amez explained, eyes focused on the mecha-gnomes’ chest.

“Oh” the mecha-gnome made a face of understanding, “I understand you better then. No, Miss Boss is the owner of Gnomiture. She’s totally transformed the wood industry in Ermos City, over the last few years. Not only that, she’s filthy rich too! Like really, really, REALLY rich. Or so they say” he admitted, his face not quite believing his own words, “they say she’s so rich that, if tomorrow all the properties in Iron City went on sale, she could’ve easily bought a quarter of it all – probably more like a third! That woman is a beast with business. She’s got her own Iron Tower and everything. But she doesn’t invest in property though, not yet at least. Not sure what she’s investing in these days actually. But, if I were to bet: she’s probably aiming for control of all the wood trade in all of Ermos. Felling, sawing, carving, design, nailing, assembling, you name it.” The mecha-gnome smiled almost happily at the thought. Probably proud that mecha-gnomes are making a mark on Ermos, Rum reasoned, finding the smile a little distasteful, as he saw nothing good with a quest for monopolism.

The mage soon left the workshop room, heading back towards the closet – closing the bedroom door on the way. I still haven’t told Amez about the closet. Rum stopped in front of it, massaging his beard in thought. Oh well, the opportunity will probably present itself soon enough.

The wizard walked inside, and found Veish in the big black space, sleeping in her new gold and red triple-sized bed, placed just a few meters from the closet entrance, with a dim magical light sitting on the floor at the end of the bed’s length. The light, along with a few tiny cracks in the closet door, were about the only things keeping the witch from being swallowed up by the great darkness within, and she looked a bit like a set piece, illuminated by a spot light on an otherwise dark stage. Rum appreciated the aesthetic as he stepped up to the bed. Veish, he discovered, had decided to sleep in the middle of it, and this Rum also discovered, that he had to slightly crawl into the bed to reach her. Doing just that, and feeling the soft bed give way under his knees as he sunk into it, he managed to put his hand out and nudge the woman, gently, as a morning wake-up. “Hey Veish, welcome to a new morning. The sun is outside, and ready to greet us!” Veish the witch, quite foreseeably, responded first by merely rolling away, the opposite direction of Rum. Then, she groaned. I’ll give her a couple of minutes, the wizard thought to himself, as he crawled out of the bed, walking towards the closet entrance and stepping outside, returning to the shop bedroom. There, on the other side of it, he found White Rose, standing eerily patient next to the shop’s backdoor. Rum walked around his new humongous bed, and stepped up to the skeleton, ze making no moves whatsoever. Getting close, Rum noticed zes eye-sockets appeared to be fixed on the door’s handle. “You okay, White Rose?” The skeleton took a second to do nothing, before ze turned around. Ze nodded. “Waiting for something?” Ze nodded again. “What are you waiting for?” The skeleton quickly raised a bony finger. First, ze pointed towards the closet, and then, ze gentle pressed a finger into zes wizard daddy. Rum smiled with comprehension. “You’ve been waiting for us to wake up, haven’t you? So we can go outdoors?” In a slow, cute motion, the skeleton once more, nodded.

2-3 minutes passed and Veish eventually managed to emerge from her darkness, stepping over to the ready-and-waiting duo with messed-up hair and a bit of sour morning-face. “Morning.” Rum smiled at her. Veish didn’t smile, not even as the mage initiated their morning routine of magical makeover did she smile, not while Rum threw around spells from “Become Clean”, to “Become Clean Skeleton”, and finally a couple of “Renew Clothes”. For a moment during his last spellcasting, Rum The Mage considered giving White Rose a dose of “Renew Clothes” as well, but the idea made him afraid that the spell would probably mess up zes disguise. He didn’t quite trust the magic, despite its previous shows of brilliance, to know why the skeleton dressed the way ze did, and if the spell messed up too much, they would have to leave White Rose behind. So, he decided not to, and concluded their routine.

The trio of wizard, witch and disguised skeleton stepped out of the building and began walking the street, all 3 now instinctively heading towards The Belly Filler. “I was thinking” Rum said, “that maybe you 2 could go and sit in the university park today, alone. While I go and check out The Vum Tree?”

“Fine” Veish responded. “It’s not like there’s much else to do here, being a prisoner.”

Rum nodded. “You okay teaching White Rose some more?”

Veish made a face of constipated thought. “Fine too, I guess. If you pay of course, and I don’t have to work all day again.”

“Not all day! Not my intention in the least. No, let’s say...” The wizard thought some. “It’s a little before noon now” Rum looked up and above the buildings, and further towards the blue sky, only a few clouds dispersed within that vast open air. “What about until the first mage tower” Rum pointed in the far distance, “has started blocking the sun. You understand what I mean, White Rose?” The wizard directed his attention towards his skeleton. White Rose seemed a little caught unaware when ze suddenly caught zes name being spoken. Ze turned zes head away from a few children playing with a dog in a nearby alley, and looked to zes daddy. Rum pointed up towards the sun. “You’ve noticed how the sun moves, right? How it always rises in the east” Rum made a gesture of sky-crossing movement, “and goes down in the west, every day?” The skeleton took a second to look up at the sun, staring at it, before looking down at zes daddy again. Ze nodded. “Well, I was suggesting to Veish that she would teach you today, and I was thinking she’d do that from the time you arrive in the university park – you know the place with all the books, trees, ponds and green floor – and until the sun has moved.” Rum stepped up to the skeleton, pointing in front of ze into the distance, where the mage towers near Flip University could be seen. “Until it has moved just enough that any of those towers is in front of it, blocking some of the light. You understand?” White Rose looked at the mage towers, looked up at the sun, then down at the mage towers again. Ze did this a couple of times, eventually putting a bony finger up in the air, and as if imagining something, traced the trajectory of the sun across the sky with zes finger. Reaching the end of said trajctory, ze stopped, putting zes hand down. Ze turned to Rum, and nodded. “Good.” Rum returned to Veish. “Is that an okay time for you?”

Now Veish was the one to look up into the sky this time, looking vaguely in the direction of the sun, though she didn’t go as far as to stare at it. White Rose may be able to do that, but not the witch, not human eyes. “It’s okay” she produced a sniff.

The trio parted ways after The Belly Filler. The duo of witch and skeleton gone to play school, while Rum went to The City Forest to visit his other, arborescent spawn.

“Hey!” Rum greeted The Vum Tree after managing to navigate through The City Forest all by himself. “Oh, how big you’ve gotten!” The wizard awed. As most trees tend to do, this one offered no reply, no comment, nor any expression whatsoever recognizing that it had been spoken to. It merely, rather, as trees do, sat there. Roots stuck in the ground, sucking up nourishment at glacial pace. Rum did not care that his words went unheard though, instead, he inspected the thing, noticing how its boughs had grown seriously thick and sturdy now. Their circumferences of the individual boughs had grown to the sizes of especially fat human thighs, with thinner arm-thick branches growing out of them. And from those branches in turn, even smaller, thinner sausage-thick branches rose out in a plenty, decorating the tree from top till mid trunk in a small sea of fresh green leaves. Wonderful, Rum admired, while also noticing that the trees height was now about the same as an average middle class house. That is to say, it was tall, though not so tall as to be spectacular by any standard, except of course for the fact it was just a few days old.

“Hi!” Rum heard behind himself, and turned to see one of The Florists sub-committee members, walking towards him along with another elf woman Rum did not know.

“Hey” Rum responded.

“She’s sure grown mightily, hasn’t she?” The Florist voiced loudly as he approached.

“Sure has.” Rum agreed the obvious.

“So what brings you over today? Another round of fertilizing? Though I don’t see a bucket.”

“No bucket.” Rum shook his head. “Today, I was going to reap what I’ve sown.”

“What!?” The Florist exclaimed next to the wizard. “Already?”

“Yes, no point in waiting as far as I can tell.”

“But she’s so young.” The Florist protested.

“Why does that matter?” Rum raised an eyebrow.

“Well. I don’t know, it just seems so strange. We’ve just made her, and she’s already going to be put to use, not a moment of her life to herself?”

“What life would a tree need?” Rum added another eyebrow raised.

“Any life.” The elf answered as if it was a matter of fact. “What do you intend to do to her? You’re not going to fell her, are you? That would be most terrible.”

Rum looked up at the tree, then down at the elf, then up at the tree again, eyebrows continually raised. “I have no idea what you’re on about. But no, I’m not going to cut her down. Calling it her by the way is kinda strange. No, I’m just going for a small branch, to try some wandcrafting.”

“Oh, well, that will be fine I suppose. No, but I call her her, because she has the soul of a woman, thus much we elves can sense, and because every tree has life of their own. A life that most normal people, like you, even most green-elves: will never get to know.” The elf looked at the tree for a moment with a bit of thought and care in his eyes. “It is perhaps, because trees don’t live like us 2-legged people. Their lives are very different, and so almost nobody recognizes their existence. Endlessly patient, they have little to say, little to tell us, but: they do speak. Many of us green-elves know at least a little bit of woodspeak. However, in almost every case, only the speak-ing part of woodspeak is know. But woodspeak also has a listening part, one which very few know.” The elf man shook his head, perhaps disappointed in his own people. “If we listen, very carefully, we may sometimes hear the trees talk back to us. Words of magic they are, like little words for the world, like tiny little spells, but not just incantations. They are like sentences, with a meaning you can only know in your heart, not your mind.” The sub-committee member touched his chest, and looked at the tree with new pitiful eyes. “I’m sure” the elf turned and stared into Rum’s eyes, “that if I lay down in the grass now, and listened carefully while you fetch your piece of wood, I would hear the tree’s magic, telling a sad story of pain; of loss. A magical call for help, perhaps. Or some way to overcome its trauma.”

Rum’s mouth hang open for a second. “If what you say is true, then I’m going to have a really difficult time taking that branch.” Rum suddenly looked at the tree with a new feeling of unease.

“Yeah. Well. If you want my help, I could soothe the tree for you, make its loss forgetable and distant. That’s one of the things we Florists do. As someone who knows how to not just speak, but also listen to the forest. It’s at the same time a power for our minds, and an obligation for our hearts.”

“Uh, yeah, that would be very helpful.” Rum breathed a little sigh of relief. He wasn’t quite getting over what he’d just been told, but the offer for help made him feel a little better, and a little more able to carry out the objective he set for himself today.

“Take this” the elf fished into his robe pocket and fetched out one of those small knives of theirs. “Cut that branch over there” the elf pointed, “when I say so.” The elf stepped over to near the tree’s trunk, then sat down next to it, cross-legged and eyes closed. The elf began to mumble, and Rum’s magic senses started to tingle with what he knew to be magic, vibrating across the air around them.

A couple of hours later, Rum arrived home, before the witch and skeleton. Within the tight space still left available in bedroom after the humongous bed had been installed, he started working his new wood with some of Amez’ tools, thinking about what it should be.

“How should I shape you?” He let his fingers feel the length of the wood, inspecting it, day-dreaming all over it. “What powers should I bestow upon you, youngling?” He thought about his magic, about his spells, about what would constitute a great wand. In front of him lay a book of wandcraft. He let his fingers shift through the pages. “How do I make you awesome?”