Softly whistling to myself, I opened up the space beneath the giant tree. There was an almost impossible warmth to the earth here, it was teeming with vitality and power, making me wonder if I could use some of that power for my own purposes. Images painted by the words of a brilliant writer, later adapted into excellent movies, flittered through my mind, describing a wonderful hole in the ground, filled with warmth, excellent food and laughter, a hobbit hole. While I doubted I could get the same effect, my current magic was a little too limited for that, I could get the next best thing. I could make this hole of ours comfortable, the earth was already filled with warmth and hopefully, Luna could provide the laughter. Maybe that would be enough to give us a comfortable home for the time we spent exploring the forest, before moving on once more, letting the road teach us the ways of the world.

Changing the ground before me was a fascinating experience. The more earth I moved, the more I felt the stress coming from above shift, making me realise that I couldn’t just continue on willy-nilly. Instead, I needed to focus on those stresses caused by the weight above and make sure that they were transmitted down, deeper into the earth, otherwise, the tree above would fall and destroy the wonderful hole I was digging. That alone would be annoying, but if it happened while I, or anyone in my group, was inside the hole, it would be outright bad.

But there was a certain feel to it, making me think that the ground wanted to move in certain directions and I had to make sure those vectors were shored up and supported so that the load could easily traverse them without hindrance. What’s more, I could faintly feel the strong roots spread throughout the hill I was digging into and those roots offered some interesting options, mostly by keeping the earth clumped together and distributing the load from above in ways the ground normally couldn’t.

Thus, arches formed and were, at first, supported by magic until the continued application of Earth Magic turned the compressed dirt into something else, it wasn’t quite rock but it wasn’t far from it. Following my instincts and searching for stability, I started to include some Crystal Magic and even drew on my experience with Ice Magic to guide me. While I wasn’t about to freeze parts of the soil, working with Ice was incredibly similar to working with other crystals, to the point that I started to wonder if I could somehow combine the two different types of magic. Or that maybe Ice Magic was a unique sub-type of Crystal Magic, I couldn’t be sure about that but it was a fascinating idea. Either way, I could soon see thin lattices of crystals form within the compressed earth, taking the load from above and even integrating into the tree roots, stabilising things even further.

It was an utterly fascinating sensation, both from a visual standpoint, the tiny, glimmering lattices almost looked like a starry sky, and from a structural standpoint. The sensation of interconnected stability gave me something new to think about, especially when I noticed that there was a tiny bit of magical feedback flowing within the roots of the giant trees above as if the trees were making sure that their foundation wouldn’t crumble. It made me wonder if I could actively provoke certain types of feedback in an attempt to make our hole more comfortable. Maybe induce the tree roots to release some energy as light or warmth, in exchange for nourishment that the tree normally wouldn’t get? Could something like this work, or was I trying to assign too much agency to a block of wood? I wasn’t sure, but given that the tree had its own magic, I wasn’t about to discard any ideas, magic made far too many wild ideas completely plausible.

My thoughts were interrupted by noise approaching my position. After quickly making sure that the hole wouldn’t collapse the moment I stopped channelling my magic, I jumped up, running up the tree with ease that made me want to chuckle. Disappearing into the crown was a trifle and a bit of Darkness magic turned me into a shadow between the thin needles.

Only to realise that the whole thing hadn’t been necessary. The noise was made by a large canine, with a smaller humanoid riding on its back, while a second humanoid with a racoon playing shawl around her neck followed behind. In other words, it was the rest of my group, not some dangerous predator, but maybe that was for the best.

With a grin on my face, I let myself fall into the shadows behind me, only to reappear in the shadows behind Lia, causing her to squeak in surprise and jump aside, only to scowl at me when she recognised me. Amusingly, Luna seemed to have noticed my teleport and it looked like Silva had noticed me even before I had teleported, but then, I had only cloaked myself from vision, not from scent or sound, so she could easily find me. Her senses were only second to mine, thanks to some canine traits that greatly boosted her olfactory and auditory senses.

“I’ve started to make us our new home. We didn’t go far but this forest is interesting enough to take a few days to explore, so having a nice place to stay is useful,” I explained, gesturing towards the narrow opening between some of the thicker tree roots. It didn’t look like much, just a narrow crevice that went nowhere, but that was exactly what I had intended, it wasn’t supposed to look inviting. I didn’t want some random critter to decide that it was a nice place to make a burrow, it was just for us. If I had been able to, I would have created some sort of door but the best I could do in that regard would be a door of Ice and that wouldn’t really work with the summer temperatures. I already had to maintain my Ice weapons twice daily, to make sure they didn’t melt away from the heat and I didn’t think a door open to the heat would fare any better.

“Mum, would you mind if I set up a small shrine for the Lady?” Luna asked, her voice somewhere between hesitant and excited as if she was scared to show her desire.

“Of course not, I’d be happy to help if I can. I’m supposed to be the Mother, in addition to your Mother, or have you forgotten that already? Just because I’ve been a little busy doesn’t mean I don’t support your bond the the Lady,” I assured her, giving her a quick hug to make sure she not only heard but felt my support.

“Ok, it’s just that you never went with me when the dogs and I sent our thoughts to her, so…” she shrugged, obviously not sure how to continue. And there wasn’t really a need, I hadn’t gone with her because I thought it was between her and the dogs, that I’d intrude somewhere I wasn’t wanted. Apparently, she had thought I didn’t join them because I had misgivings, and a lack of communication had caused things to fester. Had maybe even been the cause for the dogs to remain behind, instead of joining us, I wasn’t sure.

“No, never. I just thought one thing, you thought another thing and because neither of us explained what we thought to the other, things got confused,” I admitted, promising myself that I’d get better at communicating things to my daughters.

“But that’s for later. Munchkin, why don’t you sit with me and try joining me while I continue preparing our home? It’s fairly fascinating Earth Magic and I think you might be able to get a bit of Life Magic going with the tree you see above our home. The tree has its own powers, subtle and completely different from what I’ve been used to, so you should be able to learn something. Just be careful not to overdo it with your magic, you know that wild growth can cause more harm than anything else,” I suggested to Luna while asking Silva, Lia and Alex to do some scouting of our surroundings, maybe catch some food for our pantry. Before we filled that, I’d have to make sure that the supplies I got from the farm didn’t have any problems, just as a precaution. I doubted Mrs Wu would do that to me, it wouldn’t serve any purpose beyond turning me into a definitive enemy, but a bit of paranoid vigilance hadn’t hurt me yet.

Luna happily complied, sitting down next to me and I could feel her ability to merge her magic with mine reach out, allowing us to work seamlessly together. For now, she couldn’t contribute much but she was learning and getting better all the time. And in turn, I was getting more and more out of it, having Hecate’s chosen Maiden help with spellcasting was truly a blessing.