MAR 23 Tuesday.

I slowly move my knife along the last ink-drawn line to carve out a small piece of oak wood. I've split my time over the past two weeks finishing the last of my work with Blaz and making a new magical quill for a certain pink princess.

She sent me a letter one week ago with a good quality emerald that I thought I was going to have to find myself, but it saved me some time and effort so I decided to just focus on making this quill and it's ink well with the emerald so I can focus on other things after. It's a very clean and good quality emerald that's four inches cubed in size and works perfectly for this project.

The design we decided to make was a little more interesting, White Oak with Black Palm Tree engravings. On all six sides, I started with a simple cover of White Oak and then I cut out a heart on each side except the bottom and top. Then I added the roses.

Large amounts of roses and rose stems with thorns. The heart just goes all the way through the wood so you can see the emerald inside while the rose engravings only go halfway through the White Oak and fill the space with matching pieces of Black Palm Tree wood that strike a large contrast with the White Oak.

All in all, it looks like a white box with a green heart on each side and wooden black roses crawling along the sides. Honestly, I love the design and I might steal the theme for myself. I placed the last piece of black wood into its proper place and fused the woods together with a little life magic so it all acted like one piece of solid wood, and with that, the quill was done.

The spell work is already done so I just slotted the emerald in and activated it before placing it to the side with the quill, I still need to test it before work so I passed the short time by going over some notes and thoughts. Over the past two weeks, I decided to mess around with a plant I got a little while back, the Fire Blossom Tree.

I mainly wanted to do the most obvious test I could think of, setting it on fire, I quickly learned that the fireproofing of the tree is not as simple as expected. Let's start at the beginning, like most trees the Fire Blossom Tree has three main parts to its trunk, the bark, the newer inner wood, and the older core wood.

The bark and the inner wood seem the most fire resistant as even a powerful several inches wide Candle Flame spell took a few minutes to burn half an inch of material and it refused to catch fire at all. Hotter and more magical flames will probably do a lot more but it is very impressive for wood.

But the core wood is different, it was still fire resistant but that seemed to express itself in a different way. It does burn and light on fire after a few quick moments of being exposed to an open flame, but then it just keeps burning. I did these tests on one-inch thick slabs of both the core wood and the inner wood with bark on it.

The core wood lit on fire and then took eight hours to burn a hole through the slab and even then most of it was still burnable, the Fire Blossom Tree's fire resistance seems to massively extend the burning process of the wood. I think when the wood becomes less useful for blocking fire the resistance effect lessons enough to cause this slow-burning result.

The core wood also seems to contain a higher amount of the tree's sap which makes it relatively easy to light on fire but also extends the burning time even more. It was an interesting effect so I ran a second test in the core wood, I took a five-inch cube and lit it on all six sides to burn.

It lasted a day plus a few hours more before it stopped producing flame, and the leftover coals stayed glowing and warm for six more hours after that. It's simply ridiculous and might be something I can work with, for now, though it's just useful for sustained fires.

Now I should mention some more news, the frost-resistant carrots, which I have nicknamed Frost Carrots have been finished. They ended up taking longer than I would have liked because of the warmer weather, but it is now done and a large amount of seeds were delivered straight to Celestia a week ago, I really am finishing up on a lot of projects this month.

Those will take a while to grow and mass produce more seeds to distribute, and that gives me some time to ready myself for the mail I'll be getting. After a lot of thought, I decided to just release my plants under the alias I already have, even if there are going to be some inevitable problems.

I think it's still a better option than making another identity. My reasoning is basic, I currently have and am building a massive web of lies and secrets by having one fake identity, adding another to the mix just ups the chances of something going wrong and everything spiraling out of my control.

The more layers and things I add the worse it will get, so even if my singular alias comes under more extreme scrutiny I think it's going to be easier to manage than two different aliases at once. Moving past that tangent though, the Frost Carrot seeds should be distributed in six months or so.

Now to move on to the next thing I've worked on this month, the Fire Starter project is finished and complete, it just needs to be sent to Celestia now and I'll be sending Cadance's gift with it. I finish checking over the new quill and write a few things to make sure it's working correctly before taking it with me along with several papers and leaving my workroom to find Entropy.

I walk into the main room but don't see her on her perch or anywhere else in the room, I check both the bathroom and my bedroom but can't seem to find her. I sigh and huff, "Breakfast time!" I shout a little and less than a second later Entropy dashes out of the shadow my Iron Oak casts on the floor from the morning sunlight, and Entropy looks up at me expectantly.

Over the past few days Entropy has learned the art of stealth napping, she picks a shadow and just falls asleep inside it, apparently she prefers napping inside a shadow and it's made it hard to find her sometimes. "This is for Celestia, then you get breakfast, now get going." I encourage her but make my demands clear as she looks at the package.

I chuckle as a moment later she and the package are gone in a mist of shadows. I smile and start on some lunch for us, which actually brings something else to mind that I need to fix soon. Entropy is once again hitting the point where we need to up the distance she teleports, at this point it's three round trips to Gaia's Eden and back.

Well, there's actually another problem I should mention first. Entropy seems to finally be hitting some form of a limit on her ability to teleport after more than two years of training. She's not hit that limit yet but I noticed that it's taking longer to increase the distance she can teleport.

I think she'll still be able to improve much more but it will take much more time than before and it's going to hit the point of not being worth it at some point down the road. For now, though I need a new place for us to teleport to, and like everything I do that requires some thought and planning.

I stop my thoughts as Entropy returns and jumps on the counter as I cut up some Red Root. "Food! Happy!" A new word she's taken a liking to, that also reminds me of her speech training. She's still learning new words and improving, but she is stubborn like me and still refuses to string more than two words or three together. "Give?" She caws while looking at the meat I'm cutting up hungrily.

I smile. "No, I need to actually cook it first, now you go sit down and wait," I ordered while keeping my smile.

She ruffles her feathers for a moment. "Wait. Bad!" I give her a more stern look and she backs up a little. "Fine... Wait." She flies off as I laugh, and she just watches me impatiently with a glare from atop her perch.

"Ya, ya, I'm the mean one, need I remind you about the last fight you had with Philomena?" She lost that particular fight, badly. I smiled as she ruffled her feathers again.

"Mean!" She caws back as I laugh more and leave her be to focus on cooking. A pan of diced fish and a few fried Red Root with plenty of seasonings from my growing collection. It's nice to be able to harvest everything I need from my own herb gardens when I need it.

After we eat lunch Entropy merges into some random shadow as I leave my apartment to get to work, I haven't been late yet and I'm not breaking my streak now. The walk is nice and a short while later I look up and glance at the tall library as I walk through the main doors to start yet another day.

I've finished the last of my work with Blaz so it's time to start working under Daisy, and as I've thought about this something else popped into my head. What do I want to do next year? My birthday is close and next year around this time I'll be an adult and my contract will be done.

I agreed to work at the library until I turned fifteen and it makes me wonder what I'll do when that time is up. I could just stay here, but that's looking less desirable with time. I originally picked this job because it let me stay low key and gave me easy access to knowledge.

But I've mostly stopped caring about canon and this job doesn't help me hide that much anymore. I have more money than I'd ever need, and I don't give a shit about rising the ranks of the library or any form of a career. So what do I do? Should I just walk away?

A part of me would love that, as much as I like the job it takes up a lot of my time and I could do so much with that time. But my friends also work here and I'd see them much less if I did that, so I'm on the fence right now and haven't really made up my mind, the good news is I have a year to think about it.

Small N.S.F.W begins here.

I stop at Daisy's office and decide to not knock and just open the door, which I quickly regret. Daisy is sorting through some cabinet in the back of the room and is bending over to get a closer look, and that means I get a face full of her backside as her tail sways a little to the side.

Instantly I feel my blush overwhelm my face and I quickly turn my face away from the sight of my friend's uncovered privates, while my sheath tries to move as my blood rushes downwards. I just drop down quickly onto the carpeted floor as my cock tries to spring loose a little, while I'm trying my best to get some control over my body and Daisy turns around confused at the noise.

She sees me lying down embarrassed and raises a brow. "Shade? Ummm, you ok there?" She asks before getting a better look at my face, and I can see the exact moment that she figures it out which only makes me blush deepen. I feel my sheath start to move more at the attention and take several deep breaths before looking at her with clear embarrassment.

When she figures it out she just laughs for a few moments. "OH! You poor colt! I remember that age, it was a complete disaster." She laughs more as my blush comes back right when it was lessening some. At least she's not mad, but it's still not pleasant to have it so bluntly pointed out.

Thankfully she gives me a few moments to calm down as my member returns to where it should be and I get my mind off of certain thoughts. After a minute or two though she speaks up again and gives me a small smile and a nod for a greeting.

Small N.S.F.W ends here.

"You're on time, so that's a good start. Now stop sitting there, you can be embarrassed later. It's not like it's anything I haven't seen, you're far from the first colt or stallion to work with me." I think she is trying to comfort me, but it really doesn't help me, I forget how blunt and calm ponies can be about this sort of thing.

I jerkily nod after a moment and take another deep breath before standing up again. "Sure... And, sorry about that." I apologize quietly but she just waves it off and points to another desk that's been set up in her office.

"Not needed. Now get over here, we have a lot to go through today." I nod again and look around the rearranged office space. In the middle is still Daisy's desk while the left and back walls are lined with wooden file cabinets. The right side now has seven cabinets and a smaller desk that is up against the wall, with the desk facing the front of the room.

I set up what few things I took from my last work desk, two notebooks to write things in, and a small potted cactus that I decided would be a nice addition. The atmosphere is a little awkward for me but Daisy doesn't seem to care in the slightest, "Ok, so, let's start with the basics." She says happily as I focus on learning and try to keep my mind off of any thoughts about my friend.

"I need you to get used to where everything is, and I'll be honest I'm not the best at that." That is something I already knew about from Blaz, apparently, Daisy is the type to work in an organized mess, whatever that means. "So for now just look around until you find the cabinet with schedules and try to get used to it. When you find them, bring me the newest one, I still need to make new ones for the cleaning crew."

I nod again and finally speak up. "Sure, is that all just in one cabinet?" She nods, "Ok, give me a bit to find it and I'll see just how much Blaz exaggerated your sorting. It can't be that bad right?" I joke a little at her expense, but she just looks a little embarrassed at that, more embarrassed than what just happened a few minutes ago. "Right?"

It took Me FIFTEEN minutes! To find the single specific cabinet with the right documents, and even when I found them the documents were just in a loose stack! Who does that? ALL the cabinets were like that, WHY?! After a lot of frustration, I dump the documents on Daisy's desk. "Please tell me this is just you messing with me." I give her a slightly pleading look.

She again looks a little embarrassed. "It's never been a problem for me, I just sort of... Remember? Where everything is. You'll get used to it." She waves it off as I give her a deadpan stare that lingers for several seconds.

"Daisy?" She looks back at me. "You're not teaching me anything until I sort this out, and that's not up for discussion. Now start telling me how these need to be separated, and if you just tell me it's fine as is, I will dye you pink." I threaten her a little when she gives me a smile that I don't like.

She drops the smile and sighs. "Fine, but if you do that I will make it your responsibility to keep it organized." She demands back trying to dissuade me.

I don't give that demand a second thought. "Deal! Now talk." I demand and smile when she gives me an annoyed look in return.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D
Current year is 994

Just some projects being finished in this one.