APR 30 Friday.

I look through another document and pass it to Daisy after a moment. "I think this one is wrong, what do you think?"

She looks it over and nods after a few moments. "Good eye, this is not the right form, do you see the page stamp at the top?" I look over it from a distance and nod after a moment. "Just find the right form and copy everything over." I nod again and do just that.

I'm starting to get better at spotting things like that and learning what needs to be signed and why. It's still slow and tedious but I surprisingly like the job so far, but I still haven't done much of the talking to ponies part of this job. Right now I'm basically just Daisy's secretary.

I take notes and sort all the paperwork, and I also help out with a bunch of smaller things like scheduling conflicts. Sometimes a pony requests time off and that conflicts with others so that's where we step in to smooth things out. Still, I leave all the talking to Daisy, but I don't think I can avoid that forever.

Time ticks by slowly as we work and I let my mind wander and think. I had another meeting with Avalon, and it went like normal, not much to really say about it. We just worked on finding the right runes and also did a little bit of basic spell design and structure.

He's getting there, slowly but surely, in his defense, he's never done anything like this before. Beyond that meeting and my work, I've been training everything that I normally do, my space magic, my plant magic, and all the other things. But let's start with my newest plant, the Copper Lily.

After my first success, I've grown one more flower and a few more seed pods, each pod has a dozen seeds so I have plenty now. I didn't really have anything to do with the copper flower and decided to just use it as a decoration at the pavilion, it now rests on the fake stump. I've also made several other changes to the pavilion.

First I added six Moon Glow Vines, one on each support, they grow up to the roof before hanging down in several places. Next, I added a railing in between the supports, they are made from the same White Oak as the floor. I also added a large carpet to one half of the floor along with a few cushions and pillows for seating.

I've even started making a project that will take a week or two more, the Gold Oak dust collection ward, and just like that I have once again made a horrible name for something. I've started working on all the math needed, but as I mentioned before all it really needs is math work so once that's done I should be good to go.

I stop my work as Daisy stands up and drops her quill once the clock hits five. "We're done for the day, time to head home, see you Monday." She's much more upbeat about leaving than she normally is, she often stays behind a little to work on a few things but she seems excited to leave.

I raise a brow as she grabs her things. "And where are you off to in such a rush?" I ask with a joking smile and also gather anything I need.

She smiles widely and looks at me. "If you must know-"

I cut her off with a cheeky smile. "I must." She stops and rolls her eyes at me.

"I have a date to get to, now get going, I have nothing more for you to work on today anyway." She says the first part with a slightly teasing tone and pokes me with a hoof before walking off. :Huh, good for her: I'll have to demand to meet this stallion sometime, or does she like mares?

I don't follow her out of the library and instead head into the labyrinth of bookshelves, while looking for books I remind myself of the reason I'm here looking through books. It requires a good amount of explanation.

I've been practicing with my space magic for a while now, and beyond training my control I mostly train two abilities and a third that's a combination of both. Spatial Freezing, this lets me hold space still and keep it from reacting with other spatial effects and phenomena.

Space Bending, this is self-explanatory and is used as a base for most other space abilities I have. The newly named Spatial Fusing, is the ability to bend space in a specific way and snap it back to fuse two materials on a fundamental level. Then I can combine Spatial Fusing and Spatial Freezing to create new materials without breaking them from Spatial Rebound, shortened to just Rebound.

I also thought of training myself to control the Rebound, but that is very difficult and honestly, I don't want to spread myself too thin. I've still been practicing with Spatial Fusing and controlling the Rebound with Spatial Freezing, but all of this is just context.

I want to try Fusing more types of materials, but I need to find the right kind OF materials to work with. One of my first thoughts was gems, in theory, if I combined two gems the result would be an even denser gem that might be better at holding magic and have a higher magical capacity overall, but there are several problems with that idea.

First, the result is unproven, because as far as I know nopony has ever tried to make a gem denser, so I'm not even sure if the effect would be positive. The second problem is much worse though, gems are crystalline structures that would need to be lined up to fuse properly.

On top of lining them up, gems are very susceptible to internal forces and pressure, the tiny amounts of damage that the wood would be able to withstand could shatter a gem. That means I'd need to prevent all damage and that means I need to improve my mastery of Spatial Freezing.

So it's still outside of my reach right now, but Fusing metal might not be. Metal still has internal structures but they are far more malleable and can literally bend more, it is much more durable and can handle the stress of Spatial Fusing much better than wood or gems, and if I use Spatial Freezing I won't have to account for Rebound. That's why right now I'm going to try and research metals a little.

As I walk through different sections of the library I pick out two books on metals and metal alloys along with a medical textbook. I still learn healing, but it really is a massive time sink, even after two years I still haven't really reached a point where I can use some of the more advanced healing spells safely.

I could still learn them, but I honestly don't have much of a use right now and if anything goes wrong I have no idea what to do, so I'll continue to learn about the more mundane healing methods. I find a spot to sit and start working my way through the books slowly, it turns out that metallurgy is not as simple as you'd think.

Lists of different metals and alloys with different properties and uses, I think I'm going to need to check these two books out and read them some more. But for now, I think I have a good idea of metal to start with, bronze, it's not as strong as other alloys but it will show me if Spatial Fusing can be used to create alloys.

Bronze is a commonly used metal and is also easy to make, you only need tin and copper, that also brings me to a different idea, alloys. In theory, alloys are just different metals combined together, and presuming they don't need an added element beyond the metals themselves Spatial Fusing should make an alloy.

But I'm honestly not sure, it might work or something else could happen so I'll have to test that. After some more reading, I decided to buy some more copper and some tin in hopes of making some bronze. I move the two metallurgy books to the side and focus on the medical textbook.

This one is about Griffon wing bones and how to treat broken ones, it proves to be a dry and dense read but by the end, I learn a few things and place the book back on its shelf before leaving the library as the sun sets. I spent longer reading than I intended so I'll have to buy the metal tomorrow.

My shadow whistles a tune as I silently walk down the street heading home yet again.

time skip

MAY 1 Saturday.

I move my cloak hood over my head more as rain pours around me, even with the rain though many ponies are using the weekend to shop and do other chores throughout the city.

I stop outside of a large building, the headquarters of one of the largest blacksmithing guilds in Equestria. The Rusted Hammers, are an odd name but pretty standard for ponies. The building is mostly cobblestone walls that are painted a light blue, I can also see several tall smoke chimney's further back where the forges probably are.

I watch a wooden sign swing in the rain and enter the double doors a moment later, the inside is loud and busy. The back wall has a long counter with ponies working behind it and serving lines of waiting ponies. The left wall has some places to sit and wait while the right has a few wooden tables and a large board with many pieces of paper on it.

In a way, this place reminds me of the classic adventurers guild, and that comparison is not totally inaccurate. The tables on the right are for only guild members where they can look over and read the many pages on the large board. All those pages hold information on many different smithing jobs the guild members can take on and fulfill.

From what I know most of the members are actually mostly a mix of freelance contractors and hobbyists looking to earn a little side income. The guild doesn't actually have that many smiths that work for them, they mostly just take and gather requests for jobs and organize the payment along with making sure whoever takes the job can actually complete it, they also rent out forges for their members and others to use.

The system seems a little over complicated to me, but they must have it for a reason. Most of the ponies at the counter are busy, it is a very large and well-known guild so even on a day like this they are busy. I notice the line to the far side is mostly empty, it's right next to a staff door so most seem to be avoiding the high-traffic area.

I'm not here for anything complex so I just wait in the short line and a few minutes later I'm at the front and face to face with a Hippogriff stallion. Hippogriffs are rare, even as the most common crossbreed between sentient races in Equestria they are not the most common sight. I give them a nod of greeting and pass them a single piece of paper with a simple order. "How much for this?" I ask bluntly.

They pick up the list and read through it. My order is for twenty pieces of copper in small one-inch cubes, and the same amount in tin. They nod after a moment. "It will cost a decent amount, but we have cubes like this for other things so we can get it to you right away, you'll have to pay ten percent up front." He answers uninterestedly.

I nod and he passes me a piece of paper to fill out while I pass him ten percent of the amount on the paper before filling it out, the good thing about doing big transactions in Canterlot is my bank is close enough that I can just give them some information and the bank will pay them. I have to wait twenty minutes but I finally get my metal cubes.

I pack them away and start my long walk home through the pouring rain. Yesterday I found another problem with Fusing metals, they are different sizes, and that complicates the process. I've not mastered Spatial Fusing in any way and I'm not sure how I'd evenly Fuse two things that are different sizes to create an alloy that is an uneven mix of two metals like normal bronze. So the best I can do is make a fifty-fifty split alloy as a test. It won't be of any use but it will prove if it is possible.

I don't spend long at my apartment, I just gather a few things before leaving again for Gaia's Eden. Entropy decides to land us inside my shack as the rain falls outside, "Thanks girl, want to stay here?" She looks out the window before flying up to her perch and moving her head under her wing for a nap. I smile, "I'll take that as a yes then."

I leave her to her rest and step outside into the rain again, this time of year is always so wet. I don't really have a good place to do this in the rain so I walk over to the pavilion and start to set things up.

The pavilion could be damaged so I set up the metals in the rain a dozen feet off from the edge of the pavilion and started to cheerfully manipulate space. I go slow and move the two pieces of metal next to each other before forming a spatial fold and bending the space around them.

I've learned to get a rough feel for Spatial Fusing and I know the rough amount of space I need to bend and how much I need to bend it to completely fuse an inch of material. I bend the space and watch as the rainfall is also distorted, and right before it Rebounds I freeze the space.

Trying to move specific things in frozen space is still very hard for me so it takes time to move the single cube out of the small amount of frozen space. In the end, I have just enough time to get the cube out and move it away before I run low on magic, and the space Rebounds with a loud snapping noise as the grass is flattened and some even ripped out of the ground while the small shockwave pushes the rain back in every direction.

I've done this a few times with wood cubes of the same size as practice and at my current skill I can just barely Fuse two one-inch wide cubes together, but that practice has paid off. The dull bronze metal cube has a silvery sheen and color to it, it matches the description for the high tin bronze alloy I read about. It's an alloy that is both brittle and tarnishes quickly, but that's not important, what's important is that it worked.

I smile at the cube but then I notice many small round holes, it seems some water also got fused into the metal. That mistake on my part probably ruined this metal, but I still smile and celebrate internally the success of my experiment and the proving of my theory.

I look down at the rest of my metal cubes, I will keep experimenting but the rain will just mess it up more and I'm not doing this under the pavilion. So for the time being I take out my sketchbook and start to draw the Gold Oak as it stands defiant in the pouring rain.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :}
Current year is 994

A smaller chapter with some worldbuilding. Also, I am not a metallurgist and I have no idea how actually alloying works. I did try and make it somewhat accurate but at some point I do have to just say. fuck it, it's magic.