JUN 5 Saturday.

I slowly walk through the castle with a guard as I'm led to yet another meeting, specifically a meeting with Cadance.

We're having another meeting to work on the love rune, and we're actually getting somewhere now. After going through all the reading material we designed, the runes look, it is a little too complicated to describe in detail, but its base is a simple heart symbol.

Its shape is now done so we need to start work on the runic context, and that is where things get much more complicated. As we pass a large window I leave that thought for later and drag my mind to something more personal, Daisy. Things between us have been... Well, not tense but a little awkward.

We're definitely still friends, that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon, but she's getting to know the other part of my life. She mostly acts the same, but now she's also been asking questions while we're at work. I just cast a sound shield around us every time she does, and she warns me before asking things to let me do it. What I find interesting is that the questions are mundane for the most part.

There have been several I have refused to answer, but a lot of them are small things like my inspiration for, and my thoughts on my inventions. It's kind of fun to talk to her about all this stuff, even if I'm not very clear about a lot of things and have to shut her down sometimes it's not that bad.

I still feel... I don't know, nervous? It's not all-encompassing, but I am having to adjust to talking about this with her, and she's still adjusting to it as well. Beyond that I did make her a new comb, it was easy and not really that interesting but I did it and she seemed to like it.

Overall I'm just glad to still have a friend, even if I have to answer annoying questions at work now. I leave my thoughts again as we arrive at a large door and the guard leaves me alone, I enter a moment later and see Cadance sitting at a table like normal.

I close the door behind me. "Hello again, ready for hours of debating and researching the meaning of slightly different words." I tease her a bit with the work I've dragged her into doing.

She rolls her eyes a bit and motions for me to sit. "Unfortunately yes, are you ready for me to lecture you about the many intricacies of love? Don't worry, I can get Aunty if we need a personal demonstration." She smiles as the thought of that causes me to blush a little.

I lightly glare at her as I place a few stacks of paper on the table. "Cheater. Hhhhh, how has the Fire Starter been doing? Any problems pop up?" I change the subject, I know I won't be winning that verbal sparring match with her, I might be able to tease her but she has a leg up on me.

Her smile falters a little and she gives me a slightly annoyed look. "Beyond all the extra work you gave me? It's been going well, very well in fact. The ease of production and shipping has made it spread much more quickly than anything else you've made."

"It also gave the new trade route with Griffonstone a large boost right at the start. They need fire much more, and with how much we can ship trades on both sides are more than happy. I even got this a few days ago." She takes out an opened letter and passes it to me, I read it quickly.

It's a very formally written letter from King Thelis asking Cadance to send his thanks to Veil Winter for the helpful invention that his people have apparently made great use of. Part of the reason I made the Fire Starter was for trade with Griffonstone, but even then I didn't expect this to go this well.

She smiles lopsidedly. "It seems you have the miraculous ability to gain the appreciation of royalty." She teases me again but keeps it light. "As for problems? None that I'm aware of, there were a few incidences of wildfire. But not more than normally happens from other sources, so overall it's going well."

I nod happily at that. "Good, I would rather not be blamed for a city burning down. Then again, I'd get away with it if I did." I chuckle and Cadance gives me a slightly challenging look.

"I don't think even Aunty could save you then, I'd give you a day at most before you're caught." She jokes at my expense.

I give her the same challenging look in return. "It's not really that hard to hide from the world, just make a spell to form a bubble of air underwater and find a gem strong enough to have it always active. Then you just sit at the bottom of the ocean for a while and relax." I come up with something off the top of my head and voice it out, that probably wouldn't really work but it gets the point across.

She raises a brow and opens her mouth to rebuttal me but seems to come up with nothing. "Huh, I... Actually, I can't think of a reason that wouldn't work right now, I guess we could catch you before that? Hmm, I think I'm starting to see what Aunty said about the Changelings and you." I remember the last talk I had with Celestia about Changelings, it's not a surprise Celestia would share it with Cadance.

I shrug. "I could also just have Entropy take me to a forest and use my life magic to turn it into a deathtrap for anypony that tries to find me. But we're getting off-topic and we have work to do, and your letter said you had some material I needed to read?" I move things along and she gains that smile that scares me.

"Yes, I do! You're going to need to understand love a little better, not too much, but still more than now." I really don't trust the smile she has and try to get out of this quickly.

"Why? Aren't you the one doing that? I'm just here to make sure it works properly for the spell." I defend my position and try to not let whatever this is happen.

She just smiles wider. "We spent weeks reading things you brought, you're not getting out of this regardless of the logic. Now, you're a smart colt that is growing up, and when I was that age I loved romance novels." My eyes widen and my ears pin themselves back as she places several books on the table. "Tell me if you have any questions, I'm more than willing to explain all the tiny details." She offers with a far too cheery tone.

I look at the books. "I think I'd like to go home now."

"Nope!! Too late!" A book is shoved into my hooves and she starts to talk about how the runic context should be worded. I think I have made a horrible mistake.

time skip

JUN 6 Sunday.

I breathe out heavily as I finish my chain of practice swings with my weapons over the uneven and rough terrain, while a complex weave of green magical flows moves right above my coat.

I'm at Gaia's Eden right now training my abilities like always and, over the past several months my sensory training has really paid off. I can walk around on the worst terrain without my sight just fine now, and I can even full-on sprint while blindfolded as long as I'm on roughly flat terrain.

On top of that I'm still getting better at sensing moving objects beyond myself, mostly because Stone really likes throwing things at me, I think it's his hobby. I've also made some progress in my fighting style, it's not massive but over time it's been taking shape slowly and I'm getting better at using it.

The swings have better form and I can put up a decent fight when Stone uses his own combat style, he is definitely holding back but it's still an improvement. Along with that, I've been thinking about making some new weapons, but that's not what I'm working on today.

Today I want to start working on both of Celestia's gifts, yes both, I have two in mind and both should be interesting. The first is more of a joke gift than anything, but I think she'll love it. I'm going to modify the spell that creates an illusionary grape, I want it to be more optimized and I want to improve it a bit with an idea I'll explain in a moment.

Here's an interesting fact for you, did you know a skilled unicorn or a very skilled alicorn can hide the magical light their horn gives off? It's not an easy thing as you need to precisely control the magic you wield to not give off any magic waste, the more magic a spell uses the harder this is to achieve.

It's a skill very rarely learned because it is both very hard and not very useful to the vast majority. But a pony like Celestia has to have learned it at some point, I didn't know for sure if she learned this, but considering how easy it is to prank others with this skill I can basically guarantee that she does know it.

But back to my gift, once the grape spell, yes that's what I've named it. Once it's done I'll gift it to her so she can magically signal Philomena to deal with anypony annoying her. But that's not my only idea for the spell, I have a second idea but I'm sure it will cause havoc.

There is something known as an illusion binding spell, it limits the visual effects of illusions to a designated target, as long as that target is a living thing. It's used so you can make an enemy see an illusion while it remains invisible to you and anypony else in the area.

It's needed because without it an illusion would block your enemy, but also you. As an example let's say you made an illusion of a black rock to block the line of sight with an enemy, you would also have to deal with this illusionary rock in your way, unless you made it so only they could see it.

This spell does just that, it's not that complicated either, it just uses runes with the right context and forces the process with a large amount of magic. That is actually one of the main downsides, its magic cost is high, and to use it you need a compatible illusion spell that is made to work with it.

You have to cast this illusion-binding spell on somepony before casting an illusion on them that is compatible while binding the spell to a non-visible magic thread that is made by the binding spell. Over the past few days, I've been tinkering with the grape spell to be compatible and I've also been modifying the illusion binding spell to work a little better.

So, let's say hypothetically the illusion binding spell was cast on Philomena to let her see a grape that would be invisible to everypony else. Well, if I do it right this won't be very hypothetical, and a certain princess will be able to throw Philomena at somepony blame-free.

I think she'll like it, but I also think she'll like her other gift even more than this one. When I first showed Gaia's Eden to Celestia I offered to give her a place to stay here, and I realized that it would make a nice gift to do just that and build her a small home away from home.

So that's what I plan to do with my free time today. I stop swinging my weapon and rest for a few minutes while casting my healing spells as I continue using Mana Mimicry. On that topic, I haven't made any progress in improving Mana Mimicry beyond being able to cast it while retaining my full range of movement.

I can even cast a few simple spells while using it now, and eventually, I might be able to keep it permanently active while alone. Once I'm mostly recovered I stab my weapons into the ground in the ten-foot area next to the Gold Oak I normally practice my swings in and leave them there for later.

I've been thinking about how to build this for a few days now, and I've already done some of the work, specifically the foundation and support. The building will have three rooms in total, a large main room and two smaller rooms, the smaller rooms will be a small workshop and a bedroom.

As for the layout of the building, one large octagon is made from eight ten-foot sections. So from wall to wall, it would be forty feet, I'll divide it in half and then divide one half again to make three rooms in total. I take off my blindfold and look at the partly constructed building.

The building is located on the other side of my crops fields from my shack, it's maybe one hundred feet in between them in total. The foundation sits on eight extra thick tree stumps I grew and the floor is two feet off of the ground. The floor is four inches of pure White Oak and the stumps are the same wood.

The tree stumps have trunks that reach fifteen feet into the air above the wood floor before connecting to each other horizontally to make an octagon in the air, they all go up at a forty-five-degree angle into a single point that joins all eight trunks together. I did all of this over the past two days and now it's time to fill it all in.

I start with the roof and let the triangle-shaped gaps fill in with pure white oak and repeat what I did with the other buildings, the top has a layer of bark and leaves while the underside is just the raw wood grain. I go section by section and make sure to have an overhang at the bottom of the roof slant so rain doesn't pour down the walls.

It takes me a full hour to grow it all and get it done properly, once that's done I can build the walls. I start with the section facing my crop fields and my shack with the Gold Oak to my left side. I fill in the wall and divide it down the middle, one side is pure wood while the other has a tall doorway and door with steps leading down to the grass.

I fill in each wall but leave spaces for one window in each small room and a large window facing directly at the Gold Oak in the main room. Once the outer walls are in place I divide the octagon down the middle with the door outside and the main window on one side and the two smaller windows facing the forest on the other.

I made two more doorways next to each other and divided the other half into two areas as planned. This all takes nearly four hours in total and by the time I'm done, I'm sitting in an unfurnished building with a sketchbook drawing out some ideas. I can make most of the furniture but where can I find a mattress that big?

I could ask Cadance? As soon as that thought crosses my mind I shudder a little. How about no, I would rather not get the teasing that would entail. I guess I'll just have to look around for a big mattress or something else that would work just as well.

I smile a little as I start to plan out the layout more and look out to see the Gold Oak glistering in the distance. Maybe I should also upgrade my shack, I could use a place to sleep as well? I get lost in thought as the wind blows through the calm area.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D
Current year is 994

A short and mostly uninteresting chapter, but as a compromise I have something I made in MS paint when I got board for a few minutes. It's not good and it's not even slight to proper scale in anyway, but it should give you an idea of the full layout of Gaia's Eden.