JUL 3 Saturday.

I slowly walk through the streets as a very light rain alleviates the heat of the summer sun. I don't bother putting on my cloak and just let the sprinkle of rain cool me off.

It's been around two weeks since I sent Celestia her gifts and she's finally found some time to set up a meeting for later today. It will be nice to see her after almost a month, but that's for later, right now I'm heading home from work in a relatively happy mood.

Nothing in particular is happening, it's just a nice day. But I shouldn't talk about it too much, I could tempt fate yet again. As I walk that thought echoes in my mind for a while, fate. It's a weird thing but what's even weirder is my relation to fate, I both fight and rely on fate.

I fight fate and change the destiny of this world, but I also have a genuine hope that fate does help make some events go as originally planned. So many things are needed to keep this world safe and many of them are far out of my control, things like the elements coming together when needed.

I can and plan to help things go as they should, but I'm far from perfect and can't account for everything. I try to plan, and I hate it when things don't go according to my plan, but I know my own faults and failures well enough. So what can I do? Well, as a start I've been thinking about the medium ruby currently hidden under my bed.

Yes, I hide the gem with my life story in it under my bed like a diary, and that's part of the problem. In the past, I didn't really have a good place to store it, but now I do, Gaia's Eden. I'm not sure where I want to store it yet, but I should make it someplace both hidden and findable.

I need it somewhere nopony will find it unless I need them to and that's where things are tricky. I can't even hint that this gem exists for fear of it being opened by somepony before it's needed, but the last time I died I was just walking and tripped, so I need to make a contingency for something like that soon.

I could make something that could activate on my death? But the gem is also needed if I'm kidnapped during something important. Oh shit, I also need to add in the password somehow. How do you write down a password and still keep it secret? I'll definitely need to think about this and the sooner the better.

After a moment I shake my head and leave those thoughts alone for now, it's supposed to be a happy day, not me planning for my own inevitable death. I open my apartment as Entropy leaves my shadow smoothly to fly off to her perch. As I watch her something comes to mind that I had nearly forgotten about.

Entropy has only ever shed one feather, unlike the rest of her feathers at the time this one was fully made from a shadowy mist and to this day retains its magical appearance. It was odd because at the time her feathers were only partly made from magic, but this one was different.

Right now Entropy has stopped changing as far as I can tell, she's kept the same size and her feathers have stopped changing after fully becoming a mass of black mist that flows over her. Another thing of note is that she's a little cold, not ice cold but colder than you'd expect.

I think she absorbs most of the heat from light, but I have no idea where that energy is going. It could just be a side effect of shadow affinity magic, but I also have no idea how I would even try to confirm that. Back to my point though, the only feather she ever gave me has sat unattended in my workroom for a long while now.

It's not that I'm not curious or want to study it, but I only have one feather and Entropy has shown no signs of giving me another one. That and I'm not really sure what I could even do with the feather in the first place, I guess I could make a quill but that seems like a waste.

I know nothing about shadow affinity magic and what it can do, and I'm not even sure if I can do anything with the feather, so sadly it's just stayed there for over a year now. I slowly turn the feather in front of me as Entropy files down to look at me. "Pretty?" She asks while I look at the feather.

I chuckle a little and smile at her as she hops in front of me as I lie on the floor. "Yes, I suppose it is pretty. Thank you." I thank her with attention as she melts into my hoof as I scratch a certain spot she always loves. "Such a pretty Girl." I smile widely as her tail feathers start to wag up and down.

I spend a while throwing around her wooden ball to play with her before I grab a gem from under my bed and have her take me to Gaia's Eden. When we arrive it looks like there has been a good amount of rain as the soil and grass are soaked. "You want to go off or stay with me?" I don't always ask her but she looks like she wants to just sit on my back right now.

She just lays down on my back as I nod as I walk over to the pavilion, I don't have a perfect place for this gem to be hidden but I know a better place than under my bed, and until I can think of something better it will work. I walk over to the fake stump in the pavilion that holds the first Copper Lily.

The medium ruby I have isn't very large so I take a moment and move the soil at the bottom of the water filling the stump with my field. I gently place the gem in the underwater pit and push it in deeper until it rests on the wooden bottom, then I cover it in the Copper Lily plant and a few inches of wet soil.

It's an obvious place, but most would just see the rare plant and never question it more, plus I'm rather good at hiding things in plain sight and I think this will work just fine. With that down I take out my teapot and sit down on the comfy cushions and carpet under the pavilion to wait for my friend to arrive.

I flip open my notebook and start to look through a few notes I made on different runes. After my last incident with a mare in heat, I thought it best to try and find a way to prevent anything like this again, with that in mind I've spent some time over the last two weeks looking into smell or scent-based runes.

The idea is simple, purify the air I breathe to block out a mare's scent, and honestly, I should have thought of this earlier. It's also not that hard of a thing to accomplish, I've modified my bracelet to add another switch and I will add this spell to the gems inside my bracelet when it's done.

It will take more magic than my bracelet could supply if I run all three enchantments on the bracelet. But as long as I don't use all three at once it can work just fine, now all that's left is to actually make the spell. I've done some work on it but I'll need to find the best rune and streamline it all.

I leave my thoughts as I feel space rend apart once again, and around ten feet away from me Celestia and Philomena stand where empty space once was. "Hello, it seems you've been busy?" I ask in greeting as she looks around a little before walking right over to join me on the cushions.

We both watch as Philomena and Entropy fly off to magic knowing where to play and catch up. "More than normal, we had another griffon city state visit for a trade agreement." I pass her some fresh tea as I see her spot the building and raise a brow, before smiling at me. "It seems I'm not the only one who's been busy." She also looks over at my expanded shack.

I nod but don't tell her it's her new home yet. "Yup, but we'll get to that. How was the celebration? I had a fun time myself." I move the topic off of the buildings and take out my chess set to make things more interesting.

She huffs a little. "Same old, same old. I do love the festivities, but it is all rather... Tame. How did you spend the day?" She looks a tad bit done with the Summer Sun Celebration, not that I particularly blame her, there's only so many times you can do it before it gets annoying, but she also has a smile and seems to have enjoyed it to some degree.

I see a chance to joke around and like always I take it. "Did the Princess not enjoy the entire day basically celebrating her?" I ask in a sarcastic tone, but I chuckle at the end as she smiles and moves a chess piece to check my king. "Fair. But to answer you, I spent the celebration in Ponyville."

She smiles at me and raises a brow at the name. "Hmm, you seem to like that town. Maybe I'll take a visit sometime." If she does know about how important Ponyville is she still doesn't let it show in any way. "But, for now. Checkmate." I roll my eyes at the playful smile and decide to just get my gift out of the way because she just ended this game far faster than normal.

"If you wanted your gift you could have just asked without so soundly beating me." My only answer is a smile. "Come on then, let me show you around." I stand up and stretch but leave all my things on the floor, I even leave my necklace and bracelet behind, and I'm naked for the first time in a long while now.

I don't really have a reason for this, but sometimes it's nice to just walk around unhindered. She keeps her smile and walks with me. "Let me guess, a large kitchen? It would be a nice addition." She jokes a small bit but does actually try to guess as we walk up to the door.

I shake my head. "Nope! Want to guess again?" She does the mature thing and nods happily.

"A bathhouse? You don't really have anywhere to clean up." She guesses again and I stop before opening the door or answering her. I try to ignore a few thoughts when I hear that and shake my head.

"Huh, you're wrong, but I think I might add that regardless." She does make a good point there. "Now come on in." I open the tall door and let her walk inside without needing to crouch, it seems I got that part right. "Welcome to your birthday gift. A home away from home." I say with a slightly proud smile while looking at her expectantly.

She looks around the room with curious eyes. Over the past few weeks, I've made all the basic furniture. The main room has a large table with a few seating cushions, and the far side has several wooden cabinets and a large countertop. The most striking thing is the look, all the furniture is made from pure Black Palm wood which strikes a contrast with the White Oak floors and walls.

She smiles but does a double take when hearing my words and looks back down to me surprised. "You... You made this for me? All of this?" She has a tiny bit of disbelief and I catch one of the very few times Celestia hesitated with her words, I watch as the surprise turns into a growing smile when I nod.

"Yup! I did make the offer when I showed you Gaia's Eden, and I thought you would like a quiet place to relax a bit and just get away from it all, but that's hard without your own space. Let me show you around, although there's not too much to really see." I try to temper her expectations and show her the two other rooms.

The bedroom just has a bed and nightstand, while the workroom has two shelves and an extra large workbench. Not a desk, a workbench, it even has some basic woodworking tools I bought. All this furniture is also made from Black Palm wood with a simple look and is sized for Celestia.

Celestia is silent the entire time but when we're done with the very short tour she has a massive smile. "So, what do you think? It's not massive but it should work." I feel a little nervous as I put a good amount of work into this and really hoped she'd like it.

She keeps a large smile and looks down at me, and in a quick movement hugs me once again. I've had this happen a few times but it's always nice. "It's perfect! And honestly, far more than I could have hoped for." She stops following me and just starts looking through a few cabinets and other places. "It's a lot, how much work did you put into this?" She questions with an excitement I rarely see with her. She moves over to the table, which is too tall for me to sit at so I find a place on the floor and look up.

Her smile and happy attitude is infectious now and I can't help but smile like an idiot. "A fair few hours, the building was easy and the furniture was just grown and moved. Actually, the planning and logistics were the hard part." I explain with a happy tone.

She knocks a hoof on the solid table and looks at the wood with curious eyes for a few moments before raising a brow. "Logistics? I can't imagine this took much considering you grew it all. Also, how did you get the wood to mimic Black Palm? It's a very close match." She asks and I chuckle a bit which causes her confusion to grow even more.

I smile. "I bought a Black Palm Tree a while back, it's all just actual Black Palm wood, I wouldn't even know where to begin to try and make normal wood look like this." I look up and laugh a little at the shocked face she now has as she looks over the house in a new light. "As for logistics? Finding a large enough mattress took a while." I smile knowingly while making a small joke at her expense.

She blinks but laughs with me after a moment. "Yes, I suppose that could be hard to find. But in all seriousness, this is a lot Shade, the furniture alone is beyond expensive. Thank you, this is amazing." She keeps her large smile as she looks around the room some more.

I wave off the second part. "It's just a time investment to me, not even that much time either, and honestly I think my sense of wealth is beyond skewed at this point. Literally, I don't even look at my taxes, I just pay them and forget it all." That gets another laugh from her. "Anyway, I'm glad you like it, also, any requests?"

She raises another brow. "Requests? For what, furniture?" She asks while tapping the table.

I nod. "Yes. I can add or make anything you need, or provide materials if you want somepony to make something for you. I could even enchant things if you need it?" I offer more help. "It's not hard for me and I have plenty of time, while you work too much, and I'd like you to actually enjoy staying here." I get a warm expression from my words.

"So, I can redecorate? Rearrange or add anything I like?" She asks with building excitement while looking around with a practiced eye.

I raise a brow and nod. "Yes? I told you, this is your home now. Paint in bright pink, flood it, you can even burn it down if you want. Although, I won't rebuild it for you if you do that." I joke again. "Seriously what you want, it's supposed to be a home, make it one."

She gets a glint in her eye, I think I messed up. "Yes! Seriously, thank you Shade! I haven't gotten a gift like this in ages!" She acts out more and celebrates a little by clapping her hooves together a few times like a happy filly. "I barely remember that last time I got to decorate a home." She's more excited about the decoration than the house itself.

I keep my raised brow but have another beaming smile on my face and a heart filled with a little pride at her happiness. "You've decorated homes? I mean, I guess it makes sense but that seems so... Well, unlike a princess I guess. But you don't really act like a princess so that actually makes sense." I make yet another verbal jab at her expense.

But this time she's too excited to care about that and immediately moves the large and heavy wooden table a few feet to the side. "I'll get you for that and the other joke later, and I haven't forgotten that last prank. But that's for later, I'm too happy right now for that." My smile falters a little but she continues. "Believe it or not, yes I did, I didn't always live in a castle after all. Still, it has been... A VERY long time since then." I feel her melancholy tone and once again remember how old she really is.

I nod and try to ignore her threat. "Well, tell me if you need anything. But, on a related topic, how is the other gift I gave you working out?" She gets right to it and starts moving the table around and looking up to see the Moon Glow Vines on the ceiling with a smile.

I think she's planning a few things out in her head as she continues to examine the mostly empty space. She also gets a mischievous smile. "It was yet another lovely gift, so once again thank you. As for use? Well, a few rather pushy nobles have had an unfortunate time recently." She doesn't laugh but I sure do.

She takes a moment to walk into the workroom as I follow her around now while laughing for a few moments. She looks over the tools I gave her and nods. "Although, I may have to lighten up a bit before some of my little ponies connect the dots. Also, I must commend you, I never thought to combine those two effects in that way." She compliments me and starts to organize the tools a little.

To be fair, it is a stretch to combine bound illusion magic and love of grapes into a prank, it seems it went well though. "Great! Just make sure to use it on Cadance before she uses something like that on you." She looks back at me with a criticizing stare, although it lacks any real heat to it. "I gave her the grape spell the first time we met at the Gala. Well, less gave and more conspired."

She narrows her eyes at the wall a little, "Hmm, that would explain it..." I'm about to ask but she stands up and looks around the workroom. "I think first I need some wood to work with." I snort in surprise hearing that and get a confused look that I wave off. She wouldn't understand even if I explained that ponies don't have that euphemism.

"Sure what type?" I ask back and ignore the unintentional euphemism.

She seems to think about it. "How large of a piece of that gold wood can you grow? You know? The same type as the crown you gave me." I feel my cheeks heat up a little and I recognize that smile on her face, it seems she's already getting some revenge.

I try to ignore certain thoughts and nod. "Sure. What are you thinking? I can roughly shape it to cut down on time." I add with a smile again, a chance to do some arts and crafts with Celestia sounds like a blast.

"Hmm, for now, I think a nice chair. You seem to need the boot at my new table." She gets me again, I never thought I'd be at the end of a short joke in this life, but here we are. "Actually, I have a good amount of time. Do you have anything to do?" I shake my head. "Perfect, let's get to work then. We have two homes to decorate. OH, it will be so much fun to work with wood again." She says happily and I have to stop myself from laughing again.

I raise a brow and she smiles more at my confusion. "I know you, that shack probably has nothing but a bed and table." I don't deny it as she's got me pinned to rights. "And if you insist on staying in it, then I insist on it actually looking nice inside. Now, come on, we have work to do."

I chuckle and nod again. "Woodworking with a princess. HA." I can't help it and make a joke that she fails to understand. "Oh, this will be fun," I tell her as she gives me a slightly confused look and we head outside to start our work.

She stops and gives me another large smile. "Shade?" I raised my eyebrow yet again. "Thank you for this, I think this is just what I needed." I'm once again thanked and I once again wave it off a little.

"It was for a good friend. Now, let's get started, I want to see how well somepony like you can carve and decorate." I have a slightly challenging tone and from the look in her eye, she accepts my challenge.

Author's Note

Thank for reading. :}
Current year is 994

Not much to say on this one. Enjoy. Also, I'm taking the day off.