DEC 23 Monday. I sit at one of the tables in the breakroom eating lunch waiting with two boxes for Blaz and Daisy, I see Blaz enter the room with two boxes under his wing, he grabs some food and sits next to me "hey Blaz."

He gives me a smile "Happy hearth's warming colt" he pushes a box over to me.

"Same to you Blaz" I responded by passing his gift over "you first."

He nods and rips open the wrapping paper before opening the box, seeing the puzzles his smile widens, "Thanks colt, it's your turn now."

I look at the box a simple green and red wrapping paper on the outside, I rip the paper off and open the box inside, inside the box is a set of different spices in bottles, I read some of the labels of the bottles, I recognize some of them like ginger and clover, but there's also a few I don't recognize.

I'm smiling at this, cooking is something I really enjoy, and this will make it much more interesting "thank you Blaz."

"No problem colt."

We continue to eat for a few minutes before Daisy enters the room, she also has two boxes with her she sits after getting food, "Hey happy hearth's warming, did you two start without me?"

I chuckle at her "maybe, here" I pass her my gift.

She rips the paper in an exaggerated manner before opening the box and seeing different paints and brushes.

She smiles at me "thanks Shade, here your turn" she passes me a box wrapped in blue paper.

Like last time I removed the wrapping paper and opened the box, inside is a simple copper bracelet with a few topaz gems in it.

"Thank you, Daisy."

"No problem," After that she and Blaz exchange gifts, Blaz got Daisy a camera, that got my interest as while I knew cameras exist in this world, I don't know how they work but it might be interesting to research later.

Daisy got Blaz more puzzles which he seemed happy with "so what are you two going to do with your Hearth's Warming" Daisy asks.

Blaz is the first to answer, "well I'm going to fly to cloudsdale to visit my family."

I think for a moment before answering "not anything really, I guess I'll just spend some time off to relax" I get sympathetic looks from both of them "oh don't give me that look I'll be fine."

"Well, I'm visiting family like Blaz, and come new year I'm going to be busy" Daisy says.

"Why?" I ask.

"January is when the library hires new staff every year, and I have to interview them to see which one's will be a good fit for the job,"

"Do a lot of ponies apply?."

She shakes her head "no but the ones that do are either not cut out for the job or don't know what the job is really like, so unlike apprenticeships where you work until your of age, they work on probation for six weeks to see if they can handle the boring and repetitive work" after that we spend the rest of lunch talking before getting back to work.

A few hours later I got back to my room after work., after closing my door I spend some time making tea, I get time off until the first of January and the new year, so I don't have anything to really do for the next while and I don't really have anything to work on.

I don't know what if anything I should invent and beyond my regular training I'm out of things to do, I don't have any projects and that means I only have research left, so I need something new to work on, I spend over an hour trying to think of something before coming up with an idea.

I decided to create something to help with my plants using a few different spells, specifically water spells, water spells are mostly two types, water creation and water manipulation.

Water manipulation is the branch that focuses on water gathering, things like gathering water from the air around you or plants and soil, this breach sees the most use mostly to gather drinking water, although not on a mass scale as that would cost a massive amount of magic, the upside is if you're gathering water on a small scale it's relatively easy to learn the spells and they don't use that much magic.

As for water creation it uses magic to create water from nothing at all, it's technically a type of conjuration but like all types of conjurations the spells are stupidly complex and summoned things don't last long breaking down not long after use, this also means you can't drink the conjured water.

I have neither the time nor magic capacity to learn water creation so I'm looking into water manipulation instead, I'm going to mess around with this magic a bit and hopefully entertain myself, so tomorrow I'm going to look for books on the subject.

time skip

DEC 28 Saturday. It's been a few days since I've started to look into water manipulation spells, and I've made some small progress, unlike most of the other types of magic I practice water magic is widely used and there's no shortage of spells to learn, I'm spoiled for choice for once, so I had to narrow down what I want.

After looking through several spell books I found one spell that looks good, it moves water to form a ball from the air that can be manipulated it's not terribly complex and I'm only going to somewhat modify it for my use, the only real downside to this spell is that it can take a while to gather the water from the air, the upside is its low magic cost.

I want to take this spell and give it a modification, I want the spell to gather water from a specific area and condense it creating a small area with little to no water in the air, as for why I'd want this it's for my plants, my specialty and expertise are in life magic and plants.

My plants have helped me a lot, so I obviously want more but magic plants are rare and expensive, my problem with my plants is that many plants I want don't grow in equestria that isn't too much of a problem I can still buy them or hire somepony in the future to find them for me.

But even if I get them, If the plant isn't suited to live in the climate it could die, I can use my magic to keep it alive but that means spending time and magic constantly taking care of them, I eventually want a decent collection of plants so the more of them I have to take care of on a regular basis the worse the problem.

The best solution I've found it to create a climate that's as close to the plants place of origin as I can, but this means I need to create an enchanted object with enough magic to keep the artificial climate active at all times, this is why I'm trying to limit the amount of water in the air, if I create the right spell for the enchantment I can make something similar to a desert.

I'm not the only pony who does this ether most wealthy ponies with magic plants have similar enchanted objects, I could buy some enchanted objects instead of making one, but I need to learn more about spell creation and like I said I don't have much to do anyway.

One of the main things I'm going to need to figure out is what to do with all the wastewater generated I'm thinking of collecting it to use for the other plants, I'm also going to need make sure to not remove all the water, so I'll need a way to monitor the levels of water in the air or at least a way to keep track of them.

Modifying the spell to only affect a small area isn't hard and enchanting that spell into a gem is also easy, but finding a way to know how much water needs to be removed is hard, I can use the liking spell but that might not have enough options to work well in this project.

My plan so far is to have three spells in total, the first will monitor how much water is in the air, that spell will feed into the second which will control the finale spell telling it how much water to remove, this should all be within possibility for me, I'm thinking of making the control spell a modified timer spell.

If I start with the monitoring spell and link it into the other spells, I can give it a value for how much water I want in the air then tell it to activate the timer spell to set a time for however long is needed for the water spell to drain however much is needed.

I'll need to use a basic timer spell to figure out how fast the water is being removed and how long the timer spell should last but that will only take some trial and error on my part, this won't be the only spell I'll need in the future as mimicking an environment is difficult, but it's a good starting point for now.

I sit at my desk drawing and erasing different matrix's before getting a decent timer spell, it's by far the easiest of the three only a slight modification of the base spell with a few other to set times and receive instructions, the water spell should only take a day or two, the monitoring spell might be a little more difficult as I'll have to create it myself, but I should be able to finish this project before the new year if all goes to plan.

I spend another hour going through my notes and flipping through some of the books in my room that I thought would have useful spells or runes.

After going through my notes and books I decided to cook myself some dinner, I bought some cod earlier in the day, so I looked through my cabinets for something to cook with it and after some searching, I found some flour, a good amount of oil and finally a few eggs I bought a few days ago.

I check to make sure the eggs are still good before cracking them open into a bowl, I mix them before grabbing a plate and dumping some flour on it, I place my pan on the stove and pour a good amount of oil inside before moving back to my fish as it heats up as I cut the fish into slabs.

I coat the slabs in egg then flour repeating a few times before adding them to the boiling oil, as my fish cooks I flip them regularly so they cook through after I'm done, I have a plate of fried fish that I season with the new spices Blaz gave me, I make tea to enjoy with my meal as always.

I enjoy the sunset with my meal watching the last rays of light fade I turn on my magic light, after finishing my food I clean my things washing the pan plates and the bowl when I'm done, I head to the bathroom to take a shower I clean myself up before drying off and heading to bed.

I climb into my bed pulling the blanket over me I start drifting I'm about to fall asleep before I hear it, at first it sounds like some small scratching and a few nearly silent cracks, I try to ignore the sound to get to sleep but after a while I can't anymore and get up looking for the source of the noise.

I use my light and take a look around my room following the sound, I approach the source of the sound on my shelf and right as I approach. CRACK

Author's Note

It's my first cliffhanger WOO!. Thank you for reading.