MAY 8 Tuesday.

I watch as the small sapling in front of me grows from the ground and quickly becomes a ten-foot-tall tree within minutes.

This is another of the attempts at a more fire-resistant bark for my armor, and it is slowly but surely working as I selectively breed the tree again and again. I never gave it a name as the tree itself is just a modified Fire Blossom Tree so there really wasn't enough of a difference to warrant a new name, yet.

After it's grown I cast a few Firebolt spells at the trunk and mark down the results before closing my notebook and dissolving the tree back into soil. I check and see that my staff's life magic reserves have been mostly depleted so I walk over to the base of the Vita Tree and place the staff on its stand to refill.

After a moment of thought, I stop abruptly as I sense something large moving nearby, only to stop caring a moment later as I recognize a Sea Serpent swimming upstream. Steven passes by through the river on some rare occasions but hasn't approached me since our first meeting years ago.

I do wonder why sometimes, but it seems he is simply content with leaving me alone, so I've done the same and will continue to do the same. I take a moment to sweep my senses around the area regardless as I tend to do when something large nears Gaia's Eden.

Nothing stands out though so I go back to my regular activities. Selectively breeding the trees was the last thing I had planned on my list of daily chores so I think for a moment before shrugging and walking over to sit down in the pavilion with some tea to draw for a while.

The days are once again blending together and not much out of the ordinary has been happening. Even my feelings about killing that wolf have faded a bit already, not that I'm complaining about it. It does make me wonder what I should do with the tooth I took from the wolf.

I took some time to decompose all the leftover flesh inside of the tooth with my life magic. Which turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be, apparently highly magical beings take more magic to mess with, I think, it's not like I have a large sample size to work with.

The tooth is clean and sitting inside my spell shack on a shelf, I really do want to do something with it as a reminder. I could just hang it up somewhere? But that seems too simple for such an interesting item from such a powerful beast. Or maybe that's just the human in me being weird again?

I start to sketch out a few ideas as I sit there and enjoy the afternoon sun and air. I've also been thinking about another problem I have, lack of proper storage for my ever-growing collection of items, especially seeds. If you include all the different plants I have a few hoarded by this point.

While most of those are common plants like herbs and crops they are still important, but are also taking up my time. A seed under a preservation spell can last for a few months but still needs to be replaced. So I constantly need to check the dates on my seed boxes and replace the ones that are getting old.

It's only about an hour of work even a few days but it is still annoying and I should do something more effective. I could just make some spells to keep the seeds fresh longer but I think I want to go a different route, mostly because preservation spells look like a mess to deal with. Instead I want to build a combination of a greenhouse and something like a garden.

I have so many plants and variations of plants yet I keep them as seeds, wouldn't it be better to have them actually growing around what is supposed to be my sanctuary? I still intend to keep seeds as backups and make more long-term storage for them, but I feel like this is a good thing to do, even if it's just to fill this place in some more.

It will also give me a place to store seeds exclusively as opposed to having them lying around my small shack. As the idea rolls around in my head I like it more and more, starting to sketch out several ideas for how it could be made. The first problem is keeping all the plants alive.

The best answer comes from the Vita Tree. Because of my staff being able to also gather life magic, I've been able to give more to the Vita Tree each day so it could grow faster, and it has. It's nearly twenty feet tall with a two-foot-thick trunk, but more interestingly its field has also grown.

It's even grown faster than before, it used to be about the same radius as the tree's height and centered around the base of its trunk. But now it's almost twenty-five feet and has grown larger than I expected, surpassing the Vita Tree's growth. Which gives me an opportunity to make use of all that space.

The life field of the Vita Tree makes anything inside it flourish due to the life magic density, I even have to decompose the grass often so it doesn't grow too long around the tree. Combine that with the gold dust and you have an interesting environment that can help any plant grow even in winter.

Last winter the grass around the Vita Tree never even died, it just got covered in snow and trampled by the added weight, it recovered immediately when the snow melted away. So, if I set up my plant greenhouse around the Vita Tree I'll basically never have to worry about any plant dying there, it will grow and stay alive just fine all on its own.

However, I'm going to need a lot of space and the life field isn't large enough to cover a building like the one I want to make, at least not yet, but it could cover a small building where I can store my seeds for now. I know seeds will also stay healthy inside the life field, I did some tests and it should make them last a lot longer but I never actually tested how long that precisely was.

I sketch out something that will work for the time being and stand up to gallop over to my small shack and gather the things I'll need. After a little thought, I decided to use redwood as nothing here besides my staff stand is made from it, and the wood itself looks very nice.

I grab a few of the modified Redwood seeds I have for extra stability and spend a moment moving ten heavy wooden crates at a time out of my shack. Nearly half of one of the two rooms inside my shack was just wooden crates filled with smaller boxes of seeds. I can move ten at a time so it only takes me a few trips to move it all to the pavilion.

Me carrying something so heavy with space magic does cause some slight visual warping of space, but so I try to limit the effect as some practice while moving the crates. Once they are all next to the Vita Tree I look around and pick a spot on the other side from the staff stand, with the trunk separating both of them in the middle.

I toss the Redwood seed down and walk around as I grow and shape the wood. I grow a ten-foot by five-foot foundation with three-inches of solid wood as a base. It's not a large building but I don't need too much space for what amounts to a bunch of boxes and probably shelves, I just need enough space to store and access them when needed.

I grow six posts, one in each corner and two at the halfway point of the building. I root them deeply and grow them to be seven feet tall before growing them at an angle to meet in the middle, forming a slanted roof support beam. I stop just short of hitting one of the lower branches of the Vita Tree and actually have to move a small branch out of the way a little, leaving it pressed against the wooden beam it was near.

I do the same thing I've done with my other buildings and make a roof by growing a flat plane of wood before covering it with a dense layer of bark. Finally, I added walls and a door, which all have a nice look to them along with a rich red color. I even spend a little more of my quickly dwindling magic to add some texture to the wood floor.

I open the Redwood door and walk inside, growing out the walls into long tall shelves on either side of me, then I grow one tall shelf rack with supports that takes up the center space with two hallways in between. It's a little cramped in the hallways but I can store far more boxes in here and this will let me see all of them to easily check. Each shelf is only a few inches apart vertically as it doesn't need much room in between.

Once it's done I rest for a moment to drink some mint-flavored tea and activate Mana Mimicry before taking out several seeds and placing them all around the base of the new storehouse. In total I plant ten Companion Vines around the building and grow them to cover the walls and roof, looking like they have overgrown the building completely by the time I'm done.

The Companion Vines are nowhere near as good as the Vita Tree, but they should still help a bit to add even more life magic to the building. Once it's all in place I end by killing off the living wood of the new building, taking away its ability to grow and my ability to grow it as well.

Killing the wood does mean I can't repair it instantly, but if I left it alive around so much life magic the building itself would start growing over my seeds and boxes inside. I bring a few crates next to the new building and start to unload the boxes inside of them, each box only three inches tall and five inches long, all rectangle-shaped.

They have sharp corners to fit more inside a crate and they all open with a simple lid that sits on top of the box and is opened by lifting it. The only thing that distinguishes them from each other is the text on one end of each box. It has the date the seeds were harvested and what type of plant it is, along with denoting if it's a subspecies I made of another plant.

I bring a crate inside and place a box on the shelf, it fits well with only a one-inch gap between it and the shelf above it. I spend nearly an hour with a few pieces of paper and a quill writing down a collection of every plant and the information on its box so I have an easy-to-access list, something I should have done before in hindsight.

When I'm done I've only filled a few shelves with boxes and still have plenty of room. I place the list of information on a shelf for when I need to come here and quickly check if I have a plant or need to replace the seeds. I walk back outside and take a breath while looking over my newest addition to my home away from home.

The rest will have to wait for the Vita Tree to grow more, but with its new growth rate that should be too long from now before I can start on something, a year at most. I sit there for a few moments longer before nodding to myself and moving on to something else for today, and by that, I mean going home and recovering my mostly drained magic, making buildings always takes it out of me.

I whistle and a moment later Entropy teleports onto my back from the branches of the Vita Tree. "Home?" She asks, and I nod in agreement. Once again I pay attention to the process of her teleportation and try to feel out the Void with my senses, I find nothing but empty space in all directions for as far as I can sense, just like every time before now.

If there is anything here it's so far away that I can't sense it. I can at least tell there is ambient magic and space itself, along with time of course. Honestly, this place only seems to lack physical substance, I wonder if I could leave something here? Definitely, something to try when I get the chance.

The only reason I haven't tried to do the same thing as Entropy yet is that my reserves of magic and the conversion ratio to space magic aren't enough yet. I think it's enough to get there, but if something went wrong I wouldn't have enough magic to come back on my own immediately, which is one hell of a risk.

I could rely on Entropy to do it but this is uncharted territory and that is an unnecessary risk that I don't want to take at all. My training is improving things as is and eventually, I'll make it to that point of being able to bridge this gap. When I reappeared inside my apartment things were quiet and I relaxed after sweeping my senses around the building, finding nothing. "Thanks, Girl." I scratch her for a minute and walk over to my bookshelf.

I have a few interesting books I've collected and there are many romance novels I've gotten from Cadance and on my own. There is also a smattering of many other random types of books, so after picking one out, I sit down and simply cozy up with my bird and some tea.

I open my book and nearly start reading when I notice a Pony walking down my apartment building's hallway, unlike last time I paid some attention to it. They are a stallion and after a moment they walk over and knock on my door. I sigh after a moment and stand back up, readying myself for whatever the hell this will be.

Entropy does the usual and I place my book back before opening the door with a little caution, only to see a Pony I wasn't expecting. "Hey, Shade. Mind if I come in?" Shining of all Ponies greets me with a smile as he stares up at me. I pause for a moment before flipping a small switch and opening the door.

I'm not on edge as there are much faster ways to get my attention than Shining coming here, so it seems today is going to be yet another interesting day. "Ok, not that it's not nice to see you Shining, but why?" I ask rather bluntly as he walks inside and looks around curiously. I've met up with him and Cadance a few times after my birthday to hang out but those were short and simple meetings.

I close the door as Shining gives Entropy a nod. "Hey, Entropy." She caws back and deactivates her band as she doesn't need to hide from Shining. He only has a necklace and a pair of small saddlebags, overall he seems to be in a relaxed mood. "Well, officially I'm here to try and trick you with this." He takes a small letter and passes it to me. "But I thought we could just chill, if you're not busy?" He asks with a smile as I carefully take the letter.

I did get a letter from Celestia saying that Cadance figured something out, but as usual, Celestia was vague when it came to the possibility of me getting pranked. I look at the letter and back to him, "Do you think she made it fireproof? Actually, she'd just send more if I burned it." I decide and shake my head a bit.

I look at the letter and place it to the side for now. "Sure, I was just going to be reading anyway. Did your wife send you to try and get information?" He blushes a bit at the word wife, much to my silent amusement, and looks a small bit surprised at my bluntness. "I just need to know if I'm watching my words here or not," I say in a humorous tone as I know damn well those two share everything.

He sighs a little and tilts his head and ears. "Not really? She did say to tell her if I figured anything out, but didn't make it a mission." He answers honestly as I walk over to the floor again and grab a few things I need. Mostly tea and some small snacks for us. "I like your home by the way, Twilight didn't really do it justice." He says while looking around.

After a moment he takes his saddlebags off and places them to the side before lying down opposite of me on the floor. "I think me and you have a different definition of nice than her. Cadance told me your room used to look like nopony lived there, I can see that. Also, I heard you were moving?" I joke at his expense and settle in for a nice talk with a friend.

He huffs and rolls his eyes. "I moved to the palace to be there faster in case I was needed. And that's not true, I had several posters and a few collectibles. It's not my fault her room looked like somepony painted every inch with hearts and pink glitter. By Celestia am I happy she stopped liking glitter as much, I think I have you to thank for that actually." He says honestly and I cringe a bit at him using Celestia's name while laughing.

He gives me a knowing smile and just chuckles. "Sorry, I kind of know how you feel. Do you know how odd it is to listen to mares talk about Cadance? Or stallions for that matter. Then again at least the stallions aren't so, forward." He also cringes a bit at the thought. "Speaking of you and Celestia... Any news?" He asks in a teasing tone knowing damn well he's just messing with me.

I sigh a little as I can't deny that I have thoughts along those lines, but nothing has really ever gotten to that point yet, even in my mind. "No. And I don't think it will, I mean, come on, really?" I ask the obvious as there are definitely problems that a relationship would cause.

He just shrugs and smiles. "I'm with Cadance, and I'm not even YOU." He says as if to prove a point. I raise a brow and he gives me a deadpan look, "Shade, you've fought Dragons and a massive buck-off wolf, whatever you are doing with that black armor and I know you're still holding back in some way." He flatters me and I can't really deny him, as much as I want to downplay all that.

During our last meeting I informed Shining about my involvement with the Changelings, he doesn't know a lot of details though. He knows I'm involved as extra protection and that I've been helping with things, but that a few things are so sensitive I can't even tell him about them. Still, he's more up-to-date on the situation from a few reports he read, including mine apparently.

I nod slowly. "I did, and I was scared out of my mind both times, I'm just good at handling it. Now shhh, I don't need to think about that right now." I make him drop the subject as I really don't think talking about it when I'm still thinking about it all again will not do me much good at the moment. "You get a chance to read the book?" I changed the subject.

He just nods but gives me a smile that says it all. "Yup, I even got to read the reports you made about the wolf and Dragon. I know you can handle yourself, but, why?" He asks with genuine confusion. "Why do you have to steal the spotlight and then be the only Pony to run from it?" He asks with humor and even more confusion.

I yet again ignore the praise and think about how to explain things. Shining knows enough of my secrets that just saying I don't like attention won't really work. Then again, I don't really need to lie as I know he won't dig if I ask him to. "I don't like the attention, you know that."

He looks like he'll interrupt but I stop him by placing down my chessboard. "But, I also really like being normal." He raises a brow and I motion around me. "You know well enough how much I have, I could probably live anywhere I like, do you know why I live here?" I ask and he looks around again.

He genuinely thinks for a moment while I set up the game. "Well, good cover, who would expect Veil Winter to live, here? But knowing you? I don't know, it's cozy and you lived here before you got famous, so why move?" He guesses and gets closer than most ever get to the truth.

I smirk. "Yes to both, but I'm also near my friends. And honestly? What more do I need? This is home to me, maybe it won't be forever, but it's home and I'm not moving unless I really want or need to." I agree with him but be more honest with myself as I continue. "I also don't really like the idea of this all not affecting my nice little life too much, keeping things separate seemed so easy back then," I reveal with some melancholy.

He snorts at that. "Ya, keeping the secret of Veil Winter, easy as pie." I glare at him a little and he smiles back. "Hey, I'm not one to judge, Twilight doesn't even know I'm dating a princess." I never did get confirmation if she knew, so I raised a brow and gave him an 'Are you serious' look. He chuckles awkwardly, "Ya, not sure how to go about it honestly, my dam and sire know though."

I can already see the slight family drama from here and just laugh in his face. "I'm not going to say you're stupid for keeping secrets, I try not to be hypocritical. But, I will say I have my reasons, and you should have yours. Remember why you lie, because when you forget then it becomes a whole new problem." I give the only advice I can as we both struggle with this it seems.

He rubs the back of his neck and nods. "Honestly, I have no idea how you keep so many secrets." He looks down at the board as I checkmate him and gives me an unimpressed look. "You got anything better to play? I would rather not do nothing but lose over and over again." He says with a knowing stare.

I move the chess set to the side and bring over a simple deck of cards, moving ten simultaneously and shuffling the deck in an impressive display. He gives me a blank look, "If Celestia wasn't an actual option I'd really question why you don't have a mare friend already. Just, how? I can only move three things at once, and I practice." He asks a little incredulously.

I smirk and give him a completely truthful answer while ignoring his comment about my other friend. "I manipulate the fabric of space to pull each card a tiny amount every moment, it just looks smooth when not slowed down." I am honest, knowing that he wouldn't be able to figure out if I was being truthful or not.

He sighs and deflates a little as I pass him two cards and we start a basic game of twenty-one. "You know, if I didn't know how much you practice, I'd struggle to say you didn't cheat at life in some way." He keeps the joking and teasing going with a smile as we both enjoy each other's company. "So, what else did you get up to in the Dragon Lands? Didn't the Princess mention something about the Dragon Lord?"

I think for a moment and nod. "I met quite a few Dragons, most either indifferent, grouchy, or impatient. But a few were actually pretty chill, they tend to care a lot less and ask fewer questions than Ponies, it was nice. As for Torch? He was interesting and mostly wanted to share stories, I even got his blessing for the book." Shining gives me a disbelieving look.

I shrug. "Like I said, he likes stories. Apparently, he approves of me spreading information and Stories about Dragons, there is a section about Dragon mythology for a reason." I mention the fact I included a few Dragon stories I found, except the one about the scepter.

He nods and actually takes a copy of the book in question from his saddlebags to look through. "Huh, what do you know, I haven't gotten this far yet." He finds the right section with interest and looks at his cards for a moment. "So what was he like? Scary, I'm guessing? If you actually feel fear that is." He adds with a teasing smirk.

I roll my eyes. "I assure you, I do very much feel fear. And Torch can be described in three words, big, boastful, loud. A claw of his was dozens of times larger than me." I say with a chuckle as I remember him. "He was actually one of the calmer and nicer Dragons though, was pretty understanding about me fighting one of his subjects actually." I share a few thoughts idly while playing my cards.

Shining laughs at that and shakes his head. "Because of course, you befriend the massive buck off Dragon. I'm still stunned you even decided to fight an adult Dragon, you didn't even start with a smaller one." He says with humor and partly fake exasperation.

I think for a moment and shake my head. "Second actually. I did start with a smaller one." I say with a large smile.

He looks up at me with a tired and morbidly curious look. "What?" He asks in a level tone, not even sounding surprised anymore.

I smile even more. "Let me tell you about the time I fought a dragon with only my hooves."

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :}
Current year is 996

Two things, one, I'm sorry of this feels to similar to the last chapter but I honestly could come up with a better location at the moment. Two, any ideas for the design of the larger building in the future or what Shade should do with the tooth?