JUN 21 Saturday.

I slowly wake up and get out of bed, It's the Summer Sun Celebration today and I have some things to do, I leave my room and spend some time making breakfast for myself and Entropy, speaking of Entropy she's still changing and I think it will definitely become a problem.

At this point her feathers have gotten extremely dark, and it seems whatever process that is happening is getting faster, she looked mostly normal when she was born but over the last half year she's changed.

Her feathers are darker at this point, but unless we come across anypony who is an expert on crows or birds we should be fine for a while longer, at this rate it will become noticeable to everypony within a few months, so I need to find a way to hide her changes, but that's an entirely different problem, my best bet is an illusion spell, but I need it to last several hours, or always be active, and anypony would notice Entropy holding a gem.

So if I want it to be an enchantment I need a material that can hold, gather, and withstand enough magic to keep an illusion up for a long time, I don't have anything like that but I can find it, the problem is that the only thing that might work to hold the spell is a magical metal, magical metals are rare and expensive, they can have a very high magical capacity, even higher then a lot of gems, but even with a decent magical metal the illusion spell would take too much magic, so I need to get creative.

Illusions are made in many different ways, but what I need is a spell that will use the least amount of magic possible, or a spell that will stay on Entropy for a decent while,

Let's start with what I need both of these spells to do, I need it to make Entropy look as normal as possible, If I remove everything and just make the spell change her color that would be enough, I just need her feathers to not look like the event horizon of a blackhole, much like her egg.

So if I can get an illusion to cover only her feathers then that would also save on magic, if anypony were to touch her they would notice, but she doesn't let others touch her anyway so I don't think that will be a problem, if I use no runes it would save on magic but it will take me much more time to create the spell, so I'll probably need at least a few runes for this.

Using an enchantment also has two more problems, first I need to find a magical metal that is good enough to use for this project, and second I need somepony to forge it into a usable state, all of this is going to require me to do a lot of research.

So I'm going to spend some of my spare time researching all of this, I'm also going to be researching something I should have been looking into for some time now, changelings.

How do changelings change? Do they use illusion? Do they transform? What kind of magic is used in the process? All these questions lead me to a new project I want to work on, a way to detect changelings, this is more of a long-term project, mostly because I don't even know what I'm trying to detect.

One other thing about the changeling's transformations is why it creates fire, the changelings seem to live in the dark so why would part of their abilities make fire? just another question to add to the ever-growing pile I guess, I'm not sure if changelings use illusions but it seems as good as any place to start.

I open one of my notebooks and turn to a page containing the new scanning spell I made not long ago, I've been making small improvements but it will take much more than a few days to really make the spell better, right now I want to use this as a base.

My first step in this project is to see if I can make a way to detect illusions, I start with one of my medium rubies and enchant it to hold magic, then I add the scanning spell and change out the liquid rune, but then I realize that I don't have any runes for illusions, so I guess my new first goal is finding a rune that will work.

I go through my notes for a while to make sure I don't have a rune that would work, and I was right I don't have a rune for this project, with this in mind I realize that I'll have to do this another day, so I spend a moment making sure Entropy is fed before putting on my saddlebags and leaving my apartment, the library like most businesses isn't open today.

So for now I decide to simply enjoy the holiday, I leave my apartment and walk through the crowded streets moving towards the park, when I enter the park I walk around for a while before lying down in a grass field, Entropy flies off to a nearby tree as I open my sketchbook.

I look around and spot an old Oak that looks familiar, I look at it for several moments before recognizing it, it's the same tree I unlocked my life affinity at, I stare at it for a while before starting to sketch it, I draw it's trunk, it's branches and its leaves, I then add the buildings I can see behind it, then the ground around it.

After a while I finish my sketch and close my book, after some time staring at the Oak I walk over to the old Oak and place a hoof on its trunk, I focus and push my magic into the tree, and after a moment I watch as a single acorn falls from the tree top.

I walk over and pick it up, :someday it would be nice to find a place to plant this, but that day is not today: I put the acorn in my saddlebag and whistle, after a moment Entropy lands on my back, "Time to go girl" We spend a while slowly walking through the park and simply enjoying the nice day.

After some time we reach the edge of the park and leave, I wonder what I want to do today before deciding on something, :actually, maybe today is the day: I decide to keep walking as I push past crowds of ponies to reach the cities edge, I make my way outside the city walls and keep walking for a while, nearly an hour later I stop at the roadside and keep walking off the road.

I walk through a grass field and arrive at a small forest, it's a small place the trees and bushes aren't dense so it doesn't take long for me to be out of sight of the road, I wander the forest for a while sketching a few plants and even finding a wild blueberry bush that I collect some seeds from.

By the time I find what I'm looking for it is midday, I find a small clearing in the forest made from an old tree falling over, its fall has left a hole in the tree cover and from the looks of it the tree fell over fairly recently, I spend a while decomposing the tree into new soil.

When I'm done I take out the acorn and place it on top of the new soil, I back up some before laying down and concentrating, I close my eyes and start meditating on the life magic around me, before pushing my life magic into the acorn.

I dump more and more inside, I feel the ground under me shift as new roots grow and expand, and after a while I stop, panting slightly from exhaustion, I open my eyes and see a thick tree trunk in front of me, I turn my head up and see the new Oak tree covering the small clearing that was here before.

I see dozens of new acorns growing on the branches of the new tree, I simply stare for a while looking up at the tree and feeling the life magic course through it, after a while I've recovered enough and stand, and I start walking through the forest, making my way home while humming an old tune.

JUN 26 Thursday.

"Checkmate, that's eleven to zero right?" Gerald asks me.

"Yes, you should tell me how you get so good," I respond in slightly broken words.

"Good try, you almost got it, but you it's got, not get."

I look up to Gerald while moving all the chess pieces back into their starting positions, over the past two weeks I've been spending a lot of my free time here with him, and although I'm paying him it's still nice to simply talk to someone old, in many ways he reminds me of an old uncle.

He's always rambling on about this or that, hell he even had a conspiracy theory or two to tell me, and all while trying to teach me how to speak griffin properly, and to be honest I'm going to miss our talks a little, as he's leaving with his caravan today.

"Black or white?"

"What do you think?"

"Black", he always picks black, although he never told me why.

It's late in the day and I'll have to leave soon, but I have just enough time for one last game, it was me that thought of playing chess first, I quickly learned that was a mistake, turns out Gerald is very good at chess, so good that I've only won three of our games.

But that's fine I didn't come here for this anyway, I came to learn and I think I'm doing well, in the last two weeks I've learned a lot, I'm still far from fluent but I can at least hold a conversation now, even if I speak like I'm a child still learning to speak properly.

"Hey Gerald" he looks up from the board to me, " you've helped me a lot in the last two weeks, so thank you, I mean it, thank you."

I see his feathers rise up slightly, he's silent for a moment before answering "Well nothing to really thank me for Shade, You're the one paying me after all."

I just give him a smile and move my next piece finishing our last game, "It's been a pleasure Gerald, I wish you the best wherever you end up, and keep the board, consider it a gift."

His eyes focus on me for several moments before he nods, "Don't get all sappy on me Shade, get going, and thanks for talking with me."

I walk away from him heading home, :I wonder if I'll ever see him again? Maybe, if the world is kind, maybe:, I walk through the streets and get home right before the sun sets, I let Entropy off my back and take my saddlebags off, I don't have work tomorrow so let's work on a few things.

First an update on my changeling detection project, not much honestly, I've made some progress in finding the right rune but haven't found anything that would work well yet.

But while searching for runes related to illusions I found something that can help with my other project, I found a spell that could help me hide Entropy, It's still going to take a massive amount of work but this spell should help, the spell is called ghost target.

It creates an illusionary target that you can shape, things won't hit the target obviously, but it has a unique twist that can help me, the target can move, the spell uses two runes I do not recognize that allow the spell to move and bend, I've been able to find a out about one of them.

It's a new rune of movement, I already have something similar but this runes context is vastly different than the rune I have, the rune I have is about movement in general, while this rune is specifically made for the movement of illusions making it much better at doing what I need.

Sadly I can't find any reference to the other rune, and for the illusion to bend I need that rune, If I can get both I'll be able to make an illusion spell that will cover Entropy, it's not a permanent solution but it will give me time to create the right enchantments, and find the materials I need to solve this problem permanently.

So right now I'm studying the rune trying to find anything that can help narrow down my search, and so far the only thing I've been able to figure out is that the rune is based on a bending rune I've encountered before, I have the rune in my notes but I'll need to find the book I copied it from and work from there.

After looking through the rune again and noting some things down I move on to something else I've been wanting to try, I bring my liquid purifier, my Moon Glow plant, and my mortar and pestle to my desk and start working, first I go about the process of harvesting Moon Glow petals.

I grind them down and add some water to the mix, I keep grinding down the petals trying to extract as much fluid from the petals as I can, when I'm done I drain the mix into a jar and place it on top of the smoky quartz, I let the scanning finish and check out the results.

Sixty-seven percent water, twenty-three percent plant fluid, I have the enchantments purify the plant fluids and let the enchantments run, it takes almost an hour for the spell to finish but when it's done I have a small amount of clear fluid, I'm not sure if this will work but there's only one way to find out.

I take a piece of paper and write something with the fluid, but to my disappointment the glow is only very slightly brighter than when I tried this last time, at least it's a step in the right direction, I'm not completely sure why the plant's magic fades so much with this method.

I spend a while trying to draw a few other things before cleaning up my desk, I guess I'll need to think of a different method to try, but for now I'll work on something else, I grab my wheat plants and spend the rest of the night breeding them.

Author's Note

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