It's the day after I unlocked my life affinity and I started the day like normal with my run. Today is Thursday so I head to the breakroom and grab some breakfast, and sit down not long after I start eating Daisy sits next to me. "So how was your weekend?"

"Not bad I got a lot done and met some interesting ponies and got a few chores done, how was work?"

"Just fine, boring as always but I think that comes with the job" I let out a chuckle.

"Ya that seems about right" We spend the rest of breakfast chatting about small things mostly food. turns out Daisy really doesn't like Daisies ironically enough. that ended up getting a laugh out of me.

After breakfast I start going about my shift. Today it's sorting books so I sat down at one of the tables and settled in for a while. hours later I'm done with my work and in my room reading through the book on life magic. After reading some I narrowed down how I wanted to start training. and what I've found that this is the best approach seems to be growing plants by training your magic to control how a plant grows and how fast.

So, I'm going shopping for flowers that are small and grow relatively fast, they are cheap and I can fit many of them into my room without taking up much space. With this in mind I grab my bags and leave my room. as I walk down the street looking for a flower shop or even just somepony selling seeds.

I keep walking around and after an hour without finding anything I stop to take a break on the side of the street and sit there I see a pony I recognize. Twilight Velvet shopping with a bag floating with her much like yesterday "Well I've had no luck so far and it's not like it could hurt: so I decide to approach her walking over. "Hello again." I greet and she turns to me. staring at me for a moment before her face shifts, gaining a small smile.

"It's you from yesterday Shade right?" I nod "It's nice seeing you sorry we had to run off, Shining had a meeting and we couldn't miss it hope we didn't make a bad impression."

"It's fine I don't mind we all have some days like that, I never did catch your name though."

"Oh, where are my manners? I'm Twilight Velvet but I share a name with my daughter so most call me Velvet you can do the same."

"Sure, thing Miss Velvet I mostly came to ask if you know of any plant or flower shops nearby."

"Thinking of doing some gardening? Well either way I know of one, If you go down that street and take two lefts, and a right you should see it. it's called the rose garden" as she points down the street.

"Thank you so much, I hope you have a good day and say hello to Shining for me."

"Same with you colt and I will."

I started walking down the street she pointed out to me. I continued down the street taking two lefts and a right, and after some time walking I saw a small flower shop just like she said the rose garden. As I entered the shop I see a red mare at the counter pruning a rose bush before seeing me "hello how can I help you?"

I walk up to the counter "I'm looking for a flower that can make its own seeds to replant and grow again" She looks at me with a confused face at my request.

"Well, I know of a few that don't look that great, mostly small flowers, some with thorns" She then points out several flowers in the shop in various pots. I walk around the shop and pick out three flowers. the first with the body of a daisy with a gray flower at the end. the other a vine with dark leaves and many tiny pink flowers. and the final one a small round bush made of many small red leaves making it look like a round red ball with its bottom third missing.

As I take the pots to the countertop and place them the florist gives an odd look at my choices "Well this is probably the oddest order I've ever seen a false daisy along with a gripping vine and finally this one."

"What's so odd about them?" I asked, curious about her reaction.

"Well not much is interesting about False Daisy, its claim to fame is that before it blooms it's almost impossible to tell it's not a daisy and it's not edible it won't hurt you, it just tastes terrible. The Gripper Vine is mostly known for the fact that it can hold onto pretty much anything while in little to no soil it's hard to cut and grows fast and they have a decent grip, I've seen one of these climb a four-story building from a single small pot.

And then there's this one I don't actually know what it is. one of my customers brought it to me and said he found it in the wood and scooped it into a pot for me although it does make seeds and I've collected some a while ago and I've tried looking for its name and didn't find much and I don't really have the time to keep looking. honestly I didn't know what to do with it so I put it up for sale."

After hearing her lengthy explanation of the plants I was interested in I decided to buy them. "How much for all of them?" I ask.

"Well not many ever buy false daisies the same with the gripping vine and I don't have a use for the bush, so I'll just say ten bits."

"You sure?"

"ya honestly most of these were just taking up space, Will that be all?"

"Can I also get three more pots and some soil please?"

After grabbing what I requested I paid her and grabbed my purchase and started walking back home. After reaching home I placed my new plants near my window and gave them some water along with staking my spare pots and soil. I started reading about training my life magic and controlling plants.

The book itself doesn't contain any plant spells, just theory about them. Most plant spells seem to follow two paths, the first being plant growth and the second controlling plants. although I don't think there will be many plant spells as this type of spell doesn't seem common as when looking for a book on training your life affinity I only found two. the one I'm reading right now and the other which was mostly just conjecture and research material.

What little books I did find on plant magic were for growing herbs or improving soil quality. which means the biggest branch of magic that life affinity will help with is healing magic. That combined with the lack of plant-based spells means it's probably better to just use raw magic for plants and focus on healing spells. so after learning what little the book had to offer I brought the false daisy to my desk.

While the book didn't have much to offer in terms of plant spells it did have advice for using raw life magic. The easiest method for training life affinity is to grow a plant until it flowers and seeds, then collect the seeds then uproot the plant. chop it up and add it back into the soil and use life magic to enhance decomposition then planting new seeds starting the cycle over again.

This gives you an endless supply of plants to work with, and as long as you keep some seed if the plant dies you can just make another. As I place the false daisy on my desk I start converting some magic into life magic before reaching out and trying to encourage growth I see the small plant start to grow reaching higher than the single gray daisy joined by others as the buds open.

As the buds open to reveal a gray daisy flower the flower persists for a few minutes before it starts wilting. as they do I see small seeds falling off them. the small brown seed attached to a tuft of silky fibers. After collecting the seeds I grab my knife before pulling the plant out and chop it into bits, dicing it and mixing it back into the soil.

I repeat this process four times each time using my magic to help compost the old plant by encouraging it to degrade and rot. In the end I have a few dozen leftover seeds and my magic is almost dry. I place my leftover seeds in an old flour bag. I'm going to need to get some jars or bags later, but right now it's late and I have work tomorrow so it's time for bed.

time skip

It's been a few weeks and it's Jun 18 and the summer sun celebration is soon. I've made some progress in my training, in terms of my old training I've learned a few new things. First I've made some headway into the runic language learning more symbols. I'm still nowhere near fluent but I'm still improving. My TK field has seen some improvement but its power is starting to level off to the point of almost not being worth dedicating so much time to practice so I'm going to continue training its control but not its strength.

My general training in magic continues, I drain my magic every day along with using it throughout the day and I'm still seeing slow but steady growth. For my new training I've been trying to find a basic healing spell with no success. and after several days of no progress only finding higher level spells, everything else being information texts, I finally decided to ask Daisy for help as during one of our conversations she mentioned a cousin that's a doctor.

Today was Monday I made my way into the breakroom and settled in with some food for dinner and after some time I see

Daisy enters the room after she grabs some food and sits on the other side of the table. "So Shade, how was your day?"

"About the same as every day you ask me that almost every day and the answer never changes."

"I know", she says with a teasing smile on her face.

"I would actually like to ask you a question" She nods with her mouth full.

"I've been trying to learn some healing spells but I can't seem to find any basic ones to start with but I've had no luck"

"And you won't" Seeing my confusion at her answer she laughs, "I asked the same thing to my cousin and I'm afraid my friend that you've fallen into a trap most aspiring doctors and students fall into. It's like this as far as I'm aware there are no basic healing spells. That branch of magic is just too complex as any who've tried to create a basic healing spell have failed so far. from what my cousin told me all the basic spells that have been made are so weak that they do basically nothing to speed up the healing process."

"So, there's no basic healing spells because they get too weak when trying to simplify them?"

"Yup I don't remember the exact reason he said but I think it had something to do with healing spells having a lot of symbols in them."

Now it makes sense this world is much like mine so sometimes I forget that it is different. In my old world we had a good understanding of biology and how the body works. but from what I've read in the books I've been searching through these ponies are not as advanced as humans in this aspect.

They understand how a disease spreads but not what causes it and they have no understanding of microorganisms not being able to see them, that's considered one of the great limitations of healing magic for them, magic can repair your body but not kill a virus or infection.

This also explains why all the spells I did find even with their complexity it's still mostly symbols as they can't use many things to base the spell on. furthermore, this would make it extremely hard to make a basic healing spell as it would have to be almost entirely symbols weakening the final spells effects rendering the spell almost useless. This even explains why this world still teaches mostly traditional healing and many other methods my old world used as you can't just heal anything as the number of ponies that know and can use powerful healing spells are probably in extremely high demand but low number.

This also means I may be able to create a basic healing spell as while I wasn't a doctor in my past life I did take biology in high school so I may know enough to make one. but I can't as I am right now I have nowhere near enough knowledge to pull off something like that but It's something to work on.

But for now it's still years before canon starts and all I'll be doing for the next few years is growing and trying to master my magic so I have time. After finishing my meal and saying goodbye to Daisy I head back to my room.

After I'm inside my room I check on my plants and on all my empty pots now full after experimenting with the plants. I've discovered a few things of not about two of them, the false daisy being the only one to become uninteresting to me.

The other two plants however have several points of interest. for the gripping vine I've found that just like the seller said it does grow really fast when using magic to enhance their growth they grow even faster. and like she said they grab anything they can to grow higher the other thing once again like the seller said they are surprisingly strong for their size being tough and hard to cut or saw the vine stalks being filled with thick fibers.

And then there's what I've found about the last plant, it took me a while to find a book about it. this red bush is named blood leaf tea, yup it's a tea plant. a very rare tea plant, from what I learned this plant is very hard to farm bordering on impossible as the only known way is to have a pony with a life affinity to cultivate it.

The reason being not that the plant is hard to grow but because the properties its leaves are valued for is to increase magic regeneration and as the number of things that can help with magic regeneration are very few the leaves are highly valued.

The problem comes in when you try to farm them as the plant's leaves only gain this property if it's grown in an environment rich with life magic like a large forest or deep in mountain ranges. While you can grow the plant if there isn't enough life magic it won't gain its magical effects rendering it into just a red bush. But if you have a life affinity like I do and get your hoofs on one you basically have an unlimited supply. With this in mind I've already filled the other pots I bought with more of the tea plant and after learning how to make tea I started to produce blood leaf tea.

And after growing several plants and picking them clean before drying the leaves into tea I now have a large stockpile stored in jars along with many spare seeds and four grown bushes. And I've also found out that the tea tastes quite good having a somewhat lemony flavor.

After checking on the plants and watering them, I like all my other nights, shower and go to bed.

Author's Note

[Thanks as always for reading and have a good day :) ]