MAR 20 Friday.

I sit up from my work desk and turn to Blaz, "I'm heading home, have a good day Blaz." He nods without looking over at me.

"Same to you Colt. Oh and can you drop this off to Daisy on your way out?" He says while motioning to a small stack of papers on his desk. I shrug and take them with me, I stop by Daisy's office while leaving and give her the papers. With that done I walk out into the main library to leave and drop off a book I need to return.

While returning the book I look around and see a pleasant surprise. Sitting at one of the tables near the front of the library is Avalon reading through a book and taking notes every once in a while. I remember him being a nice griffin to talk to and having a good time with him on the train. I pushed away the negative thoughts from the way he was treated on the train.

I don't really know him but the interactions I've had have been pleasant so far. So after giving it a little thought I decided to walk over to say hi and see how he's doing. He's facing away from me, so not wanting to startle him I walk around the table and sit down opposite of him.

He's so focused he doesn't notice me for a few moments before catching me out of the corner of his eye. He looks up at me and doesn't seem to recognize me for a moment before it clicks, "Shade? It's good to see you. How are you doing? Did you enjoy New Trotten?" he asks with a friendly tone and a small smile.

I return his smile, "I'm doing well. And my trip went well, I had a good time. So you decided to look into runic magic then?" I ask while looking at a few of the books he has around him, most of them are the books I recommended with a few other books on miscellaneous subjects.

He nods enthusiastically. "I've started with the books you recommended, thanks again for the help. What are you doing here?" He asked curiously while moving the book he was reading a little to the side and looking through the others.

"I'm glad the suggestions helped you, and I was just returning a book before leaving. I just came over to say hi and ask how it's going, have a good day Avalon." I nod while standing up.

He nods back and moves another book over to him, "I'm doing just fine, and am having fun with this, so many interesting things. Same to you Shade have a good day." He nods to me before going back to reading, I leave the library and start walking home. I don't try to make new friends often but Avalon is a decent Griffin and I can see myself getting along with him.

Although I may be a little biased because he does remind me of that old friend I had in my past life, I hope he took my death well. I shake my head and open my apartment door to see Entropy on her perch sitting with Philomena as they both sleep, I close the door and look at Philomena confused.

I look around the main room but don't find a letter or anything else she could have delivered to me. Why is she here? Entropy heard me walking around and woke up, she looked over at me and flew down to me landing on my back. I raise a hoof to scratch her before making lunch for her.

While making her food Philomena also wakes up and lands on the countertop looking at me expectantly, I just sigh and make more than normal before filling a bowl for each of them. After they start eating I leave them be and take another look around the apartment.

But like last time I found nothing Philomena could have delivered to me. Did she just come for food? Or to visit? I shrug after a while and continue with what I had planned. I sit down at a desk in my workroom, take out two pots filled with soil, and plant a Solar Vine in both.

This is the selectively bred Solar Vine. It is basically finished but I don't have a place to grow it right now. The main idea with this new vine was to see if I could use plants to gather a specific magic affinity from the environment and collect it to use for other projects and ideas.

I've decided to call this new vine the Solar Trap as that is just what it does. It now collects and stores a large amount of solar magic and can cover a large area if necessary. But right now I want to create a different strain for a new idea I had while working on this project.

I want to breed another strain of the Solar Trap to not release the solar magic it collects from its flowers. As I breed the vines I take time to think through something that's been on my mind recently, I've been thinking more and more about my past life and it's started bothering me a little.

I find myself remembering old acquaintances or a few of my friends, I'm not really sure why all this comes to mind though. I can't point out a specific moment when this started, but I think it began after I started my vacation, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

It feels like there is this thing nagging at me and I don't know what it is, and not knowing is just making it worse. Throughout the day I think about people I knew and cared for, how they are doing, and if they're ok. I feel a little trapped thinking about the past so much, and it's distracting me.

But every time I try to think through it to put my thoughts to rest I always end at the same place with the same question. Why? Why am I thinking about something I can never change? Why am I thinking about a life I will never see again? I'm so distracted by my thoughts that I stop breeding plants.

I snap out of those thoughts and realize that I've stopped repeating the motions that have been burned into my memory from the amount of times I've done them. I stand up and walk out of the workroom, I need to properly think through this and finally put these thoughts to rest.

I see that Philomena has left and sit down with Entropy in the main room trying to think through this yet again. But that just once again brings me to the same question, why do I keep thinking about all of this? So I start thinking about all the things I've been ignoring, I start thinking of all the thoughts I've pushed to the side to get work done.

I think about how my friends could be doing, how what little family I have is doing right now, are they all ok? Will they be ok? Slowly my mind is consumed by all these thoughts and at a certain point I just stop holding it all in.

I think of all the feelings and memories I've kept inside and as the emotions wash over me it starts to overwhelm me and I do something I haven't done in so many years, I cry. I cry over all that I lost and all those that I will never see again, all the memories that are now so far away.

Entropy doesn't know what is wrong with me but does know something is definitely wrong. So not knowing how to help she just sits with me and quietly chirps, "Good, good." she keeps repeating that word a few times until I get some type of hold on my emotions.

I think I found the answer to my questions. When I first met Avalon and helped him I was reminded of one of the only real friends I ever had, and with that came so many other memories that I have ignored for so long now. I think I've been using work to keep my mind off of these thoughts for a while now.

After recovering enough to stop crying and stop spiraling down an endless road of old memories, I reach out to pet Entropy and let her help me calm down. After several deep breaths and some time I'm doing better, I make some tea and try to think through my life trying not to break down again.

Ever since I came to this world I didn't think much about my last one, always burying myself in different things to learn and train to distract myself from negative thoughts. After all, why think about what you can't change? But it was Avalon that indirectly brought back some bad memories when he was treated badly on the train.

After thinking through it on my floor for an hour in silence and after a few more tears, I think I know what is nagging at me so much. My past life will be forgotten and no one will remember a large part of who I am and how I lived. If I died today then the new friends I've made will never know so much about who I am, and I know I would regret that.

But I can't tell them about it even if I want to, and it hurts to hide so much from them. But beyond that, I think I fear them never knowing who I was and what I've done. I fear my story would be forgotten, with no one to tell it and no one to know who I really was. After wallowing in my sadness for a while longer I feel determined to not let that happen.

If I die I want to be remembered for who I actually was and not who they think I am. Filled with a determination to fix this and put my fears to rest I walk back into my workroom to start thinking of ways to solve this new problem. If I'm going to write down my life I need a way to keep it safe from others and for it to only be used if or when it's necessary.

And I think I have a good way to do both, illusions. Illusions let me store a drawing and if I can draw I can write, but to do this I'll need to do it properly. I start by finding my note on a spell I used for my model planet, the Base Frame spell, it lets me attach several illusion spells together so they can interact and work properly with each other.

The spell has a limit of twelve but I think I can fix that and modify it to fit my purposes better. Before starting on that I start on how I'm going to store the information itself, and I come across the first illusion spell I ever used. This spell lets me draw with three colors on a white canvas.

I start by stripping down the spell to make it as simple and cost-efficient as possible. The spell isn't that complex so it only takes me an hour to finish it. The finished spell has an average book page-sized area to draw in and costs very little to cast and maintain.

The part of the spell that takes the most magic now is the amount of detail I can draw in. I increased the detail so I could write with more accuracy and precision. I enchant the spell into a small sapphire to test it and see if I did anything incorrectly.

After some tests, I fixed a few problems that popped up and refined the spell a little more before moving on to the next part. This spell, that I'm calling the Page Spell, is very simple to the point that I even removed the part that lets you draw, Why? Well, I'll need to write everything down and that will take many pages, the more pages needed the more magic it will take.

If every page has the ability to draw in it would be a massive waste of magic as that small cost stacks up. So instead I'll have the Page spell work with another spell to do the drawing part, so I'll only need one spell to draw with and not bloat the magical cost by attaching that to every individual page.

This spell to go with the pages will just be called the Pen spell. It's very easy to make as it's just the drawing part of the original illusion spell. Once I'm done with those two spells I start on what's going to tie everything together and make it work properly, the Base Frame spell.

Right now it can only hold twelve spells but that limit will be the first thing I remove. The reason the limit is there in the first place is because the math used in the original spell is lacking in several areas while also being less than efficient, limiting the spell's effectiveness. Over the weekend I'll spend my time optimizing the spell to work with the Page spell and Pen spell.

Considering how cheap both spells are, I should be able to fit several dozen pages on a single small gem without going over its magical regeneration rate, and bigger gems should provide much more capacity. I work late into the night determined to fix what has been bothering me.

Eventually Entropy demands dinner from me and I stop my work to feed both of us, before deciding to not run myself ragged and get some sleep.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :]