I spend the summer reading and playing with the other kids, along with doing a few small crafting projects. I appreciate having a real bed to sleep in but I find myself missing the goblins.

I read books about skyships, both fiction and nonfiction. I carve a few models out of wood, but my [Woodworking] skill isn’t terribly impressive yet so there’s not much in the way of detail and they’re kind of asymmetrical.

I don’t neglect Clairvoyance, either. I realize I’ve been putting more work into tangible things, because I like hands-on work, but I shouldn’t neglect the unique advantage I have in access to a skill set few other people have. [Aura Sight] has already proven invaluable on several occasions.

It’s funny how I don’t technically have access to magic yet, but this is still kind of magic. I just can’t help but wonder why.

I get this strange feeling that humans somehow discovered psychic powers of some sort before I died. I make sure to have plenty of tea on hand before trying to think too hard about that, though. Although I don’t like thinking about millions of lifetimes of violence, I can’t help but be curious about what wound up happening on Earth.

The auras around living beings are more complex than simply their base “color” giving off concepts of nature, humanity, and monstrosity. I think I can glean more information from them if I look more closely and focus. Humans in particular have complex auras, so I decide to start off with plants. By comparing the auras of a healthy plant and a sick plant, I can pick out the concepts of health and sickness.

Your Clairvoyance (Aura Sight) skill has increased to level 3.

Corwen’s previous two reincarnators were disappointments, but I do try to collect the handful of skills they managed to unlock. [Psychometry] is a handy one. Examining an object to detect any vis still clinging to it from being handled by someone.

It leaves me with a blank at trying to figure out how to explain to a trio of toddlers why I keep staring at things for long periods of time. Juniper imitates me to try to see what I’m seeing and is quite put out that she can’t.

Juniper throws a tantrum. “Waaaaa, I wanna see the magic colors too!”

Anise sighs and forces a smile and says, “Hey, June. Want me to read you a story? We just picked up a new children’s book. One you haven’t seen before! It’s got lots of pictures of animals and monsters in it.”

“Oooh!” Juniper exclaims, her previous sorrow forgotten for the moment.

To cheer her up, I build a mobile representing the Tiganna System. Each of the nine domains is just a basic disc as I have neither a detailed topological map nor ability to carve accurate mountains and rivers into it, but I paint little maps onto them, cross-referencing library materials to copy them down.

“Your rivers are crooked,” says a boy’s voice from over my shoulder.

I just roll my eyes and turn to look. He has thin blond hair and looks to be about seven. Not one of my cousins. I’m pretty sure I recognize most of them by now. Most of us are dark-haired here.

“Rivers are s’posed to be crooked,” I retort. “Who are you?”

“Rowan Talgarth,” the boy answers. “I’m going to be a knight!”

“A knight, huh. You going to be a good tank for an adventuring party?”

“The best tank!” Rowan exclaims. “I could even stop little babies like you from getting hurt!”

I hang the domains by thin wool threads from a wooden ring, and add a small glowing crystal for the skymote, Tiganna.

Congratulations! You have crafted a Poor quality map. Skill acquired: Crafting (Cartography)

I was expecting to get a [Woodworking] or [Painting] level from this, but [Cartography] is probably even more useful given the field I intend to go into. As a bit of an afterthought, I add one of my better skyship models to it. Given the scale, this little skyship would be twenty miles long, but an accurately-scaled model would be too small to see.

As something I spent a lot of time working on, my crafts should contain a fair bit of my own vis. [Aura Sight] isn’t that different from [Psychometry], in principle, it’s just about detecting vis in the air around a being as it’s leaving their body, while [Psychometry] is about detecting the vis that’s accumulated in something. Vis leaves body, gets stuck in an object, eventually leaks out of that object, but until it does I should be able to detect it.

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I suddenly realize why I haven’t even unlocked anything as basic as [Meditation]. I can’t sit still. I always have to be doing something. Even repeatedly making stone blocks is doing something.

I spend some time at Grubwick to check on the goblins’ advances and give them some ideas. Dropping off a stack of diagrams I drew back in the comfort and warmth of Corwen Hearth, where I have easy access to things like paper, pencils, and flat surfaces. Milo’s still working on teaching them Common so they can’t actually read yet, but they can certainly interpret a picture or copy an example object.

Once the goblins been told to develop something, they do so quite energetically. I feel that their supposed laziness is just related to having no quests that demand them to change anything unless a Villain rises for them to do his bidding. Milo decided not to be a Villain but is still busily trying to unique the local goblins into a corporate empire. If they can get me soda, I don’t care how evil they are.

I build another model skyship. My detail work is improving, and for this one I decide to try making the four sails out of cloth instead of trying to carve them from wood. Wool isn’t ideal for this, but we’ve still got some spidersilk cloth leftover from adventurers hunting giant spiders. I’m allowed to use some of the Basic-rank silk as it isn’t good for much else. Not sure how even materials have ranks but whatever, it’s that sort of world.

Congratulations! You have crafted a Poor quality toy. Your Crafting (Woodworking) skill has increased to level 2.

It will be nice to eventually make stuff higher than Poor quality. I get skill levels and congratulations for them, but as I haven’t unlocked magic yet, I can’t actually make them fly. If I had Alchemy, I could extract the concept of flight from a feather and infuse it into the item. With Wizardry, I could paint a few sigils onto it.

That’s all fine and good for toys, but real skyships have cores. Cores have gravity cheats and only skyships with cores can pass beyond a system into inter-skymote space. Before I can build a true skyship, I will need to acquire a core. This isn’t a problem I will need to deal with anytime soon. When I need one, I will find one.

Before I know it, another swarm season is upon us, and I feel like all I’ve accomplished this summer was making a few toys and doing a lot of reading. I haven’t even gotten a skill for all the reading yet. Hmph.

It occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, I have somehow managed to live five million lives but never built a skyship before. That’s only encouragement, but it does mean that this is going to require more work than simply reading a book or doing something once.

The sky turns red on the turning of the season at the beginning of October, and Aunt Heather gives her usual announcements to the Hearth about what monsters she has scryed on the surface this year.

“We have a bad year coming in,” Aunt Heather says. “Many of the monsters on the surface are Heroic or Epic rank. Entire packs of Heroic werewolves led by Epic alphas.”

Whatever force is spawning these monsters doesn’t care about actual wolf social dynamics, but that isn’t saying much considering all the other things it doesn’t care about, like biological plausibility.

“There are Basic and Elite ranked jackalopes running around,” Aunt Heather goes on. “Hunt them if you like but stay close to the walls and retreat if you hear any wolf howls. The only fliers I spotted were Basic rank bats. They’re bigger than animal bats, but anyone at Basic rank should be escorted by someone of Elite rank when outdoors unless you are confident in your ability to hit a fast-moving flying object.”

The older kids, of course, turn this into a challenge, and bring out the sort of bats that are used in sports to take out the monster bats. There aren’t many adult Basics here. Anyone who hasn’t reached Elite on their own is helped to make it there like Meadow was.

Since there’s no way in heck I’m going out to play with Epic werewolves, this makes for a surprisingly peaceful swarm season for me. Milo’s staying at Grubwick this year to help teach them and make sure nothing weird happens again. He’s got his own challenges to deal with.

I turn four without much fanfare. Maybe I’ll even manage to turn five without a disaster. (No, I shouldn’t think things like that.)

Once again, we hole the New Year festival, with the lights on the trees shooting into the sky. It’s starting to become routine, but no less magnificent. The Great Orb slowly turn violet to mark the start of another year.

It is now Year 734 of the Age of the Green Fox.

As if on cue, snow begins to fall, dusting the trees and starting to accumulate on the ground. This reminds me that I have yet to have a proper snowball fight in this life.

Two feet of snow drop on Corwen overnight. Come morning, we celebrate the coming of winter with snow battles. I build a snow fort, a snowman decoy with a hat, and plenty of ammo. Most of the kids are older than me or too small and clumsy to be a threat, but I’m small and… somewhat less clumsy.

Griffin sneaks up to my snow fort and pelts me in the face with a snowball right between the crenelations. (And and two years old, he doesn’t even know the flat “teeth” of the snow fort are called “crenelations”.)

I don’t get any skills for it, but we have a lot of fun and I’m honestly not sure I want to clutter my character screen up with [Snowcrafting] or whatever the heck the skill might be called. If I ever have to rely on a snow fort for survival, it will probably unlock then anyway.

After a day of winter fun play, we all gather up in the Hearth in the hearth next to the hearth (because we have to use the same word to mean three different things) to warm up and drink some of Aunt Myrtle’s tea. It’s times like this that I can forget the trials of other lives and just be a kid for a bit.