23rd Light beneath the tenth Moon

3761 Cycles beyond the Dark

722 Years after the Repentance

Entry: 1/010

Dear self,

I went into the woods today again but didn’t find anything except a few Jolly Darlings, which I almost never have a practical use for. There were a few patches of what might have been herbs but they appeared to have been eaten.

If there is something consuming this quantity of enchanted forest herbs then it will cause me problems very soon. The Jolly Darling are safe though, since they are actually a rather unpleasant mushroom if you try breaking or eating them. Anything other than smelling or licking them provides a noxious experience if you don’t know how to prepare them properly.

I found a young kobold hanging around the property when I came back despite it being after closing hours. Our shop only operates publicly in the morning before noon and anything after that requires a prior arrangement like I had with the Whirlstorms. I only found him because of the wards alerting me, but he was bound and tangled between three tree trunks by a network of spiderwebs. The sprites hopefully amused themselves doing that and won’t feel like doing something worse soon.

The kid was quite nervous when I brought him into the shop, so I wanted to go easy on him despite him coming outside of my working hours. He had an enchanted necklace with a stabilization charm. Luckily, it was one of the ones the Simulacrum had handed out otherwise I would have been spending the afternoon frustrated at my suspension. The kid had manifested his transformation and was having trouble controlling it. The matrix was grounding his native power to prevent instability. Apparently, he was hiding his transformation for the past few weeks and no one knew. When I saw him transform into a tiny pony during the appraisal I think I could understand. Knowing his sisters they would just give him a moon of trouble if they found out. He was a little mortified from his embarrassment but it was so silly I couldn’t help laughing at him.

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Seeing the necklace I figured out how that Simulacrum was improvising enchanted items without access to my manifold, and as I suspected he was taking unsealed items lying around the shop and melding them somehow into a coherent effect. I don’t know how he managed it with so little issue, but it did mean that this necklace for example was slightly less effective than a purposely made working. I took out a swath of Marrowdrim blood to help attune the boy to the enchantment which will help the grounding effect support his native power. Since this was one better left with its owner I told him to come back tomorrow so that I could work on the item further. Since he wants to hide its purpose from his family I suggested adding a foci to the working to give it a demonstrable purpose since he already had the matrix it would need to function. He might not have actually wanted to come, but he was responsible enough to come over for a boring check-up after receiving the Guild message even though he didn’t technically have to, which tells me he is more mature than I honestly thought he was from the last time I saw him. He did scurry off as soon as I told him we were done for the day though.

I had to look around the area the sprites caught the boy in. It was strange for them to invade the warded path towards our house and attack travelers. I found digging marks nearby that scratched at one of the tree roots. The tree itself was protected from relative harm by the sprite magic in the forest. There were a couple of glowing embers pressed into the ground in the digging marks so I suspect it was the same critter that dug the nest I found the other day. They way it was right underneath the webbing trap the sprites made suggests they were trying to keep the boy away from it rather than senselessly assaulting him.

Hope we fare well.

Regards,

Me.

~*M*~