How to make a floating island? Scratch that. Before we need to know if it was a floating or flying island. The difference was more than semantical. Floating meant buoyant but static. Flying meant dynamic but fleeting. Something that floats gently descends. A flying thing can plummet. There are exceptions like a popped balloon with a rock tied to it but the poor balloon doesn’t plummet because it floated. Exactly the contrary, actually. It plummeted because it was fragile and no longer held the characteristic that kept it up in the air. So I made a floating island that couldn’t pop. Because it would hover over a city and crashing stuff from high up on urban areas is usually very bad. You can quote me on that.

How does one make floating rocks or make a rock float? The answer came to me in one of my nightly bonding sessions with my lovers. Or lover. Mirina was working hard on an all-nighter sorting documents. She fired all town governors and had a ton of ledgers to go through. But with Julia, Marlowe, and Vanagon helping her, I would only be on their way.

I was admiring Jocelin’s naked satin body. It was good underneath the heavy Academy uniform, but up close and without covers, it was simply divine. Her body was well-proportioned and feminine. The uncanny texture and color of her pearly satin skin as she laid down on the bed slowly breathing was mesmerizing. She propped her head up on a shoulder and turned on her side to look at me. I followed the movement of her pearly gates with bated breath.

“Do you like what you’re seeing that much?” The cool beauty teased with a smirk.

I could only answer with a slow nod, which she answered with a content giggle. Jocelin’s hand reached for the tip of my ear and kindly pinched the lobe, sending a shiver down my spine. My tails quivered behind me, drawing another burst of short giggles. I ran a hand up her side and gripped her shoulder blade, then brought her close for a kiss.

“You’re gorgeous,” I whispered once our lips parted. “You’re perfect, Jocelin.”

She bit her lower lip and narrowed her eyes, absorbed in thought. Then she smiled back at me, “Praise my maker.”

I held my breath then sighed. Finding the strength to push this whole creator stuff away, I joked, “I’ll make sure to thank your mom for bringing you to this world.”

Her gentle smirk never faded, “Of course.”

I was expecting her rebuttal but Jocelin was just too cool and centered. She was conciliatory and detached. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angry. It put me off-key and I stuttered, “I mean, I did weave the first silk-folk, but each of you has a spindle of living silk in your cores to weave new babies with.” And to replace lost fabric when they got hurt too but I didn’t need to go that far.

“You made Julia.”

I sensed a whiff of jealousy in her statement. It was one of those trap statements without a correct answer. So I went on a tangent.

“You noticed, didn’t you?”

I went with a defensive answer. I didn’t mention what I thought she’d noticed. That hopefully would prompt her to reveal her intentions. But all I got was a fierce glare and a nod. The whiff became a puff and a full breeze. I was burning to ask what was wrong but I knew it was a landmine. I caught a reflection of the bedroom’s mage lights in her eyes, signaling moisture. I caressed her cheek.

“Silly silky girl. Your fears are unfounded.” Again, what fears, for crying out loud?

She blinked her budding tears away and sniffled. “Are they?”

I felt like playing minesweeper, reaching the last two mines in a corner with no logical solution as to which is which. You need to guess and your relationship is on the line.

“Wanna see a cool trick?” I asked but wove a spell that transformed the canopy of the bed into a mirror. “That illusion spell will record and then replay whatever we say and do. I’ll link it to this series of controls here…”

I created the play, rec, pause, and replay buttons floating in the air above us. After I explained what they do to her, I let her play with it.

“Just hit record, say out loud what you fear, and then you can watch your illusionary copy repeat it to you. You’ll see it from an outsider's perspective and it might help you understand it better.”

I felt bad for tricking her but I never stated I knew what was going on in her mind. I guess I could use a spell from the Pekothian mind-benders but just the thought sent goosebumps crawling under my skin. That was a slippery slope I didn’t want to even glimpse at. I start using mental magic and soon I would be enslaving people.

“Can you leave and not eavesdrop?” She asked me with beady puppy eyes. I didn’t make Silk-folk’s eyes too realistic for fear of the uncanny valley. They were beady by design.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Sure. I’ll be outside, drop the sound ward and call me when you are done.”

I shapeshifted into a white fox and walked out of the room, phasing through the door. I sat on my haunches and curled my tails around me, forming a colorful cocoon. I gave up on hiding any of them, except the three useless stumps. I had a bit more than half a year until they grew back. I could hear the castle guards patrolling down the hallway but they never came close to our private apartments. I had powerful wards keeping things away and even those third-rank guards would be nothing against someone who could break these magical protections.

I guess one could use Adamantite to… break… these… wards… by draining them of their magic.

Damn.

I took the gnarled rod fragment of my first attempt of hardening from the item box and noticed a slight drain in my Energy pool. I usually never paid attention to the cost of taking stuff from it because my pool and regeneration were so big it was useless too, but now I carefully measured it. The little chunk of Adamantite was dozens of times more expensive to store and retrieve than any other item with similar mass. I created two Force platforms. One held a rock and the other had the Adamantite chunk on top of it. Without fueling them with extra Energy, I waited to see their duration. The one below the Adamantite flickered and vanished a minute later, letting the metal bounce on the carpet while the one holding the rock gave no signs of weakening.

Another reason to not let the process of hardening Adamantite become public knowledge. Almost any magical protection will succumb to Adamantite if it can’t sustain the drain. I needed solid countermeasures for that before even thinking of letting the cat out of the bag. I wasn’t afraid of divine espionage because the Gods probably already knew that and they believed they had a delicate balance going on. More like stagnation, but they wouldn’t introduce world-shaking new advancements.

“I’m done!” Jocelin chirpily shouted from inside the room. I walked back inside and she was sitting on her ankles in the middle of the bed. I jumped on it and she picked me up. “What a cute little foxy,” Jocelin cooed as she ruffled my fur.

I asked.

She chuckled, “Much better. You were right. My fears were too silly once I heard myself saying them out loud.”

I hesitantly remarked. I guessed her woes were about our disparaging status. Jocelin was from a wealthy merchant family but she was a commoner, while Mirina was Royalty and I was me. I as in the nation’s founder, the creator of the Silk-folk, and now the patron Goddess of the country.

“I knew you were interested in me since the first day of class,” she confessed. “At first I didn’t believe a girl could be interested in another and later when I learned who you really were in your previous lives I… I didn’t know what to do about my feelings so I locked them deep in my dungeon.”

There was a joke to be had here about going deep in her dungeon, but that wasn’t the time for that.

“But then you proved to be so ordinary! I thought it was all an act. You were so rich you could sleep on a pile of kingmetal coins if you wanted. You faced kings, gods, legendary monsters. I only had my looks.”

She gave me the glare for interrupting her confession with a joke. I was relieved and glad I could keep my thoughts shut about her deep dungeon. That was a dealbreaker of a joke.

I scoffed. I pouted, pretending to be offended.

“Oh. What else, then?” She purred, clearly fishing for compliments.

“Romance?” Her sultry voice became dangerous as she crept over the bed. “I thought you were just interested in my deep dungeon,” On all fours, she wiggled her hips and bumped her nose against my snout.

I raised my head and licked her chin, moving on to her nose, lips, cheeks. Jocelin tried to lift herself but fell on her back with fits of giggles while I pounced on her and face and savaged her skin with my tongue until she lifted me from her stomach.

“Enough, you naughty fox!” She dropped me on one side of the bed and rolled to reach the nightstand. Opening the drawer, she took out both of our magical happiness toys. “Or I’ll have to punish you.”

I would’ve raised an eyebrow if foxes had one.

Ignoring my growls, she pushed the buttons on her device and it stuck to the air. Looking at the other one she couldn’t control because it was bound to me, she sighed. “This is fun. If I had two of these, I could climb up to the sky.” Then she released the one floating in the air and mimicked climbing a ladder with the two fluffy toys in her hands.

She glanced sideways at me and smirked, “Thank you?”

I shifted back and took both toys. I tried it with the two of them. It was a matter of having enough arm strength to lift one’s body with one arm while moving the other device up. They were like the "unmoving rods" (but these could move back and forth on their own, wink-wink) from that famous pen&paper RPG game.

“You can use mine too?”

“I enchanted them. Of course, my items would work for me.”

She sighed and shook her shoulders dismissively. “Okay. What epiphany did you have now?”

“It’s about the floating house I want to make for us,” I confessed. “I was in doubt as to how to keep it afloat, but the answer is right here,” I pointed at the Pódi Deluxe devices in my hands.

“You are making a house float on those things?” She gasped.

I sputtered and laughed. “No, silly. Just the floating enchantment. We don’t need a house floating on a bunch of toys.”

She pulled me closer. “Okay. But now, how about you make me float with that magic of yours?”

Guess I was going to delve tonight. With a thought, I dimmed the lights and put myself and the devices to work on making a woman float without leaving the bedsheets. We were having lots of fun together when Mirina entered the room and caught us in the middle of something out of a gay version of that famous Sanskrit text on the meaning of life.

"Why is there a rock floating in front of the door?"