Getting back to the Emporium to pick up Student Green, I was pleased to see her smiling happily after her parents sent her off with goodbye hugs. 

However, once we reached the street, she started asking about the basement walls excitedly. "Father told us how you made stone walls start to grow in the basement. We did not believe him, so he took us down to show us. How did you get them to grow like that? Will they stop growing? It's not going to ruin the shop, is it?"

Laughing, I said, "Slow down."

"They will only grow to the top of the room. I was careful about making sure it would not do any damage, so please don't worry about that."

"Okay, but how?" she demanded. "You're not even there, and the spell is still going."

"I did not directly cast the spell, so I don't have to be there to maintain and control it. You probably saw the ritual on the floor. Each ritual is designed for a specific purpose and under control by rules written into it. Think of it as a short-term enchantment if that helps."

Going back to the same gate guard, I informed him that Student Green was returning to campus at this time.

Stepping back into the campus, I told her, "Well, I hope you had a good time with your parents. I need to be returning to the library before I head home."

She said thanks and took off to wherever she needed to go. I walked back to the library, slightly unhappily. It would have been nice to get another hug. Oh well, it was probably a mistake on her part.

Back at the library's front desk, I found that everything was going well and that only one person had posted a request for help. I smiled at hearing that, taking the jar and logbook, I returned to the desk.

Almost as soon as I sat down, the same girl that had brought me the first book for my research request was back. This time she had two more and another girl with one. The first book was again one I had already studied. After adding a note to it, I looked at the other two. Surprisingly, they were both new to me. Not sure that they would contain anything I would find useful, that didn't stop me from giving the girls three coppers each book. With another copper, I asked them to return the book with the note in it to the proper shelf.

So far, this idea seemed to be working, but it needed more time to tell for sure.

After reviewing the two new books and making a few notes from each, I flagged down a librarian asking him to put those two books away with the notes I left in them. Of course, he also accepted the two coppers I gave him for the task as well.

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As it began to get dark out, student Green showed up with her group of friends to look over the new board. Coming over to the desk, she asked, "Do we have to sign up to find the books you want or just bring them over?"

"Just bring them over, if I'm not here, ask the front desk to hold them for me. Be sure to leave your names in the books on a bit of paper marking the location."

Saying they would, they went off in search of the books I needed.

After another hour, I had to send two more books I'd already reviewed back to the shelves with a note and three coppers each. On my way out for the night, I stopped at the front desk with the logbook and jar and asked them to hold any books collected for me with the student names.

I got to my new home quickly and received a bit of a shock. The doors that I had tried to build into the walls had failed. The door built into my area was too small, and the hinges were barely attached. Neither did they allow movement of the door. They were both solid one-piece globs of high steel. I found this out when I pushed on the door to open it. Rather abruptly, the door broke off from the solid 'hinges' and clattered loudly to the floor.

The door to the storage area looked more like a trapezoid than a door. Also, it had two solid hinges on each side. Not that those mattered, the wood was wedged into the doorway so tightly that there was no way to open it.

Mr. Green came down, apparently drawn by the noise I made earlier. "Was it supposed to be in there like that?"

"No. The walls are correct, but my instructions for the doors were a bit off, it seems. Sorry about that, I've never built doors or hinges before."

He laughed a bit, "I'll have someone put in new ones tomorrow."

"Fair enough. Though you might suggest bringing an ax too."

Mr. Green laughed again, clearly not mad at me.

Reaching into my bag for the pouch I had prepared, I handed it to him. "This is the payment for the next four years of rent. I'm going to go ahead and start settling in if that is all right with you, Mr. Green."

He seemed to want to say something for a moment but only said, "Thank you. Have a good night, sir."

The first thing I did was to clean up my new abode with a quick spell. It was a bit cool down here, so that was the next thing I tackled. On the floor in the center of my new room, I started planning out a new ritual. I wanted it to maintain a pleasant temperature and humidity level so that it was always perfectly comfortable, clean, and dry. It took me a dozen attempts to get it just the way I wanted. I tried setting it up for a year, but that was way more mana than I could supply. Lowering the duration down to only a week fixed that. Then I added a way for it to collect more mana from the ground as I had done for building the walls. If I remembered to add more mana each night before going to sleep, that should have the ritual lasting all four years soon enough.

Just then, I realized that I had worked on learning runes and rituals for nearly three years just to be able to put this one mildly complicated ritual together. With that thought, I laid down on the hard, but now comfortably warm, floor to sleep for a couple of hours.