In the end, it was a whim that saved my life.  The energies that brought me and my surroundings to this world had locked onto me years ago, and it was only a matter of timing.  If I hadn't sold my studio apartment and bought a five bedroom farmhouse, mostly just because I could, and because it was different, then instead of twenty acres of arable land and one mouth to feed, I'd have landed in this place with a couple city blocks full of panicked and hungry people.  I'm explaining this from the wrong spot.  Two years ago I got fed up with the intentionally poor design of the public transit system and moved somewhere there wasn't one.  Being well aware how bad the winters are, I perhaps overprepared, by paying probably too much to get everything off the grid.  Three weeks ago, I enjoyed my first harvest.  Unfortunately, four weeks ago my localized patch of reality was stolen and used to build a new fantasy setting.  I'm explaining from the wrong spot again.

Okay, first thing I knew something was wrong, the power was out.  I almost didn't notice because I thought I was still asleep.  I thought I was asleep because I was staring down a mental list that didn't really have any words to it.  My soul radiance, for lack of a better term, allows for the existence of a few different proto-spells, the condensation of who-I-am into branches of magic.  Each of these fragments of potentiate could conceivably become an entire set of spells, and my existence means that somewhere out in the newly forming universe, all these spells that  could exist, somewhere do.  Myself, I only have so much magical potential.  I had to pick two.  Being half asleep at the time, I'm still not sure what I passed up, but whatever it is, I can't imagine it being better than what I got.  Shapeshifting is definitely the best superpower, even if it starts out so weak that it's basically just makeup.

I got out of bed to go find out why the power hadn't cycled over to battery, and I saw a form on my lawn.  I met its eyes and I knew.  Chirrt says that even though everyone here knows what I knew in that moment, that I should explain for the future, and honestly I don't know how to explain, but I'll try, mostly because Chirrt says that we are in the history and we must write the books or all the books will be written by those who do not know.  She has such a way of words and honestly if I could leave it just to her I would, but according to her she must write the words in her way and I must write them in mine, and the ways in which we agree and disagree are the formation of history, so with her words alone we live in a time barren of perspective.

I console myself on the fact that that means it's not just me she's bullying into doing this.  The figure explained with its eyes in a way that wasn't words that I, essentially, am a seed crystal that it's using to build a new universe.  To get exactly the tone and feel of universe that it's aiming for, it used multiple seed crystals and mixed in just the right ways to make everything form into a cohesive whole, so because I'm standing here as a human in a house with solar panels, the beginnings of a food forest, and denim pants, I must exist in a world in which humans live in houses with solar panels and wear denim pants while they tend their food forests.  All of that is just a bonus.  The figure didn't care about food forests or denim pants or solar panels.  It would have been just as happy to have grabbed a few city blocks and condemned this world to be one where the public transit system was designed by Robert Moses.  It wanted me for the unique radiance of my soul.  By being here, this is a world where it is possible for humans to learn to shapeshift.  Not a power I ever had back home, but supposedly my soul allows for it.

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My power was out because the figure wanted me to use at least one piece of magic to get the pump primed, and it didn't care which one, so it encouraged me to use my handy new repair spell.  At least I got two spells and not just the one.  I trudged down the stairs into the basement and I saw the disconnection with more than my eyes and I focused myself and made the connection whole.  Explaining exactly how any of my magic works isn't something I'm really prepared for, because my language doesn't really have any of the right words, seeing as how there wasn't any magic that someone using my language was capable of using or explaining until now, but it was a combination of seeing the flaws, accepting that the world had reached the point where these flaws brought about disorder, and then gently insisting that things be brought back to order so the whole could continue functioning.  Except magically.  This branch of magic isn't really just fixing things.  Understanding them first is an important component, because I don't necessarily have to fix them into the same way they used to be before they were broken.  That's the important thing, really, because that power of understanding and of making things better isn't limited in a way it might sound from y inability to explain right.  The whole world is a thing and I can understand it and fix it even if I don't use magic to do it, because that crystalization isn't finished yet.  What I do matters, and what I choose to do is the kind of thing that people in this world choose to do.  That's why when my chunk of farm met up with Chirrt's chunk of open water, I invited her in to stay and work together.

This isn't just a world where humans have food forests and weaverlings sail on ships that use their own webs to catch the wind, this is now a world where weaverlings dock their ships at human food forests and help with the harvest.  This is a world where peoples cooperate and accomplish greater tasks.  This, now, because I focused at just the right moment, because I meddled with something I had no business touching, is a world where my food forest contains crops I've never seen before but which Chirrt recognized instantly.  I'm living in a fantasy world, and I don't want it to suck.