Lunch was quick, no one wanted to linger over travel food after all, and once it was over I was free to work my magic. Literally. First, I needed to get the plateau properly protected from the elements, which meant starting to create a wind break all around the edges.

Something I’d learned outside in the void was how to create trees with bark that was both harder than normal and more supple than normal. I’d also watched as the plants outside had funneled and controlled various elements and resources. One of those had been simple water.

With both of those things in mind, I started work on the first layer of trees needed to stop the wind that was even now threatening to pick up. It had to be a relatively short tree, something hardy and tenacious. I didn’t choose any one species, instead forming my own tree that drew inspiration from many.

Different to the plants I had created thus far, I used the leaves of the tree to draw in the raw magic of the garden, which gave them a purplish blue colour that glowed faintly in the dark. Next came the trunk, the bark being that sturdy kind that I had discovered. The core of the trunk would be taking in the energy from the leaves and converting it into physical matter. Namely, water. Lastly, the roots would push that water deep into the ground to create an aquifer within the plateau.

This would hopefully solve any groundwater problems I had if there was ever a drought or whatever, and I’d be able to draw it back up to create the lake I had wanted. With the lake, I’d then be able to have streams running out in all directions that would cascade over the edge in really pretty waterfalls. Was this mostly all for aesthetics? Yeah, but so what, I wanted my Grove to be pretty.

I began to plant the trees a few meters from the edge, but after only three of the things I was drained to the point of dizziness and had to stop. Throwing most of my clothing off, I fell into the grass with my chlorophyll drawing in that sweet sunlight. It was a strange feeling, being thirsty for sunlight, and soon I was drifting in the warmth and bliss of the sun’s rays.

I felt my intake grow and grow, which I thought was odd, but I didn’t dwell on it, my mind fuzzy with calm warmth as it was. Why did it matter if I was getting more sunlight than normal? That is, until I felt a pressure on my stomach. My eyes creaked open like the wonky door on the shed back at my parent’s house and I looked up into the worried eyes of Grace.

She was speaking, but I couldn’t really hear her.

I couldn't hear anything at all? That was odd. I tried to sit up, and it was a terribly slow process, like I was wading through water or something in ugg boots. Looking down at myself, my eyebrows shot up when I saw that my skin had become… extremely plantlike, overlapping leaves with little magenta flowers sprouting from random points across me. Moving was hard, my body refusing to deform with any speed at all.

It was all rushing back into me now though, the flowers and leaves growing in reverse, until finally I was back to normal. Normal and almost naked. My pale skin was vaguely pink with the sudden chill of the wind. Crap, I was in my underwear again in front of Grace.

“Where’s my clothes?” I asked, my voice sounding a little rough, but otherwise okay.

“Um, here,” my friend replied, passing them all to me in a bundle, her gaze very studiously glued to my face. She looked concerned, brows furrowed with worry again, although her cheeks were blushing up all pretty again.

“Are you okay?” I asked as I hastily put my clothing back on. She was rather clearly embarrassed by my nakedness.

“You were like, full plant just then, it was… I don’t know. Am I being too overprotective here? I keep jumping up and trying to… you know, save you from things and stuff. I don’t want to be annoying,” she said, her expression tight and her eyes turning downcast.

“What? No! I like it,” I told her sincerely. “It’s nice to be cared about by someone.”

“Oh? Really?” she asked, looking back up at me with a nervous laugh. “I totally thought I was being annoying.”

“I haven’t really talked about my past… but um, I haven’t really had the best experiences with family and friends until recently, so it’s a bit of a novel concept for me that someone actually gives a shit about my wellbeing you know?” I said quietly. I hated talking about my past, it was depressing and it made other people depressed, so why bother?

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“You hinted at it once or twice,” she said with a sad smile, her hand coming to rest tentatively on my arm. “I uh, guess I’ll just have to care more than you’ve missed out on huh? ...Well, I mean like all of us, the whole group I mean. Not just me, because that would actually be weird,” she chuckled awkwardly as she furiously backpedalled.

I found a smile on my face out of nowhere, briefly wondering how it had gotten there before I just let it happen and nodded. “We can all care about each other lots, yeah.”

“Guess you have um, more planting to do and stuff?” she said quickly, changing the subject.

“Yeah, it’s going to take me forever to get these damn trees down, they take so much energy,” I grumbled, frowning at them.

“Can’t they grow themselves?” she asked curiously, walking over to press her hand to one.

“I don’t actually know? I figure it would take forever for them to mature and the wind might break them or something in the meantime,” I mused, but my mind was already working. She’d given me an idea.

What if I didn’t have to be the one to push the growth magic into them? What if I could make another plant to do that for me? It would probably end up still being slow, but faster than either planting them and waiting or doing them three trees at a time and then passing out, turning into a bushy version of myself in the process.

“Oh Grace,” I said, giving her a grateful smile. “You just gave me an idea.”

“I did?” she asked in surprise, before she sent a cocky smile back. “Damn I’m good.”

“You are,” I said, a lot more sincerely than I meant to.

With the idea of funnelling magical energy into plants to help them grow, I first needed to figure out what was different when a plant drew in energy from the base loam of the garden versus when I fed it my own energy. To test it, I made my way to where the next tree should go in the line and created the seed. Instead of feeding it large amounts of raw power though, I gave it the barest trickle of magic.

I could see it going into the seed too, it started as a fluffy mist coming off my body, but it rapidly began to twist into a small wispy tendril of energy. It was like watching wool being spun into thread. Okay, so my whole body was responsible for the creation of this stuff, which meant I couldn’t really copy the function.

What was interesting to me though, when I really looked at my body, was that it almost looked like I had two bodies overlaid on top of one another. There was the recognisable anatomy of a human there, pulsing with magic and everything. There was also something else, a less distinct side to my body that almost looked like, well, the anatomy of a plant. I could see the treelike structure of my plant veins and many more pieces that I simply didn’t recognise.

None of that helped me with the task at hand though, I still couldn’t really see how the growth magic was being formed. Not that it would stop me, if I couldn’t see the mechanisms my body used to create the growth energy, I’d just figure out a different way to do it.

I stood there and stared at the energy as it slowly trickled out of my body, just watching it, tasting the smell of it on my magical senses. It was definitely magic, but… different. More like the elemental magic that floated around out in the void than the basic stuff alongside it. What if I just… could I mix some of those elements together to create it? No, none of the elemental magics felt like they would mix into this.

You know what, fuck it, I’ll just make it work on the fly. I started with the roots as the collectors this time, like I had with my first plants. From there I built the framework of a small, hardy little shrub. Proper wood and bark that was dense and thick enough to survive any battering it might receive. The hard part came when I got into the core of that wood. It needed to convert that energy into that growth magic stuff as it flowed up through the plant.

Taking a chance, I grabbed some of the energy I was still feeding into the windbreak tree and pushed it directly into the wood of the new plant. While it flowed in, I began to create the building blocks for that elemental energy converting plant I had seen earlier. I didn’t go all the way though, suddenly taking my mental hands off the shrub while simultaneously pushing more growth energy at the mechanisms.

I watched with tense concentration as the two clashed and broke over and over, until there was a little spark, and suddenly it all fit together. I’d done it! The wood of this plant would now produce growth energy! Before it could fall apart on me, I very quickly formed leaves and flowers, the flowers especially would be releasing that growth energy, directing it at whatever plant needed it nearby. Then I was throwing it into the ground and planting a bunch of seeds for the trees I needed to grow.

Eagerly, I stepped back to watch. The shrub was slow to start, I could see it coming close to dying as it struggled with the wacky plant magic contraption I had saddled it with. It held in the end though and soon enough the flowers were letting out a slow but steady stream of growth energy towards my trees.

I gave a whoop of victory and leapt around in the air a few times from the sheer excitement. Fuck yeah! I was doing it! Magic!

“Whoa there bunny girl!” Grace laughed. “Enough with the binkies, you’ll accidentally throw yourself off the edge!”

“Bunnies?” I asked, yet another idea exploding through my skull. Oh. My. Goodness. I knew what my tenders would look like!

“Oh yeah, my family has two of them, they’re so damn cute,” she replied, unaware of the path she’d just caused my imagination to take. “When they get excited that’s what they do, jump in the air all spazzy like. It’s called binkies.”

She had no idea what she’d just unleashed upon my unsuspecting Grove… no idea.