“We really need some meat, as much as I love eating fruit and veggies all day, I’m practically dreaming of steaks now,” Grace pouted, as she stared down at the half eaten apple in her hand.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I sighed, then had a lightbulb moment. “Oh! We need a freezer!”

“We do, and that storm could probably help you with that I’m guessing?” she grinned at me, her eyes brimming with gentle affection. Gosh, my heart…

"Yeah!" I said enthusiastically. "Let me make the changes really quick. The tree and magic will do the rest."

As I closed my eyes to concentrate and envisioned what I needed, I thought I heard her say something like, “You’re so cute when you get excited about magic.”

Regardless of the cute girl whispering, I had a job to do. I needed a staircase down into the ground a wee ways, followed by a hallway out of the tree itself. I wanted the freezing temperatures to be away from the main tree so as to avoid having the perpetual cold damage it in any way. I created a sort of bubble of tree under the ground that would be full of flowers that did the reverse of what the heat and light flowers did. It was kinda as simple as that, although it would need a door at some point.

“Alright, done,” I said, opening my eyes again. “There’s going to be a way down to it from under the entryway staircase.”

“Nice,” she smiled, finally taking a bite out of her apple. “I love that you can just change things on the fly like that.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m cheating and when Esra turns up she’s going to explode or something,” I laughed, already imagining the grumpy old woman pottering around my grove telling me how I’d done everything wrong.

“I’m not sure if I should be worried or not when she comes back,” Grace joked. “She sounds pretty scary.”

“Nah, she’s harmless,” I said, thinking back on her. “She’ll act like she hates you, but when push comes to shove, she’ll like you.”

The storm still raged outside as we continued to eat breakfast, and every now and then you’d feel the whole tree vibrate as a particularly hard gust of wind rocked the structure. Rain lashed at every window, but was otherwise muted by the thick living wood walls. Honestly, now that we’d shored the place up, it was kind of cozy in here. All we needed was a roaring fireplace and some good roast… damn it, there’s the meat problem again.

“What do we do while the storm clears up, can we just leave?” Grace asked after a while, having finished her food.

“We could,” I nodded reluctantly. “But if we came back in, it would put us outside the tree. I don’t really know if it's safe for us to be out there. Which means, I guess, that we might not be able to come back into the grove if we find danger out in the mundane realm.”

“Ah shit, so we have to wait it out?” she winced, leaning down heavily on the table with her elbows. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“I can think of a few things,” I murmured mildly, pretending to be very interested in the stem of an apple that was sitting on the table.

Grace gave a laugh. “Uh huh, but other than that.”

“Well, we could explore your powers,” I said thoughtfully, giving her a good look. “Come to think of it, if it’s okay with you I’d like to take a good look with my mage sight.”

“Oh! Do you think I have mage sight now?” she asked excitedly. “Do I get glowy eyes now too?”

“As if they didn’t already,” I muttered to myself, just loud enough for her to hear.

“Oh my goodness, come here you flirt,” she grinned, pulling me over into her lap like I weighed nothing. I gave a squeal of protest that was brutally snuffed out when her lips descended onto mine.

We’d shyly made out this morning when we woke up, but hunger had quickly ended that. It was apparently hard to get really into kissing when your stomachs were growling and rumbling louder than the storm outside.

This time though, Grace was being strangely dominant, and I found that I loved it. Her hands slipped up under my shirt to cup the soft curve of my waist, the brush of her hands there causing a thrill of lovely sensation all across my body.

The kiss itself was slow and unhurried, sensual without being urgent. She even shifted me into a more balanced position in her lap without breaking contact. Yeah, she definitely wasn’t a novice at this, no matter what her lack of self confidence told her. I was melting under her care, breathy half-moans coming up from within, only to be caught on the tip of her tongue as it briefly dove inside to flick at mine.

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I honestly had no idea where my own hands ended up until we broke apart again, where I found they had tugged at Grace’s shirt until I could get at her abs. Well, I couldn’t say I blamed my wandering fingers, the transformation had done nothing but wonders for her soft muscle tone.

“Whoa,” I breathed, feeling a little light headed. Had we remembered to take breaths?

Burying her face in my neck, lips gently pressed to the skin there, she murmured, “Whoa, indeed. Kissing you is amazing.”

“I’m not even doing anything except wiggling my lips,” I giggled as her breath tickled my neck.

She gave a snort of amusement. “It’s working just fine.”

“That’s good, I want to be a good kisser for you,” I smiled, leaning my head to the side so it was resting on hers.

“Cute,” she chuckled, before she gave a tired sigh. “We should try and achieve something while we’re stuck inside though. Work out what I can do. We can make out too, but like… the real world exists out there.”

With disappointment I had to agree, we needed to find the guys and help them, as well as figure out exactly what the hell happened to Grace with her transformation.

“Okay, well,” I said, carefully getting up out of her lap. “First I should look at you with mage sight.”

“Okay,” she nodded, then gave me a hopeful look. “Then can you try and teach me to use that mage sight thing?”

“Sure,” I told her, affection warming my heart as she gave me puppy dog eyes.

I turned my mage sight on and had a look at her, and what I saw caused my eyebrows to make a slow migration towards my hairline. She didn’t have a mage’s web-like aura, but she didn’t have a bubble like before either. Instead, she had what looked to be a sort of magnetic field of magic, arcs of it twirling and twisting about her limbs as she shifted.

Carefully, I pushed my hand towards it, watching it bow inward without resisting as my magic pushed it back. On a hunch, I created a little floating yellow light, one of my many new cantrips, and then pushed it towards her. The moment it came into contact with Grace’s... I’d call it a maginetic field for now, it was sucked into the lines of the field and distributed around her, almost like a shield.

“Whoa, I’m glowing!” she exclaimed, looking down at herself.

I clicked my mage sight off quickly and gave a short bark of a laugh. Oh dear, it looked like my spell had been hijacked! It swirled around her as though the magic had been pulled into a line that stretched through every part of her maginetic field.

“Well, that’s odd,” I frowned, wondering what the hell was going on.

“Hey, I can feel it!” she exclaimed, standing up out of the chair abruptly. “I think I can…”

Suddenly she lit up like the surface of the sun, my spell magnified a thousand fold, the light all but blinding me.

“Holy shit!” I said, crying out in pain. “Stop! Turn it off!”

“Sorry!” she said, and the light disappeared, including the original spell she’d had swirling around her.

“Fucking hell,” I blurted, rubbing at my eyes. “God, we’re lucky I didn’t use the little fire-starting spell or my tree would be burning.”

“Sorry,” Grace murmured, looking embarrassed.

I shook my head and cupped her cheek briefly. “Nah, that was just as much my fault as yours.”

“Okay… but what happened?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her pretty brow.

“Okay so, around you I can see a sort of magnetic field, except it’s made of magic. I’m tentatively calling it a maginetic field. Imagine how the magnetic field around the sun looks, all weird and warped and a little fucky. Except it’s all around you. When I touched that field with my light spell, it got grabbed, and then I’m pretty sure you just amplified the spell with your own magic,” I explained, the act of putting it all into words solidifying my theory about what had just happened.

“No way… so that means I’ll be able to like, take spells from you and then make them super powerful?” she asked, understanding dawning in her eyes.

A brief image of Grace flashed through my mind, standing in her armour while loops of fire circled threateningly about her, and a grin slowly spread across my face.

“Yeah, and not just that, but you might be able to saturate that field with blank magic too! Who knows what that would do,” I said thoughtfully and just a little excitedly. “Maybe you could even power some of those fancy magical artifacts with it? We’ll need to test it all more, including having you pull it in closer, because having you accidentally suck my dome shield up wouldn’t be ideal.”

“Yeah true… okay but…” she began, giving me the puppy dog eyes again.

“Alright, alright,” I grinned, spontaneously leaning forward to kiss the tip of her nose. “Let’s see if you have mage sight.”

“Okay, what do I do?” she asked eagerly.

“It’s sorta like focusing your eyes, but you should be able to feel another set of insubstantial eyelids. Magical ones, which you might be able to feel since you did the whole lamp impression earlier,” I told her, explaining how it felt to me.

I watched her intently as she frowned, struggling for a few moments. Then just like that, the insides of her eyes glowed green, sort of like how a cat’s did in the dark. It was honestly kinda pretty, like I was looking into a pair of opal eyes.

“Whoa!” she breathed, a grin spreading across her face.

“Cool huh?” I smiled, stepping closer to her. We hadn’t been touching for like, a few minutes now, which was a few minutes too long. I wasn’t addicted to her touch, I swear.

“This is awesome,” she told me happily, wrapping an arm around me as she gazed around in wonder. “All the magic around us! It’s beautiful!”

“It’s especially intense with the storm outside,” I nodded, turning my mage sight on again too while I leaned into her.

“I’m so happy,” she told me quietly. “I’m like you now, I can stand beside you without feeling like a weakling.”

“You never needed that to stand next to me,” I told her sincerely. “I always just wanted you.”

“I know, I know,” she groaned, pressing the side of her head to mine. “Tell that to my dumbass brain.”

I could empathise with that, definitely. Brains were dumb and mean and they needed to leave us poor people alone sometimes. I mean gosh, I don’t need to think about the fact that spiders have millions of tiny hairs all over them, but my brain says otherwise all the time.

“Okay,” I smiled, turning her so we were facing each other.

I leaned in, cupping both of her cheeks in my hands so I could tilt her face down to kiss me. Our lips met and wonder sparked all over again. I really, really liked kissing her, it was incredible. The emotions and sensations it sent tumbling through me with each gentle press or flick of the tongue were heavenly. I wonder if we could go back to bed and just make out all day?