Wait, they weren’t here to destroy my grove… it was, it was… oh my goodness, oh my fucking god! She was here, she was alive! I mean I’d known that part, but still! She was right there!

My breath hitched as joy swelled within me. Either that or the sprint over had stolen all the air from my lungs. “Esra! Esra!”

“Careful, you little shit,” she growled as I hurtled towards her. I didn’t listen, throwing my arms around her elderly body with a laugh that was all full of bubbles.

“Esra! Oh my god, you’re here!” I said happily, squeezing perhaps a little harder than I should have.

“Let go of me you… you… pest!” she said, swatting uselessly at my back. “Let go of me this instant, and tell me what in the god’s name you have done to this place! What is that preposterous waste of space you have in the middle, and how did you even… make it?”

Of course she’d get annoyed at my tree. Typical Esra Rihm, always grumpy. Well, I knew exactly where I fit into this little dynamic between us.

“Are you saying that I figured something out that you don’t understand?” I asked with a shit-eating grin.

“I am not saying anything of the sort, young lady,” she said with a glare. “I’m sure if I got a good look at it, I’d figure it out in a heartbeat, but I want to hear it from you!”

I decided not to point out that she’d just admitted to not understanding what it was currently, and instead I looked up at the massive tree in question. “It was just a happy little accident.”

“You… you…” she sputtered, gawking at me like I’d just grown another head. “That was an accident? How? How did you create such a gargantuan monstrosity by accident?!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. This was too much fun. I was assuming that her being more grumpy than I remembered was just her version of excitement at finally seeing me again.

“Well, you see that plant there?” I asked her, pointing to one of the growth energy plants. “I created those things because I was getting tired using my magic to grow everything manually. They’re a little finicky and they keep dying and need constant maintenance, but anyway, they work great to make growth magic. Then, I had those trees over there making water, but—”

“Wait,” she groaned, putting a hand up to stall me. “You made plants to do the growing for you?” she asked, sounding suddenly very exhausted. “My word, I really wish that whiny little child of a man had waited just a week or so more before burning my damned grove to the ground. It didn’t occur to you to simply use tenders like a normal bloody mage?”

I laughed. “I have those too, look! Here comes Cream now!”

Cream hopped up, her head bobbing timidly as she used the motion to get a proper look at my mage-mother. Poor prey animals and their sideways facing eyes. She was so cute, and I could tell she was a little apprehensive about Esra. She’d never met her after all, and Esra could be very scary, especially to small, sweet little buns like her.

“You named it,” Esra said in a deadpan. Then, with a sigh, she placed both hands to her face and took a deep breath. “Please continue to explain that accident over there.”

Oh my goodness, I forgot how much fun it was to tease her. I had missed her so much, and being seperated from her like that, right when we’d been starting to bond? It had sucked big time.

“Right, so I had the trees out there making water and funnelling it into an aquifer underneath the plateau, right? But then this big magical storm came, and it pumped so much raw energy into my grove that everything was overflowing with it, and my plants took that and turned it into growth energy. When the water trees had all grown as high as the limit I set on them, that energy had nowhere else to go but down with the water… where my big tree, which was much smaller at the time, found it,” I told her, enjoying every moment of the wild tale. I could see her left eye twitching like mad as she listened, it was great.

“I experienced one of those storms before, yes,” she murmured, deep in thought. “Never seen the like, back in that other fertile zone. I warded my grove against it after not an hour under its ire… but if it could be harnessed as you say… my, my… my sweet little apprentice isn’t just a pretty face. A pretty face created with my incredible pedigree of course, but still… where was I? Oh yes!”

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She was silent for several long moments, glancing between the ground, the growth plants and my tree. Her eyes were lit from within, the telltale sign that she was using mage sight. She began to mumble to herself again, shuffling up to one of my growth plants to get a better look.

She gave a gasp and leaned down even closer, nose practically touching the outer leaves. “Impossible… Impossible… but could it? No, no, no, but that’s impossible! But why? Would could govern such an impossible discrepancy?” she muttered, gently parting the leaves of the plant to get a better look at it. Glancing up at me, she wore an expression that was somewhere between awe and outrage. “You broke the fundamental principles of magic, as practiced by those of us within the nameless garden. What you have done here should be impossible!”

“Yeah well, it was really cool, because I got to turn the big tree into a house!” I grinned, shrugging off the whole, breaking magic thing. I kinda knew I’d done that when I made the things… they had not been keen to exist, and still weren’t entirely happy with the situation.

“The big tree… is a house,” she said with another one of her deadpan stares. Then she tilted her head and nodded thoughtfully. “Well actually, if you have the sheer amount of raw power that you seem to have just laying around, I can’t see why you wouldn’t turn that freak of nature into a nice little tower.”

“Hey, it’s my happy little tree,” I pouted. “Don’t diss the happy little tree.”

“I am not dissing the happy little tree,” she told me with a sniff. “I am simply calling it how it is.”

“You are totally dissing my happy little tree right now, and it’s making me sad,” I mumbled, making fake sniffling sounds while I rubbed at my eyes. Was my fake crying working? Was she taking the bait? I took a peek to make sure...

“Oh, you have got to be joking,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “Stop the theatrics young lady, you’re far more intelligent than that.” Oh gosh darn it! She saw through me again.

The gentle shushing of feet on grass heralded the arrival of the rest of my friends, who were glancing between Esra and I in total bewilderment. I guess they probably heard a lot of our bickering. I really, really hoped that she was nice to them. She needed to like my friends, and especially Grace.

“And just who are this lot?” Esra demanded, folding her arms and glaring at them all. “My word, you have an awful lot of explaining to do, young lady.”

Oh dear… she was not going to be playing the kind old lady I guess. Time to do damage control!

“Uh, that one is my lover,” I said, pointing to Grace. “She’s from Avonside, and so are the rest, except the two obrec of course. They are Stonechaser clan, they’ve been helping me tank the wood market in Millowhall so I can suck the whole region dry of gold.”

Okay, so maybe I was spinning the truth a little here, but it was for a good cause. That good cause mainly just being Esra’s hilarious reactions to what I’d been up to in her absence, but still… I couldn’t resist.

“You… they… gold? What?” my mage-mother sputtered, staring at me with wide, horrified eyes. She seemed to decide that the most pressing issue was Grace as she turned to glare at my girlfriend. “You, who are you? What does a warlock want with my... uh, apprentice? If you harm her…” she hissed, eyes narrowing as she squinted menacingly at Grace. “I’ll… I’ll… leave you alone, because being bound to that brat is punishment enough.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed, trying to sound grumpy even as I fought the laughter that was bubbling up within me. “She’s really happy being in a relationship with me, thank you very much! Right Grace?”

“Um… yes, definitely,” Grace nodded. She looked just a little overwhelmed, which was understandable. Esra had bowled into my grove like one of those big storms and was currently making a big mess.

“Ah, not very bright then,” Esra scowled. “Either that or blinded by love, considering the little wretch that she’s gotten herself involved with,” she continued with a sideways glance at me.

“Awh! I missed you too,” I chirped happily, bringing her in for another hug and earning an indignant squawk for my troubles.

It seemed like she might try and protest that for a minute, before she mellowed and gave me just a slight little nod. “Alright, I will admit that in my journeys since we parted ways, I have somehow found myself missing your pestilential presence by my side.”

“Now you can say sorry to Grace,” I said sternly, narrowing my eyes at her. “Or I won’t tell you about how she got her magic. It’s a really good story, trust me.” Not to mention one that I probably needed to tell her, since she might actually be able to understand what had happened.

My mentor gaped at me for several moments, then swapped to staring at Grace. “Fine, you may court my apprentice, but I expect you to treat her like the precious young woman that she is.” Awh! She really did care! I was precious!

“Oh, definitely,” Grace replied, giving me a loving look. “I’ll also make sure she actually eats and bathes between getting lost in magic stuff.”

“Ah, good. I approve…” Esra smiled, happy with my girlfriend’s answer. Then her smile faded as she turned her eyes on the rest of them. “I expect that there is a very interesting tale to tell. You don’t, by chance, have food in that massive accident of yours do you Ryn? Food that has not been grown on a plant?”

“We bought so much meat in Millowhall, you have no idea,” I grinned, wrapping my arm around Esra’s shoulders and steering her towards the accident. It was totally time for a celebratory feast… assuming the buns were up to the task.