As the meeting wore on, we got into the details about how and what to do. Before that though, we needed to know who would be joining. Obviously the five of us who’d been adventuring around the place were in, but that still left the rest.
Duncan signed up without a second thought, while Melody and Kelsey were hesitant because they had no idea how they would help. Troy explained that they could pick any non-combat job they wanted once we figured out what the order would need, and that won them over.
Bray had a rather amusing stipulation for his membership. He wanted his own workshop in my grove, as well as a blank check for making cool shit. Troy and I both readily agreed. Claih piped up then, asking for the same thing, and we also agreed, so long as she helped teach bray and vice versa.
Then came the two obrec, who were enthusiastic, but also didn’t want to just up and abandon their clan. We said we’d give them time to talk things over with their folks, and that was that, we had our first new members.
Troy wanted to get started on planning out our new compound, but I had other ideas. Big ideas… crazy ideas, wild ideas. I was excited, so very excited, because I’d had a little hunch about something for a while now, but hadn’t really had a reason or opportunity to test it.
That required me to remove everyone from the grove though… and my friends were not happy about it.
“Don’t break anything,” Troy told me warily as I dropped them all off in the mundane world.
“When can we come back in?” Melody asked in a whine.
“I’ll let you all back in soon, I promise. No more than an hour or two,” I told them, then disappeared back into my grove before they could complain further.
Of course, that still left me with one grumpy old woman to deal with.
“Just what are you planning?” Esra asked, her face inches from mine as I reappeared.
“Jesus fuck,” I swore, stumbling backwards. “Personal space, damn it.”
“Well?” she demanded, stepping back into my face.
“I’m going to talk to my grove for a bit,” I explained, wondering if she’d understand what I meant.
Judging by the frown she gave me, I don’t think so. “When I said that your grove had a mind of its own, I meant in the way that a common beast does, not another person.”
I shrugged. “Let me try?”
She rolled her eyes, but after a moment, she nodded. “If you wish. Talking to your bunnies can’t be that bad.”
I grinned, biting my tongue as best I could. Those were some famous last words mummy dearest.
She disappeared in a swirl of autumn leaves with nothing but one last suspicious look, and then I was alone in my grove. Well, not entirely alone.
Cream bounded up to me, having sensed that I needed her. Sitting down there in the grass, I opened my arms for her and gave an adoring smile to my smallest friend. “Hey there little bun, we’re going to have a chat, you and I.”
She tilted her head at me for a moment, but obliged and hopped into my lap.
“So, we’re going to be having a lot of people visiting soon, and I was thinking that we need to remodel a little bit,” I explained to her twitching little nose.
Her earnest bun eyes blinked back up at me, one of her lopped ears trying to perk up a little. She was clearly listening to me, I just had no idea how much of this she was understanding.
“Now, I know we’re told that we can only shape our grove on that scale once, but they also told me that you weren’t very smart, and that’s a lie, isn’t it?” I asked her, giving the bun a loose hug.
To my surprise she nodded, then tilted her head and made a grumbling, growling sound.
I gave a laugh, I couldn’t help it. She was so damned cute with her big fluffy cheeks and her floppy ears. “Alright, unfortunately, I’m not as smart as you are. I can’t understand bun language, so we’re going to have to go at this slowly.”
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Another nod. Goodness, she was so cute.
“So can we like, merge again and make some modifications?” I asked hopefully, all my concentration centered on reading her fuzzy little face.
This time I was met with a thoughtful tilt of her head and a paw scratching at her chin. She sat like that for several moments before giving me a shrug. Almost flooring me in surprise, a word came out of her little mouth. “Try?”
“Wait, you can talk?” I blurted, excitement flooding me like warmth after a shot of whiskey.
“Try,” she said again, and I swear I heard amusement in her little bun voice.
“Alright, yeah it’s probably pretty difficult to speak english when your mouth wasn’t designed for that,” I winced, giving her an apologetic look. “Sorry about that.”
“Good as be, no change,” she told me, little fuzzy hands coming up to hold my cheeks. “No change.”
“Alright, you like how you are then,” I laughed, tears in my eyes over how awesome this was. My buns were talking! At least, cream was. I wrapped her in a spontaneous hug. “I love all of you buns,” I told her gently, scratching between her ears. “You’re all so good to me.”
I got a quiet little squeaking chirp in response from my fluffy cuddle buddy, and I let go with a happy sigh. “Okay, so what do we do? Same as when I created the grove?”
A nod, followed by another bun smile. Bun smiles were a little different to human ones, the eyes didn’t change much, and unlike dogs they hadn’t had enough time to evolve eyebrow muscles. Her ears perked up and her mouth tilted upwards though, and that definitely counted as a smile in my book.
Closing my eyes, I leaned down and placed my forehead to her fluffy one, reaching out as best I could. As I had done when I created my grove, and again when I created the buns, I extended my magical sense of self beyond my body, seeking out the mind of the grove.
I touched against it almost immediately, then flinched when I felt a voice speak directly with my mind. “Hello Ryn.” The voice wasn’t angry or anything, despite my reaction. It was more… gentle, actually.
“Hi,” I sent back, wondering at the odd sensation that this contact brought on me. My grove’s consciousness had grown since I last communed with it.
“You wish to change us?” it asked, mental tone full of curiosity.
“Yeah, like this,” I said, showing the mind that was my grove an image, an idea for what it could be.
“Intriguing, why?” it asked, again curious. The weird thing about its mental voice was that I could hear a multitude of… well, ears, listening. Were my buns listening in on the conversation?
Composing myself for a moment, I sent, “Many more people will be visiting, some making this place their home. I wish to physically isolate the area they will visit from your heart.”
“More minds wish to visit? Interesting,” it mused, and I received the mental image of a bunny tapping its chin with a little fluffy finger in thought. “New minds help me grow. Did you know that? I know not how or why, I know not if other groves react the same way… but I do. Yes, I will reshape myself for you. Please continue to treat my smaller selves with care, they are happy, and therefore I am happy.”
“I’m glad,” I said, wishing I could hug this personification of my grove. “You’ve been amazing for me, so wonderful in so many different ways.”
“I have seen, this makes us bright of heart… no, happy. It makes us happy,” the voice of my grove said warmly.
Then, just like that, the conversation was over and I felt reality shift around me. It was quick, a mere heartbeat, then it was done. One moment my grove looked as it had since the beginning, the next it had entirely changed.
Under the hood though, it wasn’t as simple, not by a long shot. A vast quantity of energy had just been consumed, so much so that I could feel a void surrounding my grove within the garden. Magic was already rushing in to fill that vacuum, and I knew exactly what would happen when it reached me. I’d just created a storm of magic. Still… it had worked, it had most definitely worked.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, gazing out over the new terrain from my new position atop my tree.
Gone was the simple plateau, the tiered cake of rock and earth. I couldn’t even say it had been replaced though, because that would be a disservice to what had just transpired.
What had been my original grove was now the top of a dead volcano, with the lake now at its center. My windbreak of trees lined the top of the gentle slope, spell plants arrayed in familiar patterns across the caldera. The topography was more broken now, small hillocks of varying sizes breaking up what had once been a flat plane of grass.
My tree stood proud in the middle, and from there I was able to look out at a new and awe inspiring little world. A few terraces made their way down the steep slopes of the volcano, extra space for me to work on spells, before it hit the same mist that had been there before. Anyone entering that mist would find themselves rather abruptly floating in the nameless garden.
This was critical for any potential defence of my new volcano, because out from one of its sides sprang a narrow ridgeline of craggy rock. This bridge over the mists arrived at another ancient volcano, although this one was styled a little differently.
Where the main one had been made to look like it slowly fizzled out over millennia, the second one had been styled to look like it had exploded, violently. Now it resembled a wide craterlike valley with a rocky ridgeline surrounding it.
The true reason for the massive power draw lay in the size of this new area. At almost fifty miles in diameter, it was fit for a medium sized city to nestle within, all while leaving plenty of room for farmland. It was gargantuan, and I was truly amazed that it had even worked. Somehow, my grove had managed to make itself physically larger on the inside, while still maintaining its present size and power limitations within the nameless garden.
It was perfect, and I felt my heart swell with pride for my buns, including my biggest bun of all, the grove itself.
“I think the grove did pretty good, don’t you,” I asked finally, turning to look down at Cream, who stood at my hip.
“Burrow. Try,” she agreed earnestly, staring out over the vista with a twitching nose and big, alert brown eyes.
“Yeah,” I sighed happily. “Burrow really did try, and boy did it succeed.”