Friday - Day 6 - 13 May 2021

  After I gave him his marching orders, Thomas hauled all kinds of stuff for me down to the basement while I worked. Anything synthetic that hadn’t been rained on to piles of gathered materials for me to make all kinds of new stuff with. I re-outfitted myself with new clothes and armor, testing out the piles of bug chitin as a bonding agent and reinforcement option for my boots and strike points on my gear. My gloves doubled as brass knuckles and my knee pads were Alchemically sewn into the work pants. Before I knew it, the biological equivalent to a stronger version of plastic was in everything I was making.

  My shield featured absorbent layers of chitin squished between alternating slats of wood and steel and then my helmet became mostly chitin with a thick layer of metal on top of it but chitin-infused cloth on the inside to stay comfortable. The glass lenses also were infused with chitin, lending them the strength to be almost shatterproof.

  The more I played around with the material, the more thoughts of specifically hunting down large bugs plagued my brain. This stuff, this bug chitin, was a missing link. If anything, it’s what plastic wanted to be, a magically reworkable material that shed water and become almost any kind of bonding agent or rubber. The best part about all of this was that Alchemy allowed me to work without any waste. If something was a bit too small or too big or the shape was just a little off, within a minute, I could alter the fit or thickness to suit any need. All I needed to do was just add another chunk of material into the ritual circle and I was good to go.

  After an hour of playing God on the most minor of scales, I got dressed in my outfit plus the new armor and looked in the mirror. I didn’t hold back the grin. I looked like a cross between the Spartan amor suit from Halo and Mad Max’s wet dream. The color of my armor sat somewhere between a muddled brown and a matte black, breaking up the expected lines of my form. If I stepped into the woods, I could disappear into the shadows in three steps. My shield was barely heavier than it used to be but far stronger, the insect chitin lending strength and thickness without adding much weight. My shoulder pads, forearm bracers, and other flat spaces on my armor featured an extra half inch to an inch of chitin underneath the protective steel plates. Any place that I would expect someone to aim, the obvious spots such as chest or back or head or arms, was covered by thick plates of armor.

  But where my Alchemy really shined happened to be the sections of chain mail around the joints. They were an awesome mix of chitin and steel woven on top of each other. Due to my inexperience, I did have to take off my armor a bunch of times to resize and rework the fits due to comfort or lack of proper measuring, but now, I was next to indestructible.

  “You cannot be serious. You plan on working outside in that!?”

  Sandra’s hands sat on her generous hips as she looked at me askance.

  “You’re not going to war, you’re moving dirt!”

  “Babe. One, I have to get used to wearing this. It’s the end of the damn world. Two, if it doesn’t fit well or sit right on my body, I need to know for my own comfort but also for when I make more armor like this for other people.”

  I will admit, maybe I did look a bit ridiculous. I stood outside of our house in my armor sans the shoes and gloves. My toes were dug into the dirt and my hands were pressed up against the walls of the house where I had already put up stone slabs as reinforcement.

  “Yes, but I am here and Thomas is here. Nothing is going to attack you while we’re here.”

  I pulled my helmet off so she could see how little I believed her. “It’s not that I don’t think y’all won’t protect me, it’s more like, why take a chance? I’d rather wear the armor in case something decides to jump out of the brush or if one of your plants gets a little peckish.”

  Thomas gulped as he looked up. The mutated flytrap mouth sat open, swaying in the light breeze that marked this beautiful day. I started to laugh as he began to sprout bone armor.

  “I can’t argue with that logic.” He said, taking a few steps back.

  Sandra glared at him. “That didn’t do anything.” She made a gesture with her hand and a thick root ripped itself out of the ground and pointed at Thomas like a cobra ready to strike. “You’d have to jog a hundred yards that way to get away from me.”

  Thomas turned as pale as his bone armor. “I don’t remember her being this scary.”

  That same root shook itself like a dog and nestled back into the trough of earth it had created.

  I gestured all around us. “You remember when those ladies got ripped to shreds in the park when we were a hundred yards away? We couldn’t do shit except kill the things that killed them.”

  They both glared at me.

  Putting my hands up in the air for a moment, I shrugged. “Fine, fine. I’ll trust you both. Better not let me get eaten while I do this.”

  My gloves and boots sat next to me on the ground as I put my hands and feet in the dirt, my sense of the outside world starting to dim. I focused on the steady energy pulsing in my core, closing my eyes as I visualized how I wanted this to go. My exposed skin sank deeper into the earth, a deep pulse thrummming beneath me. That same vibration sang to me as I slowly pulled it into my core. Not a yank or a hard pull, but more akin to diverting part of a river to turn a water wheel. I didn’t need to disrupt anything, just stick my hand into that river of energy and use a bit of its power to shape the world around me.

  The key lesson I had learned when using my Terrastria, my Earth Magic, was that dirt and stone did NOT want to move. Dirt and stone like to sit right where they are and chill. And if they had to move, slowly was best. Trying to do so at any other speed made the cost of the work skyrocket. It was the truest expression of, ‘slow and steady wins the race’.

  And so I obliged.

  I used my energy to maintain a solid connection with the earth below, manipulating the deeper flows of power up into myself and then right back out into the surface dirt. As if guided by invisible hands of a giant, my house began to sink just a bit as the dirt underneath it and around its foundations flowed outward and then upward. Like wet sand, I could feel the landscape reshape itself around me, pushing me out of the way as dirt flowed around and up my house. What used to be the yard of the neighbors’ on both sides of the house and my own lawn in front of the house shifted, rocking gently as dirt was pulled from all directions.

  Time did not register in my mind as I sank into a meditative state. My emotions were calm, still, as peaceful as an undisturbed meadow. And in that frame of mind, I felt my desire made manifest. All the stone I could feel far below me but not actually see slow shifted upwards flowing like geysers of wet clay. I worked, shaping the stone to form the new foundation and walls for my house. My will encompassed the stone, massaging it like clay until it encased the structure of my home completely. Most of the rock I kept at the bottom of my house to shore up the foundation keeping it ridiculously oversized and deep. I had plans for that. Images of multiple basement rooms filled my mind but I pushed that to the side for later.

  I oh so carefully did not forget one of the key necessities of modern life that help keep everyone safe and healthy. Toilets. But again, my dumbass decided to go to college for a useless ass degree instead of going to trade school and learning plumbing or something useful. My magic felt its way around the myriad pipes coming out of my house and I realized, no water pressure from the city means no plumbing. But the infrastructure would still work if I jury-rigged it. Essentially, I broke off the piping underneath the house, sealing off any water piping built under the neighborhood and then moved the earth underneath the house to have a massive sewage tank. Now, we could still use the toilet if we put water in the tank above the toilet, it would actually flush and then the human waste would be dropped twenty yards below us. Once a month, I could use my Earth Magic to bury the waste even further below and super easy clean out the tank.

  With my triumphant innovation buoying me, I felt a strange sort of peace, like a hand on the shoulder of a dedicated painter who had worked long hours and was looking to fix a flaw in his masterpiece. I took painstaking care to not disrupt the roots of Sandra’s plant, easing the stone and dirt around so as to keep them alive and healthy but not so that they would have a good purchase within the stone walls of my home. I know that over time, even the tiniest of plant roots can worm their way into cracks and shatter boulders. I even made sure to shape and strategically place vents around the structure to allow for some airflow. Last thing I wanted to happen was for a couple candles to choke us all out in the middle of the night.

  More time was spent shifting around the dozens upon dozens of animal corpses and monster waste from yesterday’s fight. Sandra’s plants had buried so much that the ground almost felt waterlogged with blood. I knew that this was nothing but fertilizer for the future but it didn’t need to be this concentrated. Like an underground excavator and tunneler machine, I shifted around the burial pits until the fertilizer was spread evenly throughout what used to be the back yard and even beyond. Sandra had big plans to make a food forest and she definitely wanted to take over the former neighbor’s plots for her own use.

  Considering she saved all of our asses by nuking a bug bigger than a bus eighteen hours ago, I was severely inclined to keep that beautiful bombshell happy. And if moving dirt was all it took, then I was even more convinced we were meant to be.

  Coming back to reality felt longer than the actual working itself. My sense of self retreated from the warm embrace of the land and back into my body. Opening my eyes hurt as the light pierced my retinas.

  My body had moved. No longer was I kneeling with my hands, feet, and knees in the dirt, but I was standing in front of an actual hill. A small one, but a hill nonetheless. Where a small, two story suburban home used to be now sat a country hill. All it was missing was a bit of green. I had tried to be gentle but moving earth on this scale does have consequences. I’d have to get Sandra to ply her art to give us some cover to prevent erosion.

  An actual hand this time clapped me on the shoulder twice and then hoisted me up to my feet like a ragdoll. Weariness hit me like a hammer to the face but as soon as my feet hit the ground again, I tapped into that flow of energy again, but only the tiniest bit. I just had to make sure I didn’t pass out while standing.

  “That was scary, but awesome.” I turned to see Elvis staring at the hill in wonder. “It was even weirder to watch it happen slowly. We’ve been here for two hours watching all of this.”

  “Yes, bossman.” Paul’s deep voice and thick accent more than anything snapped me back to the present. “This is just how Yoruba and Raguel said it would look. Well, almost. A humble throne for a humble queen.”

  Elvis and I gave him the strangest look.

  “You wanna run that past me again?” I said. “Just because you’re useful doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how weird you are. Who the fuck is Yoruba? Does this have something to do with the sunstone thing you brought us?”

  “Not you, your wife.” Paul nodded sagely, leaning forward to knock the dirt off his jeans. “My queen. This is not a throne yet, you must plant the stone.”

  Taking a deep breath was all I could really do even though it did not help.

  “Paul, you better break this down into English better than normal.”

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  His too-white teeth lit up into the biggest smile. “It’s not just a stone, it’s a seed. It needs a garden.” He pointed up at the top of the hill. “A throne, fit for the Aziza.” His face screwed up and his voice got quiet. “It’s not the right word . . . those who live elsewhere, next to Earth, afraid of iron and counting salt. My vision, from Yoruba and Raguel and Nyambe, they did not give me details. Only that your wife and this stone are more important than you know.”

  I heard the creak of Elvis’ grip tightening in his gloves.

  Thomas walked forward a bit, his stance more combative than I would’ve liked. Paul is definitely strange, but he’s been nothing but useful and a genuinely good person the last couple days.

  “You mean, like the Fae, a faerie?”

  Even I was taken aback at Thomas’ guess. I rounded on Paul.

  “I know you are not saying that I actually married a damn Faerie princess. I know she’s got magic in the kitchen, but that’s just being raised on a farm in the country. All southern gals know their way around a cast iron and a man’s stomach. It’s how they get us.”

  Thomas lightly kicked my iron shinguards. “If she’s touching iron, then she can’t be all Fae, right? That stuff hurts them?” He paused before shrugging. “I mean, not that I know anything. All I know about Irish Fae stuff comes from the Dresden Files and the Iron Druid series. Who knows what’s real.”

  Paul pointed up at the sun brightly shining down on us. “I am not saying anything. I am telling you what I have been told. But I am not the first nor the last to help her on her journey. You were here first. I am but a small piece of this puzzle. There will be more later to help her where we cannot.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. There’s enough trouble in paradise for lifetime and Paul’s hinting that my wife is at the center of it. I call bullshit. Magic being real is throwing off any kind of sensible planning.

  Thomas leaned forward. “Don’t worry bro, he’s probably just crazy.”

  Elvis nodded sagely as Paul blissfully looked up, his face catching the full rays of the gorgeous afternoon sun shining down on my bare hill of a home. We all stumbled back as the churned earth shook suddenly, the massive flytrap plant my wife had created erupting as it shook most of its trunk free. My eyes almost fell out of my head as the mouth opened up and my wife stood up.

  I had to hand it to Paul. In this light, with that pose and entrance, Sandra did look like a goddamn Faerie princess. Like the gentle hand of a giant, the mouth lowered Sandra down until she stepped out right in front of me. Her blonde hair caught the light as I took her hand, helping her step down like she just got out of a limo. Paul’s knees hit the ground.

  I hugged her before the situation got any weirder. Ignoring the people around us, I just picked her up while still hugging her and walked around the hill. “Ignore him, he thinks you’re an actual magical queen or something.”

  She didn’t know whether to smile or frown. Paul had been nothing but genuine and kind and hard-working but the reverence he shows . . . it’s a bit concerning. Offputting. The paranoid part of my brain kept wargaming out scenarios where I’d have to fight Paul and I didn’t like my chances. I’d only be able to win if I could get him to sit still, then I could use some kind of pit with my Earth Magic to bury him well below the surface of the earth. I’d need help.

  A lot of help.

  “Hey! Hey!” Sandra kissed me, pulling me up short. “I’m right here, pay attention to your wife.”

  Chuckling, I set her down gently. “Sorry, went to a dark place there for a minute.” I turned and pointed at the hill covering our home. “I do need to make a doorway in the front and the back, but that won’t take much time at all. What we do need right now is for that hill to be covered in grass and shrubs, vines and trees. The more plant life on top of that hill or around it, the more secure we’ll be. I can work on fortifying this whole place underground where my magic really shines.”

  “Stop thinking about all this. We haven’t talked in a long while.”

  I stopped. “You’re right babe, we haven’t really had the chance to talk since yesterday. Everything’s been crazy and then it got crazier and then it all decided to take a nosedive.”

  She punched me in the arm, her hand encased in a blue telekinetic shield. “And then! You almost! Died!”

  Stumbling to my right from the force, her punches sounded like metallic clanks as they spanged off the armor plates.

  I looked at her wryly. “You know, if I didn’t have armor on, I’m pretty sure you would’ve broken my arm just now. You pack a serious wallop.”

  Most of me wanted to just sit on our front porch with a stiff drink and discuss the insanity of the past week. Barring my recent landscaping renovations, we had plenty of other obstacles in the way of us catching up. I could tell by her face that she wanted to broach the sore subject between us but she didn’t want to bring it up just yet. And she’s right. Our telepathically forged mind-link is awesome on paper, but it is her power. It doesn’t hurt her to open the floodgates.

  For me, it’s migraine city. But I’m not dumb enough to be an all or nothing guy. Compromise and middle grounds exist for a reason. And my wife deserves better than to be agonizing over something we should be able to easily work through.

  “Hey, whaddya say we try that memory share thing again tonight or tomorrow night?”

  Her face lit up as she searched my face for any kind of teasing.

  “I’m not joking babe, but I am going to put my foot down on one specific aspect of this experiment.”

  I kissed the lips to forestall any kind of reply.

  “The deal is, we do it at my pace and at my comfort level.” I tilted her chin up. “You don’t know how strong your mind is with all that magic behind it. You could just as easily give me permanent migraines as you could turn my brain into soup. And as much as I know you like vegetables, I don’t want you to be married to one. Ok?” I kissed her on the forehead. “Deal?”

  She kissed me back, ferociously. “Deal.”

  I watched her saunter off, her hips swaying with satisfaction. Laughing to myself, I couldn’t stifle my grin. The best kind of compromise is when we both walk away happy.

  Realizing that I was tired didn’t really change my plans for the day. I had easily lost two hours or more moving all that dirt using magic, but I had plenty of work to do.

  “Well, aren’t y’all cute?” Thomas said with a cheeky grin. His arms were crossed and making kissy faces while Elvis turned a bit red. Paul was still on the ground kneeling, his head and hands in the dirt.

  “Shaddup.” I said, making my way over to my boots and gloves and helmet. “None of y’all know how good I have it, or what you’re missing out on.”

  Elvis sighed, his big hands unclenching. “Cassie used to be like that.” He looked at me and then down at Paul. “Do you think magic changes you? Or do you think it brings out what’s deeper in you? Like in your soul?”

  Thomas froze and spun to look at him. “You some kind of philosopher? Like a giant with a brain?” He looked at me with a wicked smile. “We’re basically X-Men knockoffs.”

  “Thomas, shut up.” I said. “Don’t act like there’s nothing to do.”

  “Oh come on. Elvis is basically beast, big and gentle until he’s mad but he’s got a real big heart under all them layers-”

  “Shut up, Thomas.”

  “And Paul, he’s Superman’s adopted kid or messed up clone with half the powers-”

  “Thomas. Shut up.”

  “And you’re Terra without the cool Alchemy or rage issues-”

  “I swear to God, I’m going to make Sandra cook a big ass meal and not give you any if you don’t SHUT UP.”

  Elvis snickered. “I always wanted a brother.”

  Paul, regrettably, stayed where he was just kneeling on the ground.

  “Elvis.” I said, pointing at Paul. “Put him to work. Or get him some food and then put him to work. We can’t be doing this shit in public.”

  ************

  My long day of recovery and slow work caught up with me. I had discovered that my grand-scale landscaping caused some unintended consequences. My back porch was gone. My front porch was gone. My fence walls didn’t connect to the house. At least I didn’t screw up my magic tree thing. After the sun went down, I treated myself and my wife to a slow scrub down with two pots of water and a couple of rags. Getting clean felt nice. I sat in front of my beautiful wife on our bed with the sunstone between us.

  Taking a few deep breaths, I picked up the sunstone and tossed it back and forth from hand to hand before setting it down with a slight frown. I swallowed my resilience, leaning forward to hold her hands in mine.

  “Are you ready for this?” I said with a forced wink. I smirked to make it obvious that I didn’t mean the horizontal tango. Not that that wasn’t on the table for later, but right now, we had to sort out this rift between us.

  “Is it bad that this is all I can think about?” She asked. “I get that it hurt but the connection, that was unlike anything I’ve ever felt.” Her blue eyes almost glazed over with wonder. “I could feel you, your thoughts, see through your memories. Intoxicating.”

  I squeezed her hands to bring her back to the present. “I get that. And that’s why we’re trying again.” I made sure to look her square in the eye. “And to make sure that we’re clear. It wasn’t like that for me. It hurt. It felt like a migraine married a cheese grater inside of my head. We can do this, but we’re going to do this a hint of a degree at a time. Any faster, and it’ll be a long time before we try.

  I smiled, letting her know that I was about eighty percent serious even though I was poking fun at an obvious old joke between us. She grinned sheepishly.

  “I promise.” Closing her eyes, she lowered her head a bit and let out a deep, slow breath.

  Closing my eyes as well, I forced my chest to expand and contract smoothly, keeping my breathing even. Bit by bit, thoughts fell away until only darkness and peace were my companions. It was at that moment, I both felt and heard a knock in my mind. Our connection vibrated gently, her telepathic tapping at my brain’s doorstep.

  Cautiously, I plucked at the door I’d so firmly slammed shut, making sure to work diligently but gently. The last thing I needed was to throw it wide open. I could hear her voice through the door.

  [Visualize it, picture the door. Imagine the wooden grain and the doorframe and a doorknob. It’s your mind. Make it real and it will be.]

  It couldn’t be that easy, but as I concentrated, it became easier. The edge of reality in our minds gained substance from my wife’s powers. Right where I could hear the light knocking, there was a kind of soft, yellow and blue light. Picking that as my starting point, I stared at it until that light shone as if peeking from underneath the door. From that visualization, it all came together. The light shone from underneath the door that stretched up to be just a bit taller than me. The brass handle closer to my left hand had a small deadbolt above it and right about face level, I could see a small window with a shade.

  Feeling a small grin escape, I didn’t open the door. Instead, I peeked through the curtain to see my wife with an exasperated expression on her face.

  [Oh come on! You gonna leave me out here or are you going to let me in?]

  I squinted at her. [And how do I know it’s really you?]

  My wife chewed on her lip. [Do you want me to tell you how you like your steak and the best sides to go with it? Or what you like in bed?]

  Laughing at her unabashed saunter just a few steps away so I could see that lovely white and yellow sundress she was wearing, I chuckled harder as I opened the door.

  [It better be you, cause I shouldn’t do this to another woman.] I said, yanking her in and kissing her deeply. I went to get a handful a bit lower but she smacked my hand.

  [Later, you horndog.] She grumbled with a smile and a shake of her head. [Right now, we’re going to fix this thing.]

  Hours passed as my wife walked me through creating a nice sitting room in my mind modeled after an old room in our house we used to have before we turned it into a music room. It was strange doing all of this, because it wasn’t something I could do. All of the visualization, the creation of what I was thinking into something I could truly imagine and yet feel, that was all her. Her powers bolstered my mind into making a space solid enough in my mind or my soul or whatever it was that made me me, that I could host a place for us to truly connect without her powers harming me. No longer would I be overwhelmed by the psychic energy she emitted.

  Any extra energy she leaked just went into making the room even more solid, more real. She poured most of her energy into the fireplace in the corner, saying that anything past what I could truly handle, would go straight over there to be used as fuel to be burned off. Here, in this space, what we thought became real. To top it all off, I designed the room to feature a big projector screen where we could show each other our memories in a movie-like format. It would allow me to relive the day but also created another thin layer of protection so she could experience the feelings that I felt but also so I could visually see how Sandra saw her own memories.

  I let her relive my fight with the big bug and the minutes I argued with Lannie before my mental energy completely depleted. As I watched a few moments of her experimenting with the magic tree, the entire room started to fizzle out. As I finished that one memory of hers, my brain felt like it had run a marathon and I dropped off into a peaceful sleep.