The Way Ahead

Edwin stretched, cracking his neck as he prepared for his next momentous task. He’d settled on a final location for his cabin and now needed to prepare the actual ground for his building. First up, digging out his foundations.

The soft topsoil was broken and hauled out, mounded next to Edwin’s kiln as it burned, making a set of smaller bowls that he could use for ingredients. He still had yet to figure out the origin of the black splotches on the generally reddish-brown earthenware, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that the soil was off to the side, but not so far as to be inaccessible in case he figured out a use for it later.

He kept having to dismiss the ‘Digging’ skill, annoyingly, but he couldn’t figure out how to blacklist a Skill from being offered. There had to be a way, right? Eh, he decided to just turn off notifications for the time being, and check them all once he was done. He wasn’t going to accept a Skill at the moment, though maybe soon, and this way he wouldn’t be constantly annoyed by the popups.

He kept going through canteens of water, to the point where one bottle had barely cooled by the time needed to down it all and Inion started to boil the next one. He didn’t mind that much, though. It provided a good time to catch his breath. Not… that he ever actually needed to do so. He was almost tireless save for hunger and thirst, but the mental break was still appreciated.

Not having to deal with muscle fatigue had its own benefits, though. Even as he- or more accurately, Inion- watched, the ground he’d chosen to work on sank away, and the mound of discarded dirt grew larger and larger.

By the time he stopped, he had dug nearly an entire foot down and cleared off all the loose dirt, leaving far rockier soil. It wasn’t a perfect foundation, but it should work.

The first logs he rolled into place and set into place with copious amounts of sand and stone. Strangely, Packing seemed to help him carry large amounts of loose objects which… he wasn’t expecting, but he guessed made sense? If piles of sand had less weight pulling them down, it did seem to fit that it wouldn’t collapse as easily.

Once properly set into the ground, Edwin chopped notches into the dry wood, easily chipping into the tree trunk. On the side further from the stream, he made sure to include an additional notch into the wood, to account for his inner walls.

Then the day was over, and he joined Inion by the fire, gratefully accepting a final canteen of water.

“You know, I have Skills to make my water more drinkable.”

Edwin paused his frantic gulping to raise an eyebrow, “And-” he doubled over coughing as he swallowed a bit of water incorrectly. Inion looked at him with some concern, but he waved off her concern, “I’m fine,” he croaked, “Just failing at basic human tasks as always.”

Much to his annoyance, though not to his surprise, Inion agreed eagerly with that sentiment. He shot a glare at the naiad, who just laughed.

“Anyway. As I was saying, why didn’t you mention that earlier?”

“Didn’t ask,” she shrugged, which just prompted another sigh- and another round of coughing- from Edwin.

With the foundation laid, the rest of the work was fairly routine, and day after day passed in basically the same manner.

In the morning, he dug out his cured pottery and started up his kiln for the next batch. While he did still lose most of his would-be earthenware, he was proud of getting up to nearly a 40% success rate. The shards he kept off to the side for some unspecified future use.

Most of his day would then consist of carefully measuring and cutting his logs so they would fit together snugly. Two walls with three notches, two with two, and two with one. The hard part came with the natural variation of thickness and the bumps and irregularities in the surface. Those inevitably interrupted the otherwise snug fit between the logs, and whenever he found one, Edwin needed to pull the log off where it was and whittle away the protrusion before returning the tree trunk.

His evenings were spent fashioning whatever pottery he’d later fire in his kiln. About ten minutes downstream, he’d found a giant bank of dried clay which proved perfect for his purposes, once he’d retrieved enough of it.

By day 4, the walls were mostly assembled.

Day 5, he got the door cutout partially started, cutting just enough of a notch into one of the logs facing most of the meadow, and started on the roof.

Day 6 involved assembling the roof, which proved trickier than he had anticipated. He didn’t have enough small logs to form a full roof structure, he had to create something of a temporary skeleton with non-dry wood. He’d need to replace it eventually, but better the roof than part of the wall.

“I don’t suppose you have something you could do to help with the roof?” Edwin asked as he and Inion were relaxing around the campfire that evening, “I didn’t adequately account for how much timber I’d need for it, and I’m just curious if you have an easy fix before I spend two days overthinking a solution.”

“Is that actual forethought that I sense there?” the naiad ruffled Edwin’s hair, “I’m so proud of you!”

“Shaddup,” his rebuttal, much like his efforts to swat Inion’s hand away, were halfhearted at most.

“And I do! I have this really cool trick, you want me to do it? I gotta get your say-so to give it a go!”

“Yes, please.” Edwin had the sort of bone-deep weariness that only came from endless days of hard work, nevermind that he felt just as physically capable as though he had only worked half a day. It was psychological, but he needed to get this in a usable state before he could take a break, just for his own sanity.

“Hmmm. But I think that your Skills would benefit from doing it yourself now, wouldn’t they?” Inion cheerfully dashed his hopes, too late to prevent them from actually being formed.

Edwin let his head thud against the ground as he groaned, “Well, I’m just training two, maybe three of my Skills doing this. Once I’m done I’ll be training my other Skills. Arguably,” he rolled his head to face the fey, “Finishing this will be more helpful for my Skills than continuing to work on it.”

“Hmmm.” Inion stroked her chin, “Interesting argument. I suppose I can almost see your point.”

Edwin wasn’t interested in games, “What do you want?”

“Hmmm. What do I want? It’s been pretty entertaining watching you scramble around shirtless day after day, stacking sticks for your little home,” Inion teased, to which Edwin just rolled his eyes.

“But I am interested to see what your next project will be after this. Saaayyyy… tellya what, I’ll do it, but you and I are going to sit down and go over your Skills tomorrow, ya? Also…” she pretended to think for a moment, “You’re going to watch, and never share.”

Edwin groaned, “Really? After all this time, now you want to go over it? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to figure that out before my week of work? Also, watch what?”

Inion shook her head, “Nah. Well maybe. But I didn’t feel like doing it then. Now I do!”

He stared blankly at the fey. It could be so easy to forget she wasn’t human at times, but when she started yanking him around for whatever reason, it was always a stark reminder. Still, whatever her reasoning, this was meant to be her ‘best effort,’ so that meant that…

Nope. He didn’t feel up to tracking whatever convoluted logic Inion had used, if it even could be traced. Edwin shook his head, “Watch what?” no response, ”Okay, sure. Fine, whatever. Just… roof, please?”

Inion hopped up with way too much enthusiasm and made a wide circle around the imposing wooden walls of his cabin. Then, she began to sing.

“Oh, my dreamer,” from the first words, her voice rang through the clearing, seeming to echo her stream, which fell silent- no, it just trickled in time with a cadence which didn’t match up to her words, but did to her singing… Polyglot was throwing a fit, but Edwin didn’t mind. She had a fantastic voice, “Sing with me, take me home.”

Wind whistled through the woods as the grass near Inion began to writhe, swaying to her voice.

“I see there the woods, I see there the thickets,

I see there the fair and most fertile of meadows;

I see there the deer on the ground in the valleys

Hiding in mantles of mist.”

“Oh, my dreamer,” Inion danced through the clearing, spinning joyously in contrast with the gentler tone of her melody. Edwin’s mana sense didn’t light up in the way he was used to. There was no single source of magic here, yet this was undeniably something deep and primal. It felt like the entire forest was waking up and becoming magical. “Sing with me, take me home.”

Any other time, Edwin would have dismissed it as merely his imagination, but here and now? No, his new house was beginning to grow together, his carefully cut and fit logs fusing into one large shape. What had he gotten himself into?

“Lofty mountains and resplendent ledges,

There dwell my own folk, kind folk of honor.

Light is my step as I leap up to meet them;

'Tis with pleasure I'll stay there a while.”

“Oh, my dreamer,” a soft, blue-green glow began to suffuse the area, and tiny fireflies- no, not fireflies. These were fairie lights, though he couldn’t determine why he was so certain about that. It felt like he was intruding on something old, something ancient. Part of him wanted to flee, yet another part felt tied in place, like he was being welcomed in and brought… home, “Sing with me, take me home.”

Vines began to grow from the ground, around the base of his home, and seemed to almost snake their way up his carefully constructed cabin. Once they reached where the roof should be, they began to weave themselves between his sparse constructions and solidify, forming a leafy top to his home.

“Hail to the blue-green grassy hills;

Hail to the grandest skybound mountains;

Hail to the forests, hail to all there,

Content I would live there forever.”

“Oh, my dreamer,” Inion rose into the air as she spun, feet stepping on the thinnest strands of grass as the fairie lights swirled around her. A warm breeze flowed through the area, coming from everywhere yet nowhere at once, “Sing with me, take me home.”

Bark grew back upon the logs, undoing weeks of careful work Edwin had put into chopping, cutting, drying, and assembling all of that timber. He couldn’t really feel mad, though. Instead, he was… entranced. The song flowed through him as well, imbuing his very soul with energy and refreshing his body. At the front of the cabin a part of the wall melted away to create an empty doorframe, and the shape of the walls shifted slightly to fit more naturally into its surroundings. The disturbed earth from all across the meadow smoothed out, growing grasses and delicate flowers as the harmonious magic seeped into every inch of his surroundings, a gentle glow suffusing everything in sight.

“Let me be among the trees, tall and proud;

Let me dwell amidst the streams, unending and pure;

Let me find myself beneath the endless skies, shining and bright,

For there I’ll find myself a home.”

The song continued, but Polyglot began to fail him as the words lost individual meaning and instead simply became a melody telling an ancient story, of lost splendor and the beauty of a time long gone.

His cabin… well, to call it a cabin was misleading. His handiwork was still present, that much was clear. But it looked to be a living thing, reminiscent of what he had seen in the halfling’s village, yet so much more.

Edwin didn’t know how long he sat, entranced by the harmony and lost in the fantastical, but by before Inion had even finished her song, night had fallen. Silver moonlight flitted through the trees, nary a beam striking the ground outside his clearing. And yet the naiad continued to dance, to a tune older than time itself.

She opened her eyes, her gaze fixed upon Edwin, and she smiled, utterly inhuman in its perfection and allure. Behind Inion’s eyes, Edwin saw the calm, serene beauty of a forest glen, the wild majesty of an unstoppable waterfall, and the incomprehensibly massive scale of a mountain. Yet also the gentle call of birdsong in the morning, the soft fur of a rabbit, and the delicate colors of a budding wildflower.

There was a spark, and suddenly Inion felt Edwin’s comprehension, his appreciation, and finished her song, the final notes drifting through the air long past her actual voice had faded into memory.

“Oh, my dreamer.

Sing with me,

take me home.”