Ryn of Avonside

The terrible howl of gale force winds tore me from sleep in the early hours of the morning. Whistling air roared through every open balcony door and window in the whole structure, whipping the plants in my room into a frenzy. Even as I groggily clawed my way to full consciousness the foliage was being shredded, leaves and flower petals swirling out into the night through the window.

“Shit!” I scrambled to secure both of the packs and all the loose items that were laying on the grassy floor. Some of my clothes had already gone flying out the window by the looks of things.

I stuffed everything into the packs and secured them with several hastily grown vines. They weren’t my primary concern however, Grace was. Before the vines had finished growing, I was rushing out the door, across the common room and up the stairs. I burst out into the greenhouse completely out of breath, but that didn’t stop me from stumbling across to the large yellow flower in the centre. She was sheltered from the gale force winds and driving rain by the tough windows of the greenhouse, but was she safe magically?

My shaking hands landed on one of the petals with gentle apprehension, sensing through with my mage sight. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found that none of the wild magic outside was making it to Grace, she was safe. 

For now. The titanic tree was still a howling, straining flute played by a literal force of nature. Who knew when something would fail and break — beginning a catastrophic cascade of failures that would end—

I had to secure the tree. I had to, which meant that task number one would be putting in the huge gate. I’d also need to figure out a way to deal with the windows, as already half of the fragile leaves that covered them had been torn out and lost to the storm. I might need to just grow crystal bark over each opening for the duration of the storm. Ah, fuck, but that would need to wait until growth energy from the storm itself was filtering down into the aquifer.

Rushing down the stairs two at a time, I was out of breath when I made it to the entry hall. People always complained about how running up stairs was hard, but they never mentioned that running down them was just as bad. The hall was a mess, leaves and flowers and everything else were strewn all over the place. Oh my— the top third of a windbreak tree was embedded in the back wall!

Mercifully, the doors I'd created were intact, still safe where they had been laying on the floor.

Wasting no time, I used my telekinesis and began to push them up into position. The wind fought me the whole time — battering at the doors with erratic gusts of wind that landed like hammer blows. Rain was beginning to find its way inside now too, causing the floor to become slick and dangerous.

A lull in the wind allowed me to quickly slot one half of the door into place, before the storm returned with a gust so vicious that it pulled the door from my grasp and slammed it inwards against the wall. Amazingly, miraculously, the hinge held, and the door kept its integrity. One down, one to go.

Having learned from the first one, I used the lulls in the wind to time my attempts at aligning the second half of the gate. It worked, and I got it in. 

However, as I was about to seal the doorway with magic, a procession of buns rushed through, each one carrying a gourd full of water. Water lapping at the edges with every hop. Every time the wind would scream and rage, they'd flatten down against the ground and wait, precious cargo stashed on the leeward sides of their soaked, furry bodies.

Whatever, I needed to get this job done, then I could figure out whatever harebrained scheme they were up to. Making sure that there weren’t any buns left outside in the storm, I pushed the door into place with my mind.

Using my magic and the first trickle of growth energies coming up from below, I was able to mould the doorway to tighten the seal and the fit of the hinge holes. When everything felt right to my magical senses, I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed my telekinesis.

Immediately, the doors flew open again with a thundering boom, and I was sent stumbling backwards as howling wind and driving rain slapped me in the face.

I hadn’t built a lock bar or the slots for it! Shit!

Thinking fast, I pushed through the wind and back to the storage room. There, I found several unprocessed logs and with my mind shaking from the effort, I wedged the door closed, growing roots through both the floor and the door to secure it all in place. It would take time to restore, but that was the least of my problems.  I needed to rush up the tree and fix all the windows.

Thankfully the crystal in the downstairs balcony and upstairs greenhouses seemed to be holding well, so I altered the plans of my tree further to cover all the openings with either crystal or plain wood. It was exhausting work on so little sleep, and by the time I was done, I vowed to pay a carpenter to make me some real damned windows once we made it to Millowhall.

Growth energy was everywhere outside now, gushing up out of the soil as my unnatural should-not-exist plants generated it on a massive scale. I had more of them this time too, after I hid them everywhere when I was working on my forest. The water reserves under my plateau were rapidly becoming saturated in the stuff, and honestly, it was going to become a problem. 

A problem that I had absolutely no idea how to solve. Would bailing the water off the side of the plateau with gourds work—

Wait, the buns!

What had they been up to?

Shit!

 “Hey!” I called, rushing for the stairs. “You’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

I took the stairs on all fours like some sort of feral animal, fuelled by a soul-deep worry for Grace. God damn, I really needed to figure out a solution to the whole stairs thing. Where the hell was Esra when you needed her? Surely she'd have a solution.

Rushing back out into the greenhouse, ready to collapse, I yelled, “Hey! What are you doing?”

The scene before me would have been comical if my gut weren't iced over with worry.

A swarm of bunnies surrounded Grace’s flower, holding gourds and other containers, most of which were now empty, save one or two which were full of growth-magic imbued water. All the buns froze when I yelled, and slowly, they turned to look at me, little noses twitching innocently. 

Making eye contact, one cheeky little bun continued to pour — the last trickle of magically charged liquid slowly pattering into the soil.

“You… you… oh my goodness,” I sighed, leaning heavily against the wall as the storm continued to rage and batter at the tree. I could barely see outside with all the rain running down the windows.

There was nothing left in my tank — no energy to fix whatever problem had been caused. I slumped to the floor with a groan.

The vibrations of the storm shook the tree so hard it actually helped a little with my stiff, tired muscles. I’d been running and leaping up and down stairs all morning, but now that I was stopped, my limbs were now making their displeasure known. I couldn’t stop the buns anyway. They’d already gone and poured magic water all over Grace's flower. I could see the growth magic being sucked greedily in by the roots.

The buns seemed to take my exhaustion as an invitation to cuddle, hopping over in a swarm. One by one they flopped down onto their sides next to me, or in a few cases they splooted — back legs stretching out behind them. No amount of cute antics was going to save them from a stern talking to, though.

“You lot need to be asking permission before you go messing around, alright?” I growled wearily at them. I got nothing but twitching noses in reply.

With a sigh, I attempted to calm down a little. The flower seemed to be fine for the moment, but something told me I’d need a blanket for her sooner rather than later. 

Growth magic accelerated pretty much everything it touched, and I highly doubted that her transformation would be an exception here. I just hoped that it wouldn’t hurt her or mess up the processes as they were sped up.

With a wince, I slipped free of the flop and stumbled down to the bedroom, where I grabbed a blanket for my friend, just in case. She’d undoubtedly be as naked as I had been when I came out of my fruit, assuming that’s what was happening now.

When I arrived in the bedroom it was mercifully free of wind, although I was going to need to move everything to a different one because it was absolutely trashed in our room. The wind had torn all the foliage apart as it was forced into the tight quarters of the tree's interior.

Blanket in hand, I stumbled back up to the greenhouse — finding that many of the buns had mysteriously disappeared, while the remainder were loafed on the floor staring at the flower. A flower that was moving ever so slightly, independently of the wind that was shaking the whole tree.

Slowing to a stop, I froze as I saw what was happening. Was she really, actually going to be coming out of her flower now? It certainly looked like it with the way the petals were peeling away at the top.

I stood there with bated breath as one by one, the petals slowly pulled away from the centre. It was almost graceful the way they curled and fell away, each one coming to rest gently against the ground. A figure was slowly revealed within, huddled in a foetal position and unmoving.

“Grace?” I asked, stepping forward tentatively, heart aching in my chest. Had she flowered too early?

When she shifted slightly, letting out a tiny groan, I felt the first bloom of relief hit me, and suddenly I was swallowing back a lump in my throat. “Grace!”

I rushed over to her where she was relaxing out of her huddle, eyes blinking blearily as she looked around the place. She was very naked — as I’d suspected she might be. Her back was to me, so I couldn't see much except soft, smooth pale skin. There wasn't any goop like a mage fruit either, just the overwhelming smell of lillies.

“Ryn?” she croaked, her voice husky with disuse.

That little sound — my name from her lips — it broke me. A sob bubbled up my throat like a living thing, and tears began to trace a path down my face. I rushed the last few steps and hugged her, blanket-first and clinging desperately, terrified that somehow, she might vanish at any moment.

Incoherent noises of relief and heartache came pouring out of me as I cried and cuddled up to her. I hadn’t even realised how much I’d missed her, how much I’d been worried that it would all go wrong until just now.

It was like an immense pressure had been slowly crushing me down, but now, abruptly, I was free of it. Without the bubbles in my blood from rapid decompression, obviously. Deep sea divers had to slowly reacclimate themselves to lower pressures again after— nevermind.

Her arms were shaky as they came up to hold me in return, and I realised I was bawling my eyes out like an overacted middle school play. She was only recently out of her flower and still figuring her new self out.

“Sorry!” I blurted, pushing away slightly with a wet sniffle. “I missed you.”

My mind stuttered to a halt when I got a proper look at her. She still looked like Grace, but she also… didn’t. It was like someone who was really good at image manipulation had gone over her and removed any and all flaws in her face. Her skin was perfect, her cheekbones were just a little higher, her eyes just a little bigger and brighter, her lashes just a little longer.

Nothing had been spared the artist’s gentle brush, including her hair. The outside layer was the same blonde as before, but her red and blue dyed highlights were gone. Instead, the inner layers of her hair were green and blue, so that if she shifted slightly the colours would peek through. The changes had me breathless with awe. She’d been amazing before… but now she was… amazing times two, or three. Maybe more. Stunning! That was the word, because she'd stunned me.

“Oh Ryn, you’re a mess… I’m sorry,” she apologised tiredly, one of her hands reaching up to brush gently through my hair in a way that had my heart soaring with happiness. “I’m back now though,” she continued, guilt lacing her voice. “I’m sorry I left you for a week, I… shit, look at you. I didn’t think, I just— Crap, I don’t have any excuses.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I hiccuped, still staring at her in amazement. “I don’t care, you’re back now… and it wasn’t a full week either.”

“Wait, it wasn’t?” she asked, confusion entering her expression.

I turned my focus very pointedly to the buns that had come to sit around us. “They watered your flower with growth magic from the storm. It’s only been like four days.”

Grace’s confusion shifted to a grin and she reached over to pat one of the buns between the ears. “Cheers little dudes. I think you saved Ryn from a lot more of my mistake.”

“No, Grace, please, it sucked but I don’t want to let it ruin seeing you again,” I asked her, hoping she’d put it to rest.

“Alright, sorry,” she murmured, leaning in against me. “I feel so weak and tired.”

“Do you want to wash up and then head to bed?” I asked, wrapping her up in my arms again. “It’s the middle of the night and the tree is all secured against the storm. I’m pretty damn tired too.”

“Yeah, I think a bath would be good,” she said, her head rocking on my shoulder as she nodded. This felt so nice, my heart already felt whole again. Chuckling a little, she mumbled, “Looks like the flower did its job though, you aren’t getting all horny.”

“Yeah,” I said, breathing her in with a smile. Then I perked up when I realised something, something I’d promised her a while back. “I put showers in! You can have a shower!”

“Really?” she asked with weary excitement. “Oh my god, please show me, I like baths, but the feel of a shower…”

“Come on, they’re in every bath,” I said, wobbling to my feet, where I helped her up too. To the buns, I gave them all a stern look and ordered, “Move the bed to a different room please and clean it up for us?”

Ear flick salutes all around.