58: Tree Mason
I slept up in Willow’s branches that night—Hiding from everyone and everything—and she was kind enough to weave a little basket for me to do so. Then, early the next morning before everyone awoke, I got to work on the crafter's hall. I wanted it finished before we moved out, and… I wanted to distract myself from what’d happened with Paisley.
Could I have perhaps been a little more assertive about what I was wanting and feeling in the moment? Yeah, definitely, but that would’ve also ruined what she was trying to do with the whole pushing me down on the bed thing. I don’t know, I was confused, and alarmed by the feelings I had swirling around my head. I hadn’t even properly admitted that I was feeling things for her, and I was already upset that she hadn’t kissed me. God, fuck—Get yourself together, Keiko. Idiot.
Anyway, I had a lot of the slime and moss needed to cement the stones together, but we were actually beginning to run out of my original hoard of basalt. That's when I realised we had plenty of stone rubble just lying around…
Technically it should still be owned by whichever NPC had owned the building it came from, but when I inspected it, no such owner was presented to me.
“Hey, Willow?” I called, staring at a particularly juicy pile of rocks.
“Flitling!” The large tree rumbled softly. Huh, had her voice gotten softer? It was still just as deep and bone-shaking as before, but it also had this rich, warm undertone… Ah, whatever.
“I want to start building the crafting hall—The building at your back—and I wondered if you'd be able to help me? I need to paint stones with the moss cement, then quickly fit them together to create the building,” I explained. Then, grabbing a chunk of stone, I flew it up, painted the sides and nestled it in place. “Like that.”
The tree was silent for many many seconds, then she rumbled in consideration and reached down with a whiplike branch to grasp a much larger stone. Effortlessly, she lifted the stone up to the large pad where the hall would go. “Like this?” She asked, nestling it beside my one. Unfortunately, she placed it inwards, rather than along the path of the wall.
“Sorta,” I said, and explained the objective in more detail.
The moment she understood, a little quiver went through her sickly-bright green leaves. “Oh, that is most ingenious! For that your bodies be so small and frail, you fashion these little shells to guard them. Oh, and hark! There be many stones with which to build, scattered around my soaking toes.”
My eyes began to unfocus and cross as the strange sentence structure she used shorted my brain for half a second, but I nodded. “Exactly. I'll need to go and buy some firebricks for the forge. Can I leave you to make that first floor wall while I go?”
Her whole body shifted slightly, and a few branches whipped around in alarm. “Fire? You betray me!”
“No, no! No betrayal!” I said urgently. “That's what the firebricks are for! We contain the fire in its own little house, so then it is, um, tamed. That way we can use it to create our metal tools and weapons. Don't worry, no fire will touch you. Remember the forge I had in the clearing where we found you?”
She shifted again, but her branches fell still. “Truly marvellous it is, to see such tiny creatures master so wild a force as fire. I will in your judgement trust—But, a warning. Since the dark reaches of time has fire been the enemy of me and my living kin. Keep it tamed, dear flitling, lest it find opportunity to consume me.”
“Right,” I said, getting the gist of what she was saying. “We'll keep it under very tight control, don't worry.”
We got a lot of money as a reward for saving the city, and I used it frivolously to buy the things we'd need. I bought an insulated forge door, I bought a whole bunch of fire bricks, because in my recent research of forges I learned that my earlier setup would’ve started cracking from the heat.
I also spent an inordinate amout of money on a huge anvil. This thing was longer from horn to heel than I was tall, and broad enough that I could only just reach the other side of it when I pressed up against it. I bought the thing because it looked really fucking cool… and then I bought a normal sized one to use too. My old Crude Spectreheart Field Anvil was going to be so jealous. It didn’t need to worry, though, there was no bloody way I’d be lugging either of the normal anvils out into the field to do Spiritforging on.
I also bought myself a proper set of tools, and also a writing desk for when I eventually got my own room in the inn. When, after adding a few more items to the list, I found myself with no money and an inventory that was blinking ‘Overencumbered’ at me, I headed back towards the tree.
It took me almost two hours to slow-walk my way towards the inn with the overencumbered debuff, and I used that time to think a little more. It probably wasn't fair to Paisley that I was upset. Neither of us had been very forthright about an interest… hell, I wasn't totally sure she was actually into me. Maybe she really had just been trying to prove a point.
Ugh, life got so complicated when you added… other… people to it—
“What the fuck?” I said aloud, stopping to stare at Willow. I was still blocks away, but I could already see the error I had made earlier.
Rising up from the crafting hall foundation was the single most crooked, asymmetrical, drunken, confused tower that had ever still had a claim to the trait of ‘circular’. To make matters worse, Willow had decided to start stacking stones up in smaller towers on other thick branches of herself. It was, to put it bluntly, like a three-year-old’s drawing of a castle had been taken as an actual set of architectural plans.
My overencumbered waddling took on a far more urgent pace as I approached the Galloping Willow Inn. None of the towers had roofing, windows, balconies, or even floors, by the looks of things. At the first sign of movement, each and every one of those precarious stacks of masonry was going to fold and collapse.
“Willow!” I called as I made it to the ruins of the bath house. “Stop! Willow!”
“Ah, the flitling returns! How fared your acquisitional jaunt?” She said cheerily, her voice having gained more of that strange thrumming. “The bricks that shackle fire, did you find opportunity for their procurement?”
“Huh—” I said, then quickly shook my head to clear it. “Yeah, I did. I have to ask, what… what are all those towers?”
“Ah, yes,” the tree hummed, pleased with herself. “Are they not most pleasing? I have seen towers such as these all across this fair city—I wished to emulate their stoic grace, but alas I have not the talent for it. Remarkable, is it not, that for people so small you contain such a capacity for skill and intelligence? Such fleeting lives you also bear, to find the time within which to learn.”
Holy fuck, Willow, what… my god, she could really talk, and it was the most backwards-ass roundabout sentences every time.
“Yeah, so…” I sighed and looked from the ground at my feet to the three, maybe four storey towers that were nestled among her twisting branches. Aside from the main crafter’s hall, there were three other smaller towers. Each was basically just a circle that'd been warped and extruded upwards.
Dumping the anvils out of my inventory, I flew up to inspect them. They weren't bad per se, but… okay, in their current state I could've probably pushed them over, even with the moss-mortar I left Willow in charge of. “Willow, these are great, but they're not very structurally sound. You need internal supports, and… and windows and doors and floors…”
I trailed off, completely at a loss for how to salvage the situation. This is what I get for waking up early—Trying to get a head start on the day.
My despair was interrupted by the fluttering of wings, and Noah popped into full size beside me. “Wow. I see we aren't the only ones who got drunk.”
Ethan, who was following behind at a more sedate pace, was laughing. “Keiko… how?”
“Made the mistake of teaching the tree to stack stones,” I groaned, and filled them in on the events that had led to our current issues.
“Huh,” Ethan said after a few seconds of thought, once I was done. “You know… hey, Willow!”
“The one who reminds me of my younger years, when I was still a living sprout!” Willow rumbled happily. “What can I do for you, young poplar?”
“So, we're worried about the towers,” he said. “They only have the bark and the wet outer layers. No leaves, or branches, or roots, or even the interior wood. That's all metaphor, obviously, but similar concept. If you add some foundations near the bottom, with flat areas. Then—”
“Young one,” Willow interrupted. “While I am most overjoyed at your willingness to teach me the ways of the smaller folk, I must confess that these concepts go beyond the forest in which my knowledge resides. Tell me how you would like a stone moved, and I will make it so, but do not put me to a task whose eccentricities I do not grasp.”
The healer pursed his lips, then glanced at Noah and I in consternation. “Fair. Okay… how about this…”
For half an hour we showed Willow how we needed flat areas at the base of each tower. When she understood, she wove tight mats of knotted wood together to create them. When we showed her how the towers needed support, she either carefully built buttresses and columns of rubble and moss. When we showed her where to put a balcony or a window, she carefully removed stones and threaded her branches through to support the weakened masonry.
Then, we explained how we needed stairs and floors inside the towers, and we almost lost her again. In the end, we settled for having her grow support beams through the stonework. Not a single set of beams created a totally flat surface that we could hammer planks over, but we'd figure that out later. Roofing was a little confusing to her too, until we pointed out some thatching on a roof nearby. Using her leaves, she threaded and wove tight slanted coverings over each tower.
The others filtered in from wherever they'd ended up that night, until the whole gang was working together to direct Willow, or to simply start sourcing the materials we'd need to start finishing out all these wonky, crazy structures.
Paisley popped up when I was showing Willow how she could use her branches to create a doorway that held the Masonry up, and I very carefully avoided her frequent glances in my direction. I just felt so awkward and uncertain about how to talk to her, and… well, we were all busy. Whatever talk was coming could wait.