Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe’s birthday came and went as the winter flew by. She spent most of her time carrying over the logs from the other side of the hill and piling them up outside her home on a stone platform she made with her Earth skill.

The wood was plenty dry enough to build with she thought, after a year of not being used. And if it was a little too wet still then that was okay. She wasn’t building a home for somebody else, it was for her. If the wood started splintering and falling apart, then she’d notice and be able to fix it.

She looked around the cave room that she’d been calling her home, and tried to picture the finished build. The ceiling was tall enough for a second story, and she thought that it might be fun to try her hand at making a second floor. Building support structures to hold up all that weight seemed like a fun problem, though she didn’t expect it to be all that difficult.

As long as she had plenty of well secured, hefty wooden frames she expected it to be just fine. In the past she’d seen buildings erected all the time. The tall skyscrapers were full of metal and designed by people far smarter than her she was sure.

But a simple house? Four strong exterior walls, a bunch of supporting structures in the center and it seemed like a pretty simple process, as long as she kept all the heavy stuff on the ground floor.

The exterior walls would just be the walls of her cave, she could extend them for extra support with her Earth skill, or maybe embed her wooden frames into the stone floor and walls.

Zoe needed a workshop first, though. She created a small covering next to the pile of wood with her Earth skill and summoned her carpentry tools. All she had were some simple tools. A saw, a hefty axe for chopping trees a set of chisels, and a hammer.

It would be enough though. Zoe created a stone table under her covering and hefted one of the smaller logs up onto it. The lumber reminded her of pine, but rather than a subtle yellow hue the wood was just the faintest bit of red. Maybe from all the hematite in the area, she wondered.

For a while she just stood and stared at the log on her long stone table. The first cut was always scary, the first step in any big project was always hard for her to overcome. Where should she even begin? She could start by the entrance, build a nice corridor for her to walk through before she gets to the cave proper.

Or she could expand the entrance and make something of a foyer. Maybe she could have a closet to hang up her jackets — or for now just singular jacket, in, a place to leave her shoes. She nodded her head, the foyer was a good idea.

The weeks flew by as Zoe planned and expanded her home and filled it with the lumber. It was a much quicker process than she expected it to be, really. If she knew how simple the process would have ended up being she’d have started on it much sooner. Maybe if she had more built, the thieves wouldn’t have ransacked her home thinking it was abandoned, either.

Zoe shook her head. They didn’t really care that it wasn’t abandoned. They just wanted money. Making her home look like it was lived in wouldn’t make it a less tempting target. She needed it to look like it was lived in by somebody that thieves wouldn’t want to annoy. And she didn’t know how to do that anyway.

Her foyer was finished, along with the hallway that connected to her cave proper. And she even had quite a bit of progress done on the ground floor of her cave. The walls were the simplest part, all she had to do was manipulate the cold stone to where she wanted it with her Earth skill and then layer in the wooden planks she cut out.

Connecting the planks to each other wasn’t even necessary most of the time since she was able to hook them onto the rock wall behind and secure everything in place with incredible precision thanks to her Earth skill. The exterior walls of her home were just a cosmetic façade, so it didn’t matter if they weren’t providing support.

The flooring would be just as easy Zoe thought, but she hadn’t gotten started on it at all yet. The wood would get scuffed and damaged from her shoes and whatever she was dragging through and it didn’t make much sense to her to add it in until later. She measured the planks, cut them to size and made sure everything fit. But then she left them in a small pile off to the side to be put in another day.

At the entrance of her home was a small foyer, large enough for a few people to stand in without any discomfort. The door entered to the right of the room, with a small closet off to the other side. The stone floor rose up a few inches as it entered into the hallway, and Zoe planned to leave the foyer floor as stone to be easier to clean.

The hallway continued on across from the entrance and twisted around to meet her cave. The wooden walls were unadorned, but Zoe thought it might be nice to one day hang some pictures of places she’d been. Maybe she’d learn to paint in her endless years and leave something of a story as you walked down the hallway.

Zoe chuckled as she thought about having to continue extending the hallway as the millions of years passed and she kept doing new things. She pushed the fear of what millions of years actually meant to the side, and looked into her cave proper.

There was a basic framework of a house in the open cavern. Large planks of wood stood on end, embedded into the stone ground with the help of her Earth. For the ground floor, she’d decided on four rooms. To her immediate right when she entered would be her bedroom. To the left, near the chimney she’d made would be her kitchen.

Continuing down the hallway, just past the kitchen would be where she put her forge — they could both share the same chimney, though Zoe had some ideas of how to make the chimney obsolete at this point too. And opposite the forge next to her bedroom was the pool of water, where she’d put her own library along with a ladder up to the second floor.

The second floor she intended to leave as two rooms. The first, when you climbed up the ladder would be her enchanting workshop. A nice table and a comfortable couch to lounge on while she experimented, and easy access to her library if she needed a specific book for something. If one day she got into some more dangerous enchantments, then she planned to expand the library out into the adjacent cave and add in some strong protection enchantments. Maybe she could talk to Ren and get some tips from him one day.

On the opposite end of the second floor would be her storage, locked away behind a stone wall that she’d create. Whatever junk she ended up not needing to carry around with her all the time she’d toss behind the wall, and hopefully if she ever had her home broken into again they wouldn’t notice her storage room.

Zoe started with her bedroom, the most important room in her opinion. A place to relax and feel safe. The exterior walls were already attached to the cavern on the ground floor, and the frames were standing in place, all she had left to do was the interior walls and the ceiling.

She chopped up some more lumber and built up the walls of her room. Planks were spaced every few feet already for support so all she had to do was cut long enough lengths to reach across the room and slot them into the support beams and holes she dug into the walls, then attach the ceiling boards to those ceiling frames.

There was without a doubt far more support beams than she’d need to hold up the second story of her home, but she thought it was better to be safe than sorry. When she had the basic framework done, she intended to form stone through all the space to help hold things together a little bit more too.

In a few days, she had a room that she was satisfied with. The door was a simple stone wall that shrunk into the ground when she pushed mana into it, since she wasn’t sure how to make a hinge with what she had. But she liked the theme of magical doors anyway. It made the place feel unique and different to her.

Inside her room she put her bed, of course. But she added some shelves to the walls and dug into the wall a little to make a closet for her clothes. Not that she had much anyway, but now that she had a place of her own she thought it might be nice to have a nice wardrobe to play with.

She let the door close behind her and laid down on her bed. For the first time in a long time, she had a nice cozy bedroom to fall asleep in. She’d gotten used to the wide open cavern, but having closer walls and a door made a world of difference to her comfort.

It was weird, she thought. Sleeping outside wasn’t uncomfortable and that was about as open as it could get. But sleeping inside a wide open cavern made her feel so vulnerable. What was the difference, she wondered. The cave walls would do a lot more to keep unwelcome visitors away than open air. Yet seeing walls that were so far away made it so much less pleasant somehow.

Zoe stood up and walked out of her cave. The sun was high in the sky, the trees waving in the gusts of wind. The snow was beginning to melt as spring came in, and Zoe thought it was a good time to go visit her friends. There were some supplies she wanted to buy and a closet she needed to fill with clothes anyway.

Her first stop was Emma’s tower. She felt anxiety rise in her as she knocked on the door. Would Emma open the door? Would somebody else? It had been so long since they last spoke. Would Emma be the same?

Zoe waited for a few minutes and knocked a couple more times, but nobody was answering. She pushed the fear welling up in her aside. Emma had a job, and it was the middle of the day. There was no reason for her to be home. She was just at work, that made the most sense.

She took a breath and made her way down the road to Joe’s inn. She smiled as she saw nothing changed on the outside, and opened the door. She heard some clattering of pans coming from the kitchen and poked her head in.

Joe was slaving over the stovetops, dumping ingredients into a large pot of stew while slabs of meat sizzled away in some pans.

“Hey Joe,” Zoe said.

Joe looked over at her. His face was littered with wrinkles and sweat dripped from his brow. “Oh hey Zoe, how are you doing?"

“I’m good. Came to town to buy some stuff. I’ve kinda made myself a bit of a home out in the hill I visited a few years ago?” Zoe said

Joe laughed. “You’ve just been a few hours out of town this whole time, huh?”

“Yeah. It was fun though, there was lots to do actually. But I think I’ve done it all so I’m just building my house and then I’m off to the next place, probably. How are you doing though? Business going well?" Zoe asked.

“Yeah, things are well here. Barlahai is coming up soon and I’ve still got lots of work to prepare for that. Glad you’ve had fun, Zoe.” Joe smiled.

“Thanks. I’m glad business is going well. I uh. I think if you’re up for it I could help you name your inn too. I think I’m good enough now. You thought of a name yet?” Zoe asked.

Joe chuckled. “No, I’ve never given it much thought. It’s just a place for people to eat and rest at.”

“But that’s important you know? You do a lot of good for people.” Zoe said.

Joe shrugged. “I do my part, like everybody else. Without the hunters there’d be no food to give people, without the guard there wouldn’t be a safe place to rest. I’m just one small piece.”

“How about The One Small Tavern then?" Zoe asked.

Joe chuckled. “That’s not terrible. Maybe I’ll give it a bit of thought if you’re serious about naming it then.”

“Sure, only if you wanna. I don’t wanna push you into it if you don’t want it.” Zoe said.

“It’s fine, it’s not that I want it to not have a name, I just never cared much for the cost of naming it.” Joe said.

“That’s fair. Alright well I just wanted to stop in and say hi. I’m gonna go clothes shopping. Made myself a closet and I don’t even have much clothes!” Zoe laughed.

“Well see you around then, Zoe. Nice to see you again.” Joe nodded.

Zoe left and wandered down the street towards Flit’s Cloths, but the store was gone. In its place was another clothing store named The Needle, and Zoe walked in.

The interior looked nothing the same. Flit’s Cloths had bolts of cloth hanging from racks and only a little pre-made clothes hanging from the walls. But The Needle seemed to have much more of a focus on clothes, rather than on cloth itself.

Racks of clothes covered the store floor, with big puffy jackets hanging from the walls. A counter was set up on the other side with a few people standing behind it chatting. Zoe walked up to them.

“Hi, do you sell custom fitted clothes here?” Zoe asked one of the women behind the counter.

“We do. What are you looking for?” The woman asked.

“I’d like a bulk order, I guess. I don’t have much and I want to fill out my wardrobe. Is that alright?" Zoe asked.

“Sure is. We’re a bit busy today though for a bulk order, so could you come back tomorrow morning?” The woman asked.

Zoe nodded her head. “Yeah that’s fine. Thanks.”

There was no point to heading back home just for the night, so Zoe made her way to Kaira library. She wanted to see if there was any information on the icy splinters, or the jagged ball of Frost that she found.