Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe took a meandering path through the city to The Needle to pick up her clothes and arrived just before sundown. The woman she’d talked to earlier wasn’t around from what she could see, so Zoe walked up to the counter and spoke to the younger man behind it.

“Hello, I placed an order for clothes earlier?” Zoe asked.

“Oh hi. Yes, Julie is just finishing up now. She should be done in about ten minutes if you’d like to take a look around while you wait?” The man gestured to the store.

Zoe nodded and wandered around for a bit until Julie came out of the back room and waved.

“Hi, I’ve got your order ready. Do you have a storage item or would you like me to place them in bags?” Julie asked.

“I’ve got enough storage for it, that’s fine.” Zoe held out her hand.

Julie took her hand and traded over two full bags of clothes. Zoe directed the clothes away from the bag with the ball of Frost in it.

“Thank you for shopping at The Needle.” Julie smiled.

“Thanks.” Zoe smiled back and left.

Zoe walked down the street towards Joe’s inn and said her goodbyes for a while and then left Flester back to her cave. She was excited to sit down and go through all the clothes that she’d purchased, and she found herself accelerating as she approached her hill.

When she arrived back at her home she half expected to see it broken in again, but there were no new tracks outside her cave and inside was just as she left it. Zoe walked up to her bed and summoned all of the clothes she’d bought onto it, then jumped back as it filled her bed and poured off the edges onto the stone floor.

Two full bags was a lot more than she expected it to be. The pile of fabric was colourful and Zoe could see a large variety of different types of fabric poking out of the tangled pile of clothes. Some thick fabrics mixed in with feather thin almost transparent fabrics.

Zoe took a few hours to sort through it all and put everything away into her closet. Some of the clothes she hung, but most were folded and placed on the shelves that lined the walls. She’d make a dresser to organize her clothes later.

One thing she was happy for was that under garments were included. Zoe hadn’t even thought of it, but Julie included a few sets. Some from thicker, warmer fabric. And others with lace and straps. Zoe was pleased with the selection, but she wasn’t quite one for romance and the lace was somewhat uncomfortable on her skin. She liked how it looked, but if nobody was going to see them anyway she’d prefer the more comfortable pairs.

There were quite a number of dresses in her pile of clothes. Some were simple coloured sundresses, others were full of detailing and patterns. Her favourite was a knee length, sleeved green sundress with a floral pattern, but a close second was a black gown with specks of white that shone in the dark.

Julie had made three suits for Zoe, one black, one brown and one that looked tie died. Zoe was quite a fan of the tie died suit, something about the professional form but the playful colourway made her giggle.

Four jackets were included. One that looked like a heavy, puffy winter jacket. Two lighter jackets that seemed perfect for a cool spring day. One was brown and the other was blue. And the last jacket almost looked like a black raincoat.

The rest of the clothes were all pretty bland, but helped fill out her wardrobe nicely. A couple nice cardigans, dozens of light t-shirts in different colours and patterns, skirts of varying lengths and a handful of pants with different fits.

Zoe smiled. For so many years her selection of clothes was so restricted. She never cared much for clothes and it didn’t bother her too much to wear the same pants and shirt day in day out. Especially since she got her own cleaning skill and Restoration to fix up any tears that occurred from her day to day wear.

But it was nice to have a bit more of a selection. Though, she expected that she’d end up wearing the same thing for a while anyway. Zoe put on the green dress and sat on her bed.

Working in something so light and fragile like a thin sundress was a fun experience. Back on Earth she had some overalls, boots and gloves that she’d used when she needed to do some gardening. Wearing a cute shirt and then having it rip on something or get stained from the grass and dirt would have been upsetting.

But magic solved that problem for her, and Zoe got to work finishing off the rest of her cave in her pretty new dress. One day, she wanted to make a garden as well. Maybe with her enchantments, she could even make one underground.

If she had some artificial light and air then the plants would survive underground just fine, or they could just go outside somewhere. She had plenty of space around the hill to grow some crops. Zoe just wasn’t sure how long she’d be sticking around for. Once her home was done, she didn’t have much left motivating her to stick around.

It was weird, in a way. To spend so long building her home only to abandon it once it was done. But that’s the freedom that Zoe wanted. To be able to do what she wanted and not worry about the consequences too much. The home was hers, but it was transient. She would enjoy having a place to come back to, but might enjoy making another place to come back to even more.

Months flew by as Zoe finished off the rest of her cave. The framework was there. Walls and ceilings, even some shelves and simple furniture that Zoe was able to make from wood. A few wooden chairs and a table for her library.

But what was left were the complicated parts, and the floor. Her kitchen had the simple firepit that she’d been using ever since she moved in, but Zoe wanted something a bit better. And with her new skills, she thought she might be able to find a solution.

Zoe’s Wind skill created wind, but a question that Zoe had was what exactly qualified as Wind? Was she creating velocity, or air? After a bit of testing with her sleeping bag filling up despite being almost sealed off, she determined that it was creating air. The Wind was just flavour, but the true skill was simple Air. She could create it and move it. Her theory was supported by the skill being able to create stationary ‘wind’. That wasn’t truly wind.

And if her guess with how she created different rocks with Earth was right then what she would create with it would be the same breathable air that was always around her — since that’s what she manipulated most with the skill originally.

Which meant that Zoe didn’t need an intake of air if she could create self sustaining enchantments that created air inside her cave. She would need to deal with the carbon dioxide waste that would fill up the place. But Zoe thought that if she tried, she might be able to make an enchantment that destroyed gasses too.

Her Wind skill was capable of it, but it was a little mana intensive. She was worried that her enchantments might not be able to sustain themselves, but it was worth a try anyway. It raised another problem though. With an intake of fresh air from outside, the stagnant air inside would get forced out through cracks.

But if Zoe had a sealed cave, then there would be nowhere for the carbon dioxide that she breaths out to go. Her kitchen would have an exhaust, as would her forge. But when she slept in her bed and the carbon dioxide fell to the floor, that would have nowhere to go. It would just keep piling up. She’d need a solution for that.

Over the months, Zoe had stopped back in Flester a few times to check on her friends and pick up some supplies — wood stain was the main one that she needed. Zoe got a nice bright stain for her walls and a darker stain for the wooden floors and ceilings, both enchanted to keep the wood at a stable moisture level. They were a little pricy — three gold in total for enough, but worth it if it helped her home’s longevity. She’d already applied them to the frames, but the rest she’d do later.

She had an idea for dealing with the poisonous gas that would pile up at the bottom of her cave by the end. All that she really needed to worry about were her own exhales, since everything else that produced waste would be dealt with on site.

Her plan was to carve out small trenches in the stone floor and embed icy splinters into it with a weak Wind enchantment to blow air towards her cave’s chimney or if she managed to make one, gas destruction system.

The enchantments wouldn’t be strong enough to overwhelm the fresh air creation enchantments. But it would provide a gentle nudge to any gasses that settled in at the bottom, which would be enough to deal with her own exhales.

Zoe took a few hours to carve out the trenches, and then sat down on the floor. With enough time, Zoe was able to flood an icy splinter with mana and manipulate it with her Frost skill. She looked around at the maze of tiny trenches in her floor and sighed.

A single splinter wasn’t going to do much, and she intended to line the entire floor with them. She’d need to work through at least a hundred of the splinters. And that wasn’t even counting how many she intended to embed into the frames of her home for making fresh air, either.

The splinters were nice, but the time investment was a serious problem. Zoe began to understand why Ren was purchasing so much mana, now. At least, she hoped, the experience would bring her a little closer to making her own icy splinters.

Another few weeks flashed by as Zoe struggled to fight against each splinter and force it where she wanted. The trenches ran along the floor lengthwise, and were about two inches wide — three if you included one of the walls. Each splinter was big enough to cover up about a quarter length of a trench and there were a hundred trenches.

Zoe quickly realized that at least a hundred of the splinters was a vast underestimation of how many she’d need. With Meditation and a constant effort, she was able to work through a few dozen in a day. Each splinter took about thirty minutes just to fill with her mana and then grasp control of with her Frost, and then another ten to force into place and flash her enchantment onto.

She was using a Wind, Meditation and Enchanting combination to provide a gentle breeze, and at the end connected all the trenches together beneath the cave wall and up to her chimney. Zoe replaced the stolen splinter in her chimney and it all worked together to pull out any gas that settled in at the bottom of her cave.

Next, Zoe took a few days to take down all of the wood she’d painstakingly put up and then stained it. She could have stained it before she put it all up, but figured it would be better to only need to do it once than have to redo portions every time she decided to change something or realized she cut it to the wrong size.

While all of the wood was off the frames and drying, Zoe took another few days to weave stone supports through all of the frames with her Earth skill. She left slits open where the wood would connect to each other, and connected all the gray stone together to the ceiling and floor.

After the stone was woven through the structure, she slotted a few icy splinters into the stone supports and enchanted them all with Wind, Meditation and Enchanting to create fresh air with as little movement as she could manage. She was somewhat worried about the pressure building up to uncomfortable levels, but her testing with her Wind skill didn’t seem to be able to compress air all that much so she hoped the enchantment would be similar.

While everything was torn out, Zoe sat down on her bed and fiddled with hematite that she kept summoning. She’d enchant it with Wind and try to urge it towards destroying the air around it and then felt what was happening with her Wind skill, but no matter how many times she tried, it just didn’t work like she wanted. Destruction just didn’t seem possible for her enchantments, and she gave up on the idea.

Instead, Zoe just accepted she’d need a chimney and made some changes to the one she already had. The larger hole that connected to her cave, Zoe sealed off and replaced with an icy splinter that created fresh air and pushed it up the chimney.

Zoe put all of her now stained wood back in place and got to work on the finishing touches for her kitchen. She had a few large wooden counters made from the slight red hued pine wood for preparing foods, some shelves and cupboards for storing food and whatever tools she might need. But the main focal point was the large stone oven on the wall opposite the entrance.

Almost the entire length of the wall was carved out at waist height. At the bottom was a slot for burning wood, with fresh air being created from the icy splinters embedded into the front of that made a bright blue border to the bottom of the oven.

Just above was a stone platform with dozens of holes of varying sizes for the fire to reach up through. Zoe could rest her pots and pans on the stone platform and build up the fire below to heat it. She added a chimney to the back of the oven with some icy splinters to help direct the smoke and ash up the chimney and out of her home.

In time, the ash would build up in her chimney and she’d need to clear it out, but she still held on hope that before that happened she’d be able to find another solution.

Zoe went back to her room and laid down on her bed. The last bit that she wanted in her home was something of a forge to break down all the hematite she had and work it into something usable. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to make it work if she were being honest. But giving it a try sounded like fun anyway.