Val woke up on her third morning refreshed, clean, and without a worry in the world. Amazing. She swung herself out of bed, swung her backpack on, and stepped out the door.

  The firs, hemlocks, and morning-gray sky created a lovely scene, but the plot of dirt she had hoed and watered yesterday held Val’s attention. The dirt remained hoed, but she’d need to water her crops every day.

  “My seeds! I should have planted them yesterday! These are the most important things in my life!” Val took the seeds out of her backpack with a dramatic flourish.

  Val attended to her crops. Farming was the focus of her gaming life, so it was a most joyous moment to find her ignisbulbs glowing, just like the label instructions said they would once they were ripe. Val pulled her first grown ignisbulb out of the ground, the loamy soil breaking apart in her hands. The red bulb, twice the size of her fist, did indeed blaze, wisps of Aries fire twirling around six inches high. Val tossed it from hand to hand, expecting it to burn her, but it didn’t. Just like she’d learned yesterday, magical Aries flames didn’t actually start fires.

  She immediately stuck the ignisbulb in the farmhouse storage to keep it safe for the shrine at the reflecting pool. That forum would be fixed in no time.

  Next she carefully planted each seed, satisfied by the little five by three rows of ignisbulbs, with the other seeds filling the spots. This used nineteen energy points. The ignisbulb had used up a point of energy to harvest and had added just a bit to her Farming skill meter.

  The next step was to fill her watering can. Did she have to walk all the way over to the river west of the farm?

  Val looked around her farm, hoping some signal would pop up. Instead of anything useful, the farm rubbed wrong. She’d expected that being a farmer would fill her with wholesome, happy feelings, but instead she was just annoyed, even restless. This was more than just an empty watering can.

  Oh, of course.

  Val preferred an orderly life. In contrast, the tall grass, bushy bushes, waist-high weeds, and untidy random paths created an overgrown mess of a farm. She’d squelched part of her personality to endure her job and life, but now she was unfolding again, and actively wanted to impose order on the chaos. If she was going to stay at this place for any length of time, some housekeeping was due, even if it wouldn’t help her with her Airaba-given mission. And hopefully she’d find a watering hole.

  She divided her farm into four quadrants. The forest bordered it on the east and south. Cliffs and shrubs were the northern boundary, with the path toward the north farm entrances along the line between the northwest and northeast quads. The west boundary was a fence with the Usallis River beyond it. The west entrance to her farm was the divide between the northwest and southwest quads.

  Nice and tidy.

  What did each quadrant have?

  The southeast quad was the easiest: That was a quarter acre field where her current little patch of crops grew, and otherwise full of weeds. Was there a watering hold in the mess?

  The northeast quad held her shack of a farmhouse, and was otherwise empty of function but full of useless, ugly overgrowth.

  She hadn’t poked around at the western quads at all during her first two days. She walked over and kicked at the weeds and prickly bushes. The southwest quad was useless, the most overgrown with no sign of anything interesting. She needed to take the time to clear it out, and that alone would make her feel better.

  The northwest quad was a bit better, the overgrowth not as old. Val decided to start there, and used her scythe to slash through the tall grasses, throwing the debris into a pile. Under the grasses was flat ground that had once had use. Val paced around. There were the ruins of a foundation here, much bigger than her ruined shack. An idea struck Val. She paced around her shack and the ruins there and then back to the new foundation she’d found—this northwest quad used to hold a huge house! Her current shack was part of a ruined small building, like a shed. The foundations for this house took up most of its quarter acre. Val was impressed. Her vision of what the past farm looked like expanded. This really used to be an entire home for someone. She continued pacing around and a hot wind suddenly hit her face. She stopped in surprise, then looked around. There, a ley line with Aries flames glowing a foot high. She ran her hand through them. While the flames were warm, they weren’t dangerous.

  An idea struck her.

  Since the only water she knew about was the Usallis River, she went there straight away, climbed down a bank, and filled her watering can. She definitely couldn’t water her crops by accessing this water. She needed to focus on that project. But right after this idea.

  Val scanned through her tools, retrieved a shovel, and dug at the packed dirt that intersected with the ley line. Once she had a square foot of loose dirt with all the surface grass pulled away, she dumped all the water from the watering can onto the dirt, stirring it around with her fingers to create mud right where the Aries magic was.

  Within a minute, the mud stirred on its own and her very own baby ram crawled out of the mud!

  “And people say I don’t have magic.” Val grinned and poked at the ram’s side. Her finger left an indent. The baby ram, still the size of her fist, bounced around, not noticing how its muddy curls had been disfigured. She repeated the shoveling and watering process a few more times, more cute rams popping out. She liked to watch them.

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  After that side trip, Val went back to work, scything away at the southwest quad. She cleaned up all the overgrowth. No hidden secrets. Digging up roots and grass would take work, which she’d do once she needed to expand her crops out of the southeast quad.

  Once Val had been working on the weeds around her crops for an hour, she heard singing coming from the north entrance.

  A teenaged girl entered. She had golden brown skin, dark hair in two buns, and wore jeans with a mulberry-colored shirt.

  The girl waved her hand wildly over her head and called out a loud, cheerful “Hello!”

  Val smiled and gave her a less-wild wave back.

  The girl walked up to Val, chattering away immediately. “I cast lots on what to do today and it told me to come to the old farm! I thought my dice were finally broken, but here you are! I didn’t know anyone lived here. What should we do? Go for a walk?”

  “You caught me in the middle of a project. I’m trying to find a watering hole. I need to water my crops,” Val said, the lively teenager leaving her a bit confused but open to anything spontaneous happening.

  “Ah. I don’t have water magic to water them in the easy way,” the teenager said, putting her hands on her hips and looking around.

  “I’m Val. Welcome to Cattail Farm.” Val stood up and waved an arm in a flourish.

  “I’m Lily Desrosiers, from the Herbalist family.” She pointed over her shoulder in the direction of the mountain. “Usually people offer guests tea, but I won’t ask for any. This place is a mess!”

  “It was worse a couple hours ago,” Val said, amused and taking the blunt insult in stride. “What skills are associated with a Herbalist? I have a Foraging skill I need to level, if that’s one.” Val snapped her mouth shut; she may be focused on leveling her skills, but assuming everyone was set up to help her wasn’t the way things worked.

  “Yes! Foraging and herbs are like this.” Lily held up two crossed fingers.

  “Since you’re from here, maybe you know how to solve this problem. I’m all for unconventional solutions Cascadance might have. There’s water over at the river nearby, but it’s not convenient at all for watering my crops. I was hoping to find something, I don’t know, a spigot or sprinklers. Maybe a well or watering spot. How did the crops get watered before?”

  “Oh, yeah, what do we do in our garden? Oh, I have a spell for a waterproof barrier. That should be helpful, right?”

  Val and Lily stared at each other for a minute. Val felt like she was sharing her one brain cell to solve the problem. Lily reminded Val of a cousin. Did Lily perhaps have a developmental disorder?

  “I’ve got it,” Val said. “Dig a hole and then with your barrier, I should be able to fill the hole with water, probably by digging a narrow trench from the river.”

  That’s what they did. Surprisingly, the idea of some physical labor didn’t scare off the teenager. While Val dug a two-by-two foot square about a foot deep, Lily volunteered to get rocks from the river to line the hole for stability. Val thought Lily was getting the harder part of the deal, but Lily easily carried a huge stack of rocks, all that Val could need, in one load. Magic.

  “I was thinking,” Lily said, dumping the rocks and crouching by Val as she dug her hole, “I could dig that trench from the river to the hole. What do you think?”

  “Um, that would help me a lot, but don’t think you have to do it.”

  “I have a spell I want to try. It’s okay if I experiment with magic, right?”

  “By all means,” Val said with an amused smile. She wondered if there were rules about experimenting with magic. “I don’t know what path will be easiest for the trench, but leave the mud rams alone.”

  Lily laughed at that and rushed away to the Usallis River.

  Val’s new watering hole was located to the west of the crops. As well as digging the hole, Val smoothed out the area surrounding the hole. Over the next few weeks or months, she could turn this little area into a Zen-like space, some Japanese garden thing. For now, Lily’s pile of stones had a couple big enough to sit on, and would work until Val could have a real patio someday.

  As Val worked, the rhythmic scrape of her shovel blended with the whispering of the breeze through the trees. The birds’ chittering was lost in the song Lily sang. Lily’s spell was like a diamond-white blade that ate away at the soil, the narrow trench parallel to the path. When asked, Lily said her magic was Libra magic, airy, bright, and easy to form.

  Next, Val, with quiet concentration, laid the smooth riverbed rocks on the bottom and against the sides of the hole.

  Right before Lily connected her trench with the watering hole, she cast her Airy-tight Barrier spell, a white magic that spun in the air before settling into the sides and bottom with a shimmer, leaving just a notch on one side for the water to pour in.

  As the spell settled and water poured in, Val placed her hand in the water, the cool liquid slipping between her fingers. The sensation was soothing, real in a way that nothing had been for so long. She watched as the pool deepened, ripples catching the light, tuning out Lily’s chatter.

  Something within her shifted.

  Stillness and quiet used to mean emptiness, but now she felt peace.

  The realization hit her that she had made plans as simple as they were. For the first time in two years, she had formed something with her own thoughts and hands, with forethought about her future. She was proud of herself, let the tears prick her eyes for a moment before blinking them away. The watering hole filled up and then overflowed, the water running down hill into the forest.

  Her tablet beeped at her from her back pocket, a shrill, unfamiliar tone. Val took it out and unfolded it. A message popped up:

  Congrats on Farm Improvement! +50 points to Farming skill.

  Lily had hustled over when the tone chimed. “What did the System give you?”

  “Fifty points to a skill,” Val said, showing the screen. “This is the first time I’ve received a message like this.”

  “What’s your Farming level?”

  “Zero.”

  “Ha, that’s so low. I was at level one in all the basic skills before middle school, before I even chose a speciality. Anyway, fifty points puts you halfway to level one.”

  “Good to know. I’ve got to water crops now. That might push me over the top.” Relief that she was making progress joined Val’s peace. She filled her watering can from her new watering hole.

  “Watering?” Lily said skeptically. “Not interested. I’m going to go play with the mud rams.”

  “Don’t hurt them! No hunting for crystals! If you want payment for helping me, that’s not it!” Val yelled as Lily scampered off.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lily waved. “Tell me when you’re done.”

  Watering her crops ended up being a tense, exciting adventure. Once Val watered one bloodstone radish, her Farming skill meter popped up, showing how the extra fifty points put her close to filling the meter. She had a total of twenty-three crops, two points of energy each to water, not sure exactly how many points of skill earned per crop.

  Val kept an impatient eye on her Farming skill meter. Finally! Before she finished, the skill meter maxed out, flashed, and emptied. Her tablet chimed the same shrill tone.

  Congrats! You’ve passed 100 total Farming skill points earned.

  Level 1 Farming reached!

  Bonuses:

  Watering can holds 50% more water.

  Hoe reach increases by 100%

  Yes! This seemed like a little gift from Airaba, that Val was playing the game correctly. She continued watering. After watering the last asparagustine, she had thirty-four points of energy left out of a hundred, which was enough to get something else done today.