118: Bubbles on Bubbles

Ryn

Everyone was waiting for us in the balcony cafe of the tree, including Esra, who was still scowling from when she found out who she was going to be teaching. That was like, a week ago. She could really hold a scowl.

“Hey everyone!” I called, making sure that Cee was still walking okay. “Cream’s out! She’s going to go by Cee now.”

“Oh wow,” Bray commented quickly. “I can see that she’s changed a lot. How are you feeling little dude?”

“I am not a dude?” Cee asked, genuinely confused.

Bray coughed and nodded, cheeks reddening slightly. “Right, sorry. Habit, I guess.”

“How are you doing though, Cee?” Grace asked. My girlfriend had been more than a little worried about the small bun. I wasn’t the only person who cared deeply about my grove’s little helpers. “It has to be very strange to wake up with human proportions.”

“It is very funny,” the bun agreed, clutching at the towel she was wearing to keep it from slipping. “I still can hop, though!”

She showed her feet off with a smile, and god it was so cute. Her mouth wasn’t really made for human smiles, so even with the corners tipped up she still looked very solemn. Her eyes crinkled in amusement and happiness just fine, though.

“Oh, and my brain does words better!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Before the fruit it was very hard to make my brain put words together into sentences because us buns are used to just sending ideas without words with our brains. See! That was a very long sentence!”

Standing there looking so extremely proud of herself, I couldn’t keep from putting an arm over her little shoulders. “You’re never going to stop talking, are you?” I teased.

“Why would I stop?” she grinned. “I can tell everyone all about everything I am thinking about! It’s very exciting.”

“You’ll need to stop and listen, too,” Esra said, speaking up for the first time. Her frown had eased considerably. “I’ll be teaching you about how to be a mage, and apparently, how to interact with society too. I hope you’re harder working than your mother.”

I just about choked on my own tongue when Esra just casually referred to me as Cee’s mother. Several amused looks turned my way, and now it was me scowling. I was definitely not her mother. She was a… a… shit. I kinda was.

“Ryn works very hard!” Cee said, hands moving to her hips. “I will work very hard too, because I am a bun!”

“Oh, I’m sure she does,” Esra remarked sarcastically.

Cee nodded guilelessly. “Yes, she is very good at working!”

Oh dear. I wonder how long it would take for the buns to realise I wasn't perfect. Honestly, I hoped it was soon. Being treated like I was some sort of omnipotent goddess made me uncomfortable.

"So now that we have another mage… what's the plan?" Asked Catherine.

"Keep building, keep training," Troy replied, eliciting groans from everyone else.

Well, everyone except Esra, who nodded along with Troy. "I will be taking Cee right away to begin training her."

"We need to get her some clothes, first," I interjected, tightening my grip on the bun girl.

"Nonsense," Esra scoffed. "She has fur. That is enough."

I let go of Cee and crossed my arms. "Tell that to the creeps who'll sexualise her."

The haughty derision in my mage-mother's expression faded, replaced by a grimace. "Ah. You may have a valid point there, Rynadria. We shall see about creating a wardrobe that is comfortable for her after her grove is created."

I nodded and looked down at Cee. "Is that okay? Shall we get on with it?"

"Yes!" She smiled. "I am excited! My own grove! I wonder what it will look like!"

To my surprise, Esra chuckled and stepped forward to offer a hand to the tiny bunny girl. "That's entirely up to you, my dear. I am very interested in how you shape your sanctum."

"I make it myself?" Cee gasped. "Ryn, did you make the home burrow? Did you choose it?"

Oh my god, she was so cute!

"Yeah, I did," I said, cheeks aching from how hard I was smiling. Her enthusiasm was so good and pure.

Cee's little grin grew even bigger, and spontaneously, she leapt into the air and did a backflip. Unfortunately, the flip wasn't the most coordinated manoeuvre in the universe, and she came back down on her side. If it wasn't for the fact I reacted by reaching out to catch her with my telekinesis, she'd have hit the ground rather hard.

"Whoa there," I said, righting her again while bending to pick up the towel that'd gone flying. "Let's contain the binkies until you're more coordinated on those feet of yours."

"I almost bonked," she said sorrowfully, big eyes turned up towards me in a quest for sympathy. "Binking is so much harder like this."

"There there," I cooed, patting her head. "Soon you'll be able to do big magic binkies."

That seemed to strike a chord with her, and she brightened up again like nothing bad had happened. Oh dear. Despite my best efforts, it seemed I had a kid, of sorts. Or maybe a tiny sister? We'd see once she matured and grew into her own as a mage.

Catherine and I were up in the library theorycrafting some new spells while we waited for Cee and Esra to get back, when the whole grove shuddered. It was like an earthquake and an explosive shockwave in one, and instinctively I dove under the table.

"What the fuck was that?!" Cat asked. "And why are you under the table?"

Grumbling about earthquake drills, I clambered back up and glanced around the library. None of the books had fallen off the shelves.

On the table, the inkwell was still upright and our written blueprints were fine.

We were in the process of designing a spell that would allow us to bond two separate objects made of the same material together. Bray had asked for it after the Cee welcome party, saying it'd help him with a project.

Unfortunately, it was giving us a lot of trouble. The flower had a semi-hollow stalk like a dandelion, but it was filled with a complex metallic lattice. The lattice was what carried the frustratingly complex instructions for creating the various forces that held a solid together. The further we went down the rabbithole, the more complicated it became.

“I think we should probably go and see what just happened,” I said, starting for the door.

Cat reached out and grabbed my hand. “It’s probably out in the Nameless Garden. We should drop in there.”

“Good point.”

We phased out and into the garden with a thought, and found ourselves floating nearby to Esra and Cee, who were staring back past us in shock.

The Nameless Garden itself seemed like it’s usual trippy self, with fractal plants twisting and morphing their forms on a whim, while currents of magic swirled through it all. There were more groves here now, with Esra’s off in the middle distance and Cat’s close by. Further out, I could see another grove that for some reason, reminded me of Eilian. I guess that was her new one?

“I am afraid, my dear Rynadria, that we might have reached the limits of your ability to break the laws of magic in our favour,” Esra said, floating over to us with Cee in tow.

Speaking as I turned to see what they’d been looking at, I asked, “What do you mean? There was a bit of an earthquake in the grove, but it’s still— oh. That’s weird.”

Attached to the large bubble of my grove was a second, smaller one. It looked like a couple of soap bubbles bonded together by surface tension. Was that Cee’s grove? How was it stuck to mine like that?

“Indeed,” Esra remarked. “I am glad to hear that your grove has not suffered any obvious damage. I am, however, concerned. In the past, when groves were allowed to touch in this manner, there would be a large explosion and a lot of magical debris to clean up.”

“Except it isn’t…” I said, stating the obvious.

“I think it’s just snuggling because it knows I came from that grove,” Cee said defensively. “Maybe bun groves are different. I think they’re different.”

“Yes, but you are about one year old, Cee,” Esra retorted, although her tone was gentle.

Cee’s back legs flicked in annoyance, but she didn’t say anything in reply. Instead she just asked, “Can we go inside? I want to go inside.”

“I guess we can,” my mentor said with a long-suffering sigh. “No other way to find out what’s going on, since we’re clearly not going to get any more information from out here.”

“Yay!” the newly minted bun mage said gleefully, trying to run towards her new home. It didn’t work, and she began to spin wildly in the zero gravity of the garden.

Esra sighed again. I just grinned. It was honestly so funny to see her biting her tongue and suffering in silence so she didn’t upset the naive bun. Typical Esra, grumbling and moaning while secretly doing everything she could to help others.

QuietValerie