My alarm goes off and I squinch my eyes and I blink rapidly, ready to swear at my HUD, when I realize my hands are blue and I am not in my own bed. In fact, I am on a couch, with a crick in my neck.

  A blond mess with a lip-full of drool is resting on my nice tunic, which is thankfully stain resistance in the face of Elfin spit. A look around the room after I wipe the lip and shift her gently shows me a dilapidated house with bare furnishings and a couch that I was forced to drag in front of the fireplace. Goddess am I sweaty.

  It’s been a month since the meeting I had with Gunther and Harmond. Now armed with a mid-grade platinum contract and an agreement with the Guild’s main office for crystals, I have a few minae to rub together. Which leads us to this shit building an hour and a half walk from Marcrest.

  Much to my surprise, Melody found Ol’ Jeb’s Farm for sale for three Talents. I thought it was a bit steep, but Melody pushed it, in case the Healing House asked for more. Turns out, Ol’ Jeb was quite the collector and staked out four thousand hectares of land to go with his farm and the water rights to the river that runs through his land. The same river that runs through the hills over my caves. The properties are adjacent over the majority of their borders, not to mention that Jeb’s land borders the main road for tens plus kilometers.

  My current living blanket tried very hard to survive the winter days discussing the improvements I want and the shipments I’d like her to arrange, but the poor tree-hugging dear damned near froze her ears off. My bed with the meager blankets were not enough, so she made me start a fire and snuggle on the couch with all of the blankets in the house.

  I didn’t need a blanket, I just didn’t take off my clothes. And now I’m boiling. I chuckle at the warnings about racial differences as I thought they were token differences, but my ‘cold resistance’ has got to be expert or master level. I won’t ever know until it increases—a feature that pertains to transferred skills from my personal experiences—but I can live with that until I travel to Sky Reach.

  There’s been an odd pull in my mind to travel north after I learned that Trolls earn their last names instead of being given them. While Melody mentioned that ‘displaced’ Trolls are named with a generic name after their community like ‘Sky’ or ‘Frost’, I kind of want a name that belongs. A problem for when I get stable, but a future problem just the same. I picked ‘Frost’ for my last name for the Guild, but only ‘cause they need one.

  I slide out from under my drooling mentor, placing a pillow underneath her face before plopping it back down. Mornings are getting colder and the fire in the fireplace has died down, but some of the kindling is still there so I grab a handful and head toward the kitchen.

  The stove is old and heavy, made for radiating heat to the room as well as the cooktop. It takes more wood than Leeda’s, but I’d raided the barn for tools the day before and found a hatchet to split the logs piled up in the barn.

  Fire, then tea and bacon, my priorities this morning, then being a person.

  Half an hour later when the meat is finished and I ‘m starting on eggs, Melody bumps me with her head and slings a blanket half around me.

  “Is the tea ready?”

  “Yeah, it’s on the corner of the stove. Cuddle with that at the table for a bit while I finish.” She grunts, grabs the kettle with her wool blanket mittens and does as I say and sits at the table with the kettle in her lap. I shake my head and smile at her silliness.

  “I hate your Troll blood right now.” She says as I serve her breakfast.

  “I will likely curse your Elf blood in the summer. Though my heat resistance is coming along.”

  She smiles while sampling the meat.

  “Did you learn to cook as a Traveler?” Melody asks.

  “No idea. I can’t remember some stuff, but feeding people always made sense.”

  After breakfast, Melody cleans up and I head out to the barn to open everything up. We worked on the house yesterday so that we could stay overnight without it feeling like a health hazard. According to the listing when I purchased the place, there’s the barn and a corral somewhere else on the vast expanse of land.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Though I was planning to spend another evening here, Melody was only out here to see what professionals I would need to set up my operation on the farm for both glass and alchemy. Ideally I’d want a workshop with a Kiln and various tools and supplies, a lab for my alchemy, a greenhouse, and mill of sorts where I can construct a crystal grinding apparatus for my grand glass idea. Okay, it’s just a variation on my experiment with ruby granules from last week. I want to try and imbue ruby dust, or just the aethrite/corundum dust by grinding the two crystals together. I suppose I could use diamond for the grinding plates, but I don’t have a source of diamond now do I?

  Melody eventually joins me outside, almost comically bundled up, and she coos at the dappled mare she convinced me to buy, despite not knowing how to ride a horse. That said, I don’t mind having to wrap my arms around her while she leads the beautiful animal towards the creek. I’m tempted to put my icy hands on her unsuspecting tummy, but I don’t want to fall off a horse.

  “I wouldn’t call this a creek.” Melody says as she reigns our mare to a walk and eventually to a stop. She waits for me to slide off before dismounting herself. “I also wonder where this much water is coming from at this time of year.”

  “My other land has some underground water features, perhaps it comes from a spring of sorts instead of a lake. The cave with the bats is also near-constantly dripping so it’s got to be something like that right? Those places are several kilometers apart, so maybe it’s both a lake I haven’t seen and a spring.”

  “The specifics don’t matter much for my purposes.” She walks up to the edge, pulls out a bottle and fills it halfway before stoppering it.

  “Afraid something is in the water?”

  “Not really, however getting one of our mages to analyze the water can tell us a lot about what’s going on up stream and it will give us a baseline to see what impact putting your workshop here will mean to the larger river downstream.”

  Environmental impact concerns at this level of civilization? That surprises me. Maybe it’s just an Elf thing.

  Getting back on the horse, we ride up toward the hills and more forested area where she stops again, without getting off. “I would recommend building here. Easy access to wood, this area’s relatively flat and water is of course nearby.” She leans back and turns to look at me “Are you sure you want us to start here and not on the house?”

  “I don’t need the conveniences really, save a chill box. I do however, need to get these ideas out of my head before they claw their way out.” She smirks at me, leans forward, and directs the mare back toward the farm house.

  “Go grab your pack, I want to head back to Marcrest, grab lunch, and get some estimates before you . . . travel for a few weeks.”

  “But, there’s so much to do here.” I whine.

  “Is it worth taking a whole day to walk back? I am taking Freckles with me.”

  “Freckles?”

  “I got tired of you calling her horse. So I named her for you, you’re welcome.” Her smirk is daring me to challenge her ridiculousness.

  A snort escapes me as I shake my head before jogging inside my farmhouse. She’s right, it makes no sense to waste a day, when I’d only be tidying and organizing. Even more sense to go in knowing that Leeda has a kiln for me to work at for the last two days of this stint at home.

  I make sure the fireplace and the oven ashes are both doused and lock the doors as best I can before returning to hugging on horseback. Melody quickly has Freckles at a trot that she can maintain for a while and I am forced to try to learn the cadence. My butt is going to be so sore.

  ***

  Leeda’s mood doesn’t sour this time when I describe the farm and my potential work locations, perhaps because I was there for work and not a date. She stays busy throughout the day, asking me to fetch things or to man the store while she talks with a serious customer.

  Glassworking is slow, as I only get a few pieces in during the consistent breaks I take to help. That said, I’m not doing anything of particular interest save refining my bottle and vial shapes into something standard and repeatable. I also fiddle with some brass pieces to make wire rigs that would let me close a bottle with a topper like those Belgian beer bottles from Earth. Is that something I should get into? Brewing? Leeda would like it, but I should probably focus on alchemy first—after I get a lab that is.

  “Are you moving out when you get back from traveling?” Leeda asks as we clean up the store.

  “If I do, not soon. That farm house needs . . . to be re-built, and even then I’ll need to hire someone to watch the farm for me, maybe range some livestock. I haven’t gotten that far yet. For now, though, I’d rather go out there for ‘work’ trips and as a place to store my cave plunder then come back to town for a few days in between. Plus, it’s nice to know that when I’m traveling that I’m not in danger. Is it okay if I stay here until I figure it out?”

  She tries to hide a smile, but she’s not actively frowning anymore so I can tell. “I’m not trying to kick you out, Zhantsa, just curious is all.”

  I smirk while I walk over to Leeda and pull her into a big ol’ hug. “I like having you around too, you softie.” She grumbles but doesn’t push me away.

  Be have a companionable dinner, talking about a trip to my lair once I get back. When I tell her that I have a horse her eyes brighten, knowing that we won’t have to walk the whole way. She deflates when I explain that since we never looked for a way to get a full cart to the cave, we’ll still have to walk that far with the hand cart. Leeda promptly promised to find a path or create one.

  After the meal, the Halvyr insists on cleaning up and for me to get on with whatever I need to do for traveling. I shrug, give her another hug and head off to lock myself in the room I’m renting. I message Lucy and Jessie before lying down and navigating my menu to log back into the ATC.