I made a bit of a change here and erased the Construction Bundle from the Crafts Room bundles. Because in the context of the story (aside from the game), where the Junimos are forest spirits that appear when nature reclaims a bit of the world that was previously human-occupied and such, I find it hard to understand that they would ask for so many trees to be cut down. That was all. Have fun reading.

15 Spring, Year 3

A Commission for Robin

Gus's cousin is in town. He's staying for a week in a room at the pub. I've spotted him from afar – he's a somewhat corpulent guy with an eye patch – but this is really not my problem, so if he starts talking to me I'll just have a conversation, but otherwise I won't get involved unless someone specifically pulls me back in.

Bright and early in the morning, before doing anything else, I take a basket to the community center. It contains one of each of the crops on the spring crops list in the pantry, and one morel, the last thing I need for the list that had the maple syrup and pine tar and stuff on it.

I finished the list with the winter stuff – and got more of those strange seeds of the same plants in exchange – and it caused yet another scroll to show up. This time it's in the office room, and it seems to contain only requests for ever larger sums of money. I am very simply not doing that. I don't care what the reward might be, I am not giving these junimos a cumulative 42,000 gold. Even gold ore I can technically still find in the mines, it's 'hypothetical money' – it's not actually money until I sell it. But this is actual money, and I'm never even going to get that much of it together. I could put a kid through a year of college with money like that.

So now I'm really curious what other scrolls are going to appear next and what outrageous things they're going to ask for. Before going into the pantry, I check over the whole building, just to have fresh in my mind which scrolls there are and where, because I'm going to start losing track. From right to left, there's one in the boiler room; one in the office with the vault; one on the bulletin board; one on the aquarium; one in the pantry; and one in that other empty room.

I go into the pantry and let, in succession, a green bean, a cauliflower, a parsnip and a potato vanish from the face of this world. The list is wiped off the scroll, item by item. Then the air above the golden plate starts shimmering again and a box appears. Speed-grow fertilizer. Okay. I can get that.

But the shimmering doesn't stop – it spreads, upward and outward, and more boxes start appearing. I apprehensively take step after step back as the magic reaches the spot I've retreated to again and again, and I'm starting to wonder if the whole room is just going to be filled up with this stuff. Then, the air stops thrilling, and after waiting for half a minute I figure nothing more is happening.

So now I'm looking at a stack of boxes of fertilizer. These junimos might just go on surprising me. Counting them, I reach the number of twenty.

Okay. So that's... really not bad. This stuff is pretty expensive if I have to get it from Pierre, and though I have found a recipe for homemade fertilizer in my grandpa's notebooks, it's a pretty big hassle to make that version, requiring enough clams that I'd probably cause them to go locally extinct for a year just to fertilize my big island on the farm once.

But now, the moment of truth. I look in the kitchen – nothing. I look in the empty room – nothing new. The big hall still only has the one golden scroll near the aquarium. There's the bulletin board in the hallway, the one scroll in the vault room, and one in the boiler room.

No new scrolls have appeared. So can I assume that I've reached the end? Is this going to be all?

Well, I still have a few lists to complete on the first two scrolls. On this scroll I have the summer crops, and there's a list with animal products – eggs, milks – and one with processed things like cheeses and jam. My sheep is busy growing wool, which I'll be able to make cloth from for the second bundle. Likewise, my bees are busy producing honey, it's just going to take another week or so for them to have amassed enough honey to fill a few jars. If I complete the animal products bundle tomorrow and the other one in a week or two, I just have to wait for summer to put in a tomato, a melon, a blueberry and a hot pepper and then I'll be done with this list.

And of course I have this morel to put in the empty room. I go over and look at the rest. Turns out I'd completely forgotten that the junimos also want foraged things of this season, but also that's the last list I need to complete for this scroll. I just have to get a leek from the mountain, a daffodil from the park right here, dandelion from the bus stop, and a horseradish from the forest.

I wonder if anything will happen when I finish this thing. One way to find out.

But I've been hanging around here for long enough. I need to water my crops before the sun gets too high, and do the animals... And then after I'm done with that, I have something else I should do. These boxes can stay here for a while before I manage to get them home.

I go outside to find out it has started raining. So I guess no watering today.

I walk into Robin's house in the early afternoon and stay on the door mat, dripping water. I gingerly push my cowl back, trying not to get myself wet. It's been raining steadily since noon, and while that's good for my crops, it's less than ideal to have to trudge through the mud.

"Oh, you're all soaked, you poor thing," Robin says, coming out from behind her counter.

"Yeah, I should probably invest in an umbrella. Any idea if I can buy those here?"

"I'm afraid not. We have several, though, you can borrow one until you find a good reason to go to the city. It's such a hassle to get there. You can hang up the coat, if you like. Dry up for a while."

"I guess I could do that," I answer pleasantly, and pull my arms out of the sleeves. "Hey, Robin, you make furniture, right?"

"Yes, of course."

I leave my coat on the coat rack, but stay on the mat.

"You know, you can take off the boots. If you're staying to dry up anyway."

"I'm not... really planning to hold you up for the rest of the afternoon," I smile apologetically. Taking off your shoes is a step further than the coat.

"You're welcome to. Whenever you like. We don't get a lot of people up here, it gets a bit lonely."

"Okay, well... because you seem so happy to have me."

I wring myself out of my boots and get off the wet door mat on my dry socks.

"So i was wondering, do you have... like a catalogue or something, a portfolio... like an idea of the kinds of things you make?"

"Not really. Are you thinking of something unorthodox?"

She's half joking, but she seems more excited than apprehensive. She was really interested last time I proposed something she didn't know yet – she found it a fun challenge to install Maru's bird nest rooftiles.

"Really I just want a table, but I'd like it to hold up for a while if I leave it outside... and I was thinking about a specific decoration. I'm also not promising I'm going to officially commission anything right away, because I have no idea what kind of price tag I'm looking at here."

"No, of course. A weather-resistant table is not too much trouble. So what's the decoration you want?"

"I'm... not entirely sure, because I'm not a visual talent, and I'm not sure how intricate you can make it. It's a bit of a long story."

"In that case, we might as well sit down. Cup of coffee?"

I think about it, and really, I might as well.

"I can't really stand coffee, but that sounds nice."

I follow her to the kitchen on my socks. I pop my head into the lab on the way to find Demetrius doing something scientific in there with a bunsen burner and a bunch of test tubes.

"Hi Demetrius."

"Oh, Evan, hi."

"Don't worry, I'm not here to bother you. But I just wanted to say hi."

"You can bother me any time. Just a few days ago I was thinking I should come check on those mushroom boxes on your farm, I just haven't got around to it. So thanks for reminding me."

"Sure. Come round whenever you like."

"I'll see if I can make it tomorrow."

"Okay. See you later."