14 Summer, Year 3
The Pantry
I didn't end up going to Maru's party – the calf waited three more days to present itself, and then decided to do so at four am. I've been spending my nights waking up every two hours to go check, else I would've missed it. I write Maru a little note to let her know, just to make sure she knows it wasn't an empty excuse. I invite her over to come have a look if she wants.
It's probably a good thing I have too much work to do to spend much time pining. I've tried working my way down beyond level 80 in the mine, but I hardly ever manage to get through the onslaught to find the next elevator before I'm too exhausted to take another step. There is indeed a lot of gold to be found down there, but the critters are downright terrifying – and they actually hit me with honest-to-the-gods curses, because why not at this point. Last time I went down there I didn't even take the time to open the treasure chest on the empty 90th floor, I was just too exhausted. Got myself cut up a lot more than I had in a long time, too, so I'm staying away from the village for a while until I can walk and move naturally.
And in the meantime I've been looking at the designs and machines I've copied from grandpa's notebooks, trying to put them together. I had bought some blueprints from Robin too, for things like braziers and lamp posts, just because I thought they would be useful on the farm, but since then I found a little golden ring in the mine that glows when I put it on, more than enough to be able to get work done on the farm after dark. I might as well put some effort into making this place look nice, now that I've got the basics down.
Aside from all that, of course, I've been collecting the things I need for the community center. I've found several nautilus shells forgotten in a corner of one storage chest, I have a bunch of geodes lying around in another that I just haven't gotten around to taking to Clint yet, I got a bunch of pretty feathers when my ducks went through their last winter molt... I also have a couple of solar essences and enough bat wings to finish one list in the boiler room, all the minerals of a second except for the fire quartz, and I now do have a gold bar to finish the last one – the boiler room will be done as soon as I find that quartz.
More importantly, I have finally put a loom together – the very simplest version of one, basically just a wooden frame on legs. Robin can make the more complicated type, but for now this is all I need. Getting the wool ready to weave was a whole day's work, between skirting, washing, carding and spinning. The weaving was probably the least time-consuming part of the whole process. But then, of course, I didn't dye anything and didn't try to do anything interesting with colors; that might make a difference.
So, once again at 6 am, I get to the community center with a bag of apparently random stuff and a small roll of simple white woolen cloth under my arm. I have no clue how much the junimos want, so I have one fleece's worth and I hope that'll do. It's lovely to be outside right now, with the air fresh and humid after last night's thunderstorm, and my boots splashing heedlessly into puddles every now and then.
On my way, I pull the solar essence out of my pocket and study it. It just kind of fell to the ground when I killed a ghost, tinkling like glass. It feels like glass, too, and it's always warm to the touch and glowing with a faint light. It's definitely magical, and I have so many questions. Is this thing supposed to be the magic of the sun? Why was it in that ghost? Could there be something you could actually do with these? What would happen if it breaks? I mean I'm not going to try it – it might as well scorch the Earth for miles, you can never know with magic. But I wonder.
I go up the stairs to the park still looking at the little thing and miscount the steps, bumping my foot on the last step. With a yell I go down, but catch myself on my hands without pain because I've reached the soft dirt and grass of the park – but the solar essence falls out of my hands and into a puddle a few feet further.
I scramble to get back to my feet and reach out to pick it back up, but in the next instant a cloud of vapor billows out of the puddle and I can't see. I stumble off to my left, holding my breath because you never know with this magic, until I manage to get out of that cloud.
I stand there stupefied, watching, waiting for the vapor to blow over to see what happened to the solar essence. It takes a few minutes, but when I get to the place where the puddle was before, the puddle isn't just gone – the ground is dried out and cracked in a circle of a few feet around it, and the grass dead and completely dried out. The solar essence is nowhere to be found.
So what, it… dissolved in the water? Just turned into pure heat? I shiver thinking about how close my face was to that puddle. But I shouldn't stand around here; I absolutely don't want anyone to spot me loitering close to this thing right now. I head into the community center.
When I enter the community center, I see a junimo fade from view in the center of the hallway. Going in further, another one sits next to the aquarium. It disappears as soon as I spot it. The same thing happens walking into the boiler room and the pantry. So, what, they want me to catch a glimpse of them in every room now? Some kind of sign of trust?
I put various items in the boiler room and the bulletin board. I couldn't bring a bar of each metal because of the weight and the noise, and now I'm missing the solar essence, and then the fire quartz. With those three items, two of which I have at home, this scroll will be done.
In the pantry, I lay down the roll of cloth on top of the scroll and watch it melt away. I wait. The other list, the one with crude animal products, gave me a cheese press – I already had a few of those, but I was planning to make more because I now have more milk-producing animals, so that was nice. I stand aside to see what it's going to be this time.
The cloth melts away and in its place appears... a wine keg. Again, I already have a few and I can make them myself, but that's quite a hassle. It's nice to get one extra just like that. But I don't move; I wait. That cloth was the last item I needed to complete that scroll.
True enough, half a minute later, the junimos start appearing all around the small room, on the floor and the shelves, wiggling and making their mewing noises. I close my eyes to prevent being blinded again and only see the insides of my eyelids light up red, and when I open them again, the pantry isn't just refurbished with new floor tiles and shelves – it is completely stocked.
I look around goggling my eyes out, walk outside and realize that the kitchen is all gleaming new cabinets too, though these are empty. A set of linoleum table and four chairs sits neatly in the center of the room. There is even a coffee machine. The first time I walked in here, it looked like the cabinets had literally been ripped off the walls. This room was empty. Out of pure curiosity, I open a tap. Nothing comes out. The water is still shut off, but that's to be expected.
This is pretty amazing. All of this, just in exchange for a few crops and things that I can just get by doing what I already do every day on the farm. I also put a couple of things in the bulletin board scroll that I had lying around and strike them off the list I now carry at all times in my backpack before having a closer look at it. I should go fishing. First I'll do my crops and animals, as always, and then I'll go fishing. Where doesn't seem to matter much so far. There's one list that's completely ocean fish, one list of river fish and one list of lake fish, and then a few fish from elsewhere. I have no idea where I should start looking for sandfish, but I'll figure it out. I think I've picked up from the adventurers' guild that ghostfish can be caught in the underground lakes in the mines.
For now I'll just go with the mountain lake. The fish on the list are all available right now. Also, it's rainbow trout season, and I love those buggers.