Summary: While training Wildsong and her new pet, Firesong learns a few things he'd rather have not, starting with 'Alberich wasn't joking'.

A/N: tlcroft: www dot invasive species info dot gov slash plants slash multiflora rose dot shtml Most of these are pink or white, but when you get up by the continental divide, yellow ones are more usual. Take out the spaces, replace the dots and slashes and watch the video...it's on a federal level forestry department website. This is the one Texas made famous when the song called The Yellow Rose of Texas came out...and I'm not going to tell you what her real job was. Look it up if you want to know.

Oddly enough, they are all the same plant as your's...just on the extremes of it's range, coastal where there is salt in the soil for it to deal with and the eastern slopes of the Rockies with the harsh winter conditions it must survive.

FYI: The prolifically growing and difficult to tame vines in the last chapter were several varietals of Morning Glory...

BUSY

He was cute and he knew it, the young monster was adorable. He knew it, Firesong knew it and the hertasi knew it. When he rolled on his long back and waved his little feet in the air after having gotten into some kind of mischief, it wasn't long before the scoldings tapered off and the adept's sensitive fingers ticked the softer scales of his belly, all forgiven. When a doubled dose of dragonic cuteness and Wildsong's version was leveled at you, there wasn't much you could do.

Take now, for instance...the fireflower patch was certainly welcome, but he'd have preferred being warned they were putting one in so he could have put the proper protections up. Those four ekele would never be the same...

Crap

Starfall in his place as a Vale Elder, and his son, Firesong, as the girl's Guardian stood with complainants Looseleaf, Sliverwood, Red Oak and Moonlight and looked up at the burnt out bottoms of the four ekele too close to Wildsong's ground-dwelling's stacked gardens for safety from that top platform...or rather, from what she had planted there. Granted, those platforms she'd grown were fascinating, easily repeated elsewhere and very useful...they were living, bowl shaped containers grown from vining branches filled with soil and then whatever was wanted was planted. Draping vines along the edges further ensured privacy in her ekele's upper floors, for one thing...only the bottom level was on the ground.

The central tree didn't have anyone living in it so she'd put in a spiral staircase around the trunk...not that she knew that's what it was called, she just knew what she needed and started growing it. Other, smaller trees had their branches woven and tied off in a way that gave them the shape of a flat, circular platform too...looked rather like tables...and those were the supports for the next higher floor. At first, the central tree looked like it had several levels of 'workspace' but then she started growing heavy flowering vines that fell over the top edges of the uppermost platform and provided walls. As they grew, they thickened until they could be tied together, woven with other, smaller vines until they grew enough to stay where they were on their own. She grew every part of her home except some of the furniture, though she wove living vines and branches into much of her furnishings as well. She was a creative, industrious apprentice to Steelmind...and she had an irritating habit of not asking before she tried something.

Like planting six Lesser and one Greater Fireflowers as the centerpiece of her topmost display garden...where it had gradually 'cooked' the bottom of those four ekele until the bottoms were rendered into high value fertilizer...as the plant was prone to doing to anything between it and sunlight in the wild...and those homes had been in it's light... The six lessers weren't an issue, they couldn't send heat that high...but the Greater...oh dear.

"The plants were welcomed by the Vale, rare as they are, I realize that, Elder...but she planted the Greater in her top platform...genius those platforms, by the way...but as you can see, the flowerfires have already damaged all four ekeles past any hope of recovery.

"The Greater Fireflower has already added it's magics and they're all already turning to powder. Along with everything in them. I've lost all my clothes!" A sobbing Sliverwood whimpered, blubbering all over Firesong. Complaints and weeping, indeed. The young mage was smearing snot and other disgusting things on Firesong's shoulder as he cried.

"The floors were just the start. Now with those six female Lessers and the male Greater...Star-eyed!" Red Oak pointed out, patting Sliverwood's shoulder as she frowned at Firesong. "The girl is only six summers old, one cannot actually blame her for obeying the people she's supposed to obey and actually following her teachers' instructions to the letter...but you and Steelmind were supposed to be keeping up with the child. She was out picking seeds from the 'girls' as she calls the female plants, last week...the resulting hybrid should be grown only by adults...or hertasi...who will have a care for where they're planted. We can't move those seven or we'll kill them...too rare to take that chance and surely no one else will have ekeles put in overhead, but still...the hertasi tell us the child didn't give them any of the seeds...so who knows where she has planted them?"

Firesong and his father shuddered at the thought, nor were they alone in this...Sliverwood's sobbing deepened and Firesong's shoulder was getting a little...slick.

Have you seen what that young drake has been into? The glass-works, that's what. We had just barely gotten the main furnace cooled enough to clean it and here he comes for his daily visit an' seein' th' furnace was out, well, there he goes, himself was just being helpful. He meant well, he did...cute little bugger...anyway, he fires it up again. Only it's dragon-fire this time and howinhell do we put that out?"

"I tell you, Firesong, if that child tosses another watercrystalwood plant in the main Flower Pool to clean the waters after parties, there won't be room for anything else. She's turning it into a Crystalwood Pool. It'll be lots easier if you just raise a new hot-spring and we've already got the pools ready for one..." One of the hertasi told him. "That way we can keep the crystalwood pool. Did you know? No other Vale has even one color of crystalwood, let alone over twenty. It's priceless!"

Firesong sighed...as if he didn't have enough to do already.

Even our battlemares aren't going to do much more than stampede when presented with Dragon scent, you idiot! Why didn't you warn us that the Vale has someone in it that has a baby dragon for a pet?

Firesong let the Shininin rant, she was right, after all...but he glared at his snickering mate.

"There's white moonflower vines...or at least that's what Wildsong calls them, all over the meeting hall...no bodies birds can land on the perches anymore with those on there, Steelmind. Best you redirect their growth, don't you think? they're too pretty to cut...night bloomers, those. She told us they were a variety of those morning glories that were growing all over the Vale last year.

"Tamed?"

"No, not as far as anyone knows...the night birds think the seeds are delicious, though. Eating tons of them."

Firesong groaned. Steelmind wasn't going to be happy.

"Invasive, golden grapes, thick skinned and will grow in the worst, poorest soils...delicious, mind you, but they're all over the place. Spread faster than those Morning Glories last year and harder to get rid of...or tame, than those yellow roses. Runners and seeds...those seeds sprout fast, too. If you let them lie on bare ground for more than a day or so, they're already got roots in several inches deep...highly successful wild grapes, these. Best get started taming those. Your ward sure seems to know about lots of valuable wild foods, doesn't she?"

"Yes. She told me if she plants a few that Steelmind and I have a chance to get rid of all the unwanted traits while we hunt them all down and bring them to a useful state. I really wish I could fault her reasoning." He grumbled. "Unfortunately, she's correct...so what can I really do?"

"Well, for now, getting started on these new grapes would be a good idea. They've taken over half the vale in just two weeks."

"A full fortnight? Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Firesong yelped, knowing there was a good chance that taming was now going to take a long, long time...

Were you aware that dragon dung will heat a dwelling for months? Or that when dragon urine is allowed to drain into a stream instead of being disposed of magically, nothing but aquatic Flamevines will grow in it? Do we really need those popping up unexpectedly in various places...like the swimming pools? There are several people with scalds in odd places. Fix it, Firesong." Starfall snapped, limping away awkwardly.

"OH, come ON, we don't need that many rabbits in here for the hunting birds and young Fyr, do we? I've been wading ankle deep through them for two days!"

Alberich read through the latest 'Darci Reports' from the resident Heralds as he waited for the rest of his class to arrive for their lesson. He then promptly terrified the children by bending over so far the top of his head nearly touched the floor...in laughter. "Ah, such a busy child is she!"

Sounds like it, but why does Firesong have a baby dragon in the Vale? Is it a pet or something?

"Must be. My problem it is not."

**TBC**