[Food, Path]

  The former spy had originally planned on opening her new bakery out by the farms, in fact they had given a way a ton of food to both the gnomes who were building everything and the farmers and their families while they waited for the farms to produce their first crops. But now she was starting to get interested in the affordable housing initiative, the five estates with lots of affordable housing would mean lots of hungry families. It might make more sense to build the new bakery out on one of the estates.

  Rose had invited Lily, Nim and Paula to the tower for supper and to request that they each agree to be board members or foundation allies if Elma got enough votes for a name change. With Roses’s portal network, the entire town had been virtually shrunk, almost every location in town was less than a five minute walk away from a portal. Even living an hour's walk away on the farthest estate, with the portal network you were still only five minutes away.

  Paula wondered if the portal network would have the same effect on Wyldwood as cars had on Earth. The portals wouldn't create pollution nor foster energy crises, there would be no global warming effect either, but what about obesity. Did people often walk much farther before the portals or did they live, work and shop in the same neighborhood? Madd Maggies didn’t even have a portal in front of it, yet business had definitely increased, free food being handed out had almost doubled. Paula and Lily were happy to be giving out more free food.

  Paula portaled out to the Evans estate, the gnome colony was abuzz with activity. Rose & Maz’s portable sawmill was running eighteen hours a day, Maz explained to her that the fairly low horsepower, compared to a car, would never run out of gas. If you filled the tank to the brim it would consume the gas until it reached the three quarter full mark. From then onwards it just ran, you could still smell the exhaust but the gas level never decreased.

  That is just how it works at the bakery, the non magical ingredients once brought in never dropped below three quarters full. If this world ever ran out of magic, the bakery’s business model or lack there of, would be shattered. Rose’s farms might be able to make up the shortfall of food once the magical free food was gone. She started walking towards the vineyard careful to stay out of the way of the industrious gnomes. As they toted stacks of lumber fresh from the sawmill. She wondered what made her think about the possibility that magic might run out, she wasn’t even sure what magic was or where it came from.

  It certainly wasn’t mana from heaven rationed out by a jealous god. Paula wondered where this philosophical turn of her mind had come from, was she the spy, hidden in the dark or was she the practical baker, who enjoyed the work so much that she gave it away freely. Rose used all her power to help the people around her. Paula hadn’t believed Rose was real when they first met and demanded ten million dollars for one night's work. Afterwards she was embarrassed and had on more than one occasion tried to return the money. Even donating a million dollars to the theater and actors retirement home was just her way of trying to get rid of the money that she felt she had not earned.

  But now that she thinks about it, it would have been better if she’d requested ten billion or even ten trillion, she could have set up a foundation on Earth first to feed and then to help them feed themselves. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple, corrupt governments wouldn’t want their population fed, it’d make them less desperate. Desperate people are easy to control, well fed people may look to change governments that don’t have the people's best interest in mind.

  She was at Harris's former mansion, she saw the sign someone probably Mossbeard had put up for a public portal. Down the hill a little to the north was a huge winery building. Rose’s vision for the winery is to make great wine, but make it affordable. But she also wanted the profits from the winery to help pay property taxes for families that without the help, couldn’t afford to buy a home. She also wanted to finance all infrastructure costs, after all of the homes are built, from the winery.

  She walked a little to the south of the mansion, its location was perfect, a great view of the town, close to a portal, but still within easy walking distance of two estates, soon to be filled with homes. Eldara had even expressed an interest in buying a home out here. They’d been dating for almost six months, would it be too early to ask Eldara to move in. It would be on Earth, but Rose and Lu had moved in together after only a matter of eight or nine weeks, circumstances were different, than her and Eldaras. Rose and Lu had just come to Wyldwood for a few days, then Rose was staying longer, so it was either long distance or to take a leap of faith in each other.

  Rose and Lu had more things going against a happy future than Paula and Eldara. Lu being a werewolf and not being honest about it, at first. Rose’s bibliomancy powers, which at the time she only had the barest peek at, come at a cost. Rose can control reality in fictional worlds but her characters can see by looking at our world through her eyes and can even take over and control her body. Hopefully she only creates nice characters, what would happen if an evil character took control of Rose’s body? Would they have her bibliomancer powers? That is something terrifying to ponder when you wake up in the middle of the night.

  Alright, enough scary thoughts yes I want Eldara to move in, gods she had become fictional for me, why the hell was I even hesitating. That means a nice big house above the bakery, a hopefully magical bakery. Kids would make a nice addition someday, Eldara would be a terrific mom. She picked up the pace and headed back to the Evans estate, she wanted to talk to the gnome in charge of building, to order her building, even though she didn’t have a plot yet, actually she needed two plots.

  Rose rose early, she wanted to get to Draco before Opal went for her morning lessons. She walked down to the dragon’s lair and knocked. A heartbeat later.

  “Come in, Rose.”

  “Draco, I’m here to apologize."

  “About what?”

  “Why have I done multiple things?”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “No, as far as I know you haven’t done anything, so maybe just go ahead and apologize and we can talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry about arguing with you about Opal’s training. Specifically training her to defend herself. I mean as soon as I saw that she was better at magic than me, who do I turn to for advice and help, and finally just leave the whole thing up to you. Then when you tell me she needs to be able to defend herself, I argue right away. It was wrong of me in more ways than one.”

  “No it wasn’t and I wasn’t offended, I just left it where it was, I don’t want to start teaching her that today, sometime in the near future, but we have lots of other stuff to teach before that comes up. I thought we’d talk again and come to some compromise.”

  “Ruby, doesn’t want any compromise, she wants her sister to be able to defend herself, she even wants her to learn non lethal offensive spells if you think that it will keep her safe. I’ve lived a charmed life, first my parents protected me, then just my mom and granny, then Lu. I’ve never had to defend myself so it was easy for me to assume that everyone has that kind of support system and is it even fair. Why should Lu have to protect me, shouldn’t I be able to protect myself?”

  “Look Rose, you look at Opal and see a sweet eleven year old girl. You don’t even want to consider the fact that she may be attacked and I really understand that. I really do so I don’t want you worrying about this. I see the same sweet eleven year old but I also see the powerful fey witch underneath, by the time she’s eighteen you and I will make sure that she stays that wonderful sweet girl but we’ll also make her so powerful that only the largest of fools will even think of testing her.”

  “Ahh, Draco, that’s why I love you, you old softie, you.”

  “I am not a softie, I’m a proud and regal dragon and don’t you dare hug me. No one is dying and I wasn’t even angry, so run along and be back by noon to train Opal on gathering this afternoon. Hey, Hey, I said NOT to hug me.”

  I portaled to the farms, it had been quite a while since I was last here and I was pleasantly surprised to find about half of the farmer’s houses had been completed. I was even happier to not hear the sawmill whining in the background. I walked over to the former sawmill and knocked at the door, a gnome answered it and I asked for Maz, who was on his back under some kind of shoot. Maybe it fed the grain into the large mill stones that kept turning, round and round. It was hypnotic.

  Maz shoved himself out from under the shoot when he heard my voice.

  “Rose, is everything alright? Nothing's happened to Groucho or Draco has it?”

  “No Maz, Nothing like that, everything is fine. Do you have enough time for a quick break, I’ll buy you breakfast or second breakfast.”

  “Sure Rose, breakfast would be nice, I had an idea for the flour mill so I ran out this morning without thinking of breakfast.”

  We portaled down to the teahouse and Salome has us seated and a pot of tea in front of us, before going to the kitchen to retrieve a stack of pancakes for Maz.

  “So what did you want to talk about Rose?”

  “Well, Maz, I’d like to ask a favor. We are establishing a temporary Non Profit Estate Foundation and I’d love it if you would consider serving on the board, I think your’s and Lotie’s scientific viewpoint would help give perspective especially since you both are from earth and understand some long term pitfalls we might fall into, pollution, ecology, health. But aside from that we have another large gnome colony which introduces a lot of workers who will need jobs once all this construction is done. Look how far and fast the farms have come in such a short time.”

  “What kinds of jobs did you have in mind?”

  “Well you’ve worked with the gnomes for awhile, first building the sawmill now with the flourmill, are they suited for that type of work?”

  “Oh, yes Rose, I never would have gotten it done so fast or built so well without their assistance.”

  “That’s great, Elma got me thinking, when we were talking about Walden, could you design a wooden washing machine, powered by a removal battery?”

  “Why removable?"

  “Well I can’t just throw up a magical field around the town, there are certain sections that need to not have a field, like Lily’s outdoor oven where she does medical bakes. But if the battery were removable then people could go to a battery store which has a magical field to charge the batteries and just swap batteries, go home and stick it back in the washing machine.”

  “That is a great idea, there are a ton of other things that might be appropriate for the gnomes to build and yes I’ll be honored to be on the board.”

  “Thanks, Maz.”