Catherine’s PoV

“There you go, my little baby,” I said softly, patting the earth flat where I’d just planted the magical tree seed.

Standing up, I surveyed the area I’d planted the prototype. My grove had changed a bit since I created it. It resembled a large sinkhole now, lush with vegetation that was continuously watered by a giant waterfall that sprayed everything as the water mostly misted before it hit the ground.

One of my grove tenders, the latest iteration of which were generic dryad sticky bois, ambled over to the seed I'd just planted and began to sprinkle it with growth magic.

"Hey, no," I sighed, and gently pushed the tender away. "Damn it, I wanted to see how it would grow naturally."

Already, a small seedling had sprouted from the loamy soil because of the tender's 'helpful' ministrations. Ugh. I didn't want to do it, but I needed some smarter grove tenders. It wasn't even that the less intelligent ones were messing with my experiments, it's that they even mismanaged normal spell plants. It wasn't by much, but if a plant required non-standard care to operate at peak performance, then the tenders were useless.

Resigned to my fate as the carer of a million little fluffy problems, I bit the bullet and closed my eyes. Communing with my grove was always an exceptionally unnerving experience. It was like dipping your toes into a vast pool of cold water, except the water was made of sluggish, nonsensical thoughts. According to Ryn, her grove didn't feel like that… which raised a whole bunch of questions I would probably never find the answers to.

Originally I'd decided to try doing things without any tenders, but that'd proven too time consuming as I worked to build up my spell repertoire. I began by trying for bees as tenders, since that just made sense to me. It didn't work. They were too dependent on their strict hive structure to function without it, even if mine were pretty smart as far as insects go. In the end, I swapped to the dryad tenders most mages used. Unfortunately, it was really damn hard to get the grove to reabsorb the tenders and create those dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks dryads. It felt like trying to convince a toddler to have a nap.

This time, when I inquired about absorbing the tenders, it shifted sluggishly and did as I asked without much fuss. Huh. I wonder if the intelligence of the tenders changed how difficult it was to convince the grove to scrap them. Would Ryn be completely unable to redo her buns because they were sentient? I hoped so.

Clearing my mental throat, I sent the grove my proposal. I wanted something cute, obviously… but not buns. I didn't want to copy Ryn, after all. Except… What kind of animal could I choose? It had to be good at digging, of course… huh, and—

Something tickled my neck, and I swatted at it instinctively. Rather than air and a bug as I expected, my hand caught a fistful of leaves, and all hell broke loose in my adrenal system. I jumped forward and spun, squealing like a preteen at her first PG pop concert.

Whatthufuk. The tree, it was… it was… growing.

Something skittered past my feet, and I watched in consternation as a ferret bounced over to the tree and—oh shit it was pouring more growth magic on it. Ah, there was another one doing the same thing! No wait, three… four… five… god damn, how were they so wiggly?

Their tiny stubby front legs were pressed against the rapidly growing trunk of the tree, pulsing green energy every half a second.

"No!" I yelled. "Stop! Stop! That one doesn't need any help!"

Their tiny, fluffy little heads turned and half a dozen pairs of beady black eyes fixed on me with confusion.

"I'm trying to let that one grow on its own so I can see how it does without supervision… the whole point of you lot was so you'd be smart enough not to mess with the experimental tree," I grumbled.

Six fuzzy noodles bounced off the still growing tree and wiggled up to a vague stop in front of me. I say it was a vague stop because they were now sniffing me, each other, the grass, and in one case, digging at the ground.

Well. The groves obviously had free will, because of all the animals to pick, I wouldn't've chosen a sextet of adhd linguini. They were kind of cute though, and I love cute stuff.

Sadly, before I could get to know my new friends, I had a situation to deal with. A situation that was rapidly growing into a Ryn-sized situation… a Ryntuation if you will.

Raising my hand, I tapped into my spells and accessed one that was… let's just say if the folks who wrote the Geneva Conventions had been taking some hallucinogens they might've thought to ban it.

Three bronze darts of magic zipped out of my palm. The moment before they hit the trunk of the tree, they splintered into several dozen smaller darts each. Those tiny darts embedded themselves in the wood and began to spin, grinding and burrowing into the tree like termites.

With my other hand, I sharpened my mind to a knife's edge and sliced off a good sized branch. It fell right into my still raised hand, where I immediately pumped growth energy into it. Inside the branch, I located dormant instructions and activated them. A fruit began to grow, heavy with juice and bearing a seed inside itself.

"Nice," I smiled, and plucked the fruit free. In the background, the newly made tree toppled as my spell finally felled it. Sorry lil baby… but I wasn't interested in having a giant tree in the middle of my grove.

The skin of the fruit was tough, almost leathery, but a quick telekinetic strike sliced it open just fine. The inner rind of the fruit was beautifully soft, but oddly dry until I pierced the skin with a fingernail. Juice instantly spurted out and straight into my eye.

Squeaking in surprise, I dropped the fruit to wipe at my face. A drop made its way to my lips and… oh my goodness. It tasted like the most gorgeous, succulent peach in history, but with a dose of strawberry. It was perfect! Holy crap we absolutely nailed this project! Those Neub folks were going to be over the fricken' moon with these things.

A noise at my feet prompted me to remember two things very quickly. The first—I dropped the fruit. The second—I had a gaggle of problem children at my feet.

Wait… I had a gaggle of problems at my feet. Now there was only one ferret down there, laying on its back with a chunk of fruit held in its paws. It glanced up from chewing for a second to stare at me.

"Alright… where did the rest of you go?" I asked with a laugh… until I remembered why I wanted that fruit. "What… where the hell is the seed? I needed that!"

Over under a bush, several of the ferrets were wriggling and tumbling as they wrestled for control of the tattered fruit. Reaching out with my mind, I plucked the fruit away from them and dragged it back. One ferret didn't want to let go, so I had to pry it off manually.

Holding it up in front of my face, I gave it a stern glare. "No. You can't just snatch up any random thing I drop and claim it as yours."

The ferret's little nose twitched as it sniffed around, while its long noodly butt hung down out of my hand, feet pawing uselessly at the air. Okay. I had to admit it. They were very cute.

“Okay. Everyone, I need your attention,” I said. Only one fluffy face looked up at me, and it was the one in my hand. I snapped my fingers, and their attention finally shifted. “Now, I needed the seed from this fruit, okay? You can have the fruit itself.”

Using my telekinesis, I plucked the seed from within the mangled fruit, then dropped it to the ground along with the ferret. A chaotic, wiggly brawl ensued as they all tried to eat it at once. Rolling my eyes, I held the seed up and spun it in midair. The hard protective shell was still on the seed, so I cracked it with a tendril of power, then wandered off a few yards and planted the seed again.

I applied another spell to it, this time. One I developed to help with Avonside’s crops. It was basically an animal repellant ward that made a nasty smell that would keep most hungry critters away from the crops.

Hopefully it would work on my ferrets too.

Then I glanced over at the sapling I felled. Poor tree. I just knew it was going to cause a problem if I let it keep growing. I suppose I should use the still living decapitated trunk to get some more fruit before I disposed of it. Plus… I kinda wanted to try the fruit for myself, properly this time.