Hey Diary,

  There was a big earthquake today. Or, bigger than any I’ve felt so far. I assume there’s gonna be bigger ones if the ground is literally going to split apart.

  It scared Peanut. Well, it scared all of us, but it’s my job to make sure he’s ok. In the end I had to use charm magic to make him think the world wasn't ending.

  It even scared the levitation runes on our cart. Their job is to stay a certain distance above the ground, and when the ground was shaking and wiggling they were like “aaaah what do we do???” and three of them died.

  Thankfully making replacement levitation runes is Luke’s hobby now, so he had spares to replace them. It took about the same amount of time for him to swap the runes as it took for me to decide Peanut was going to be ok. I’m just glad I wasn't on my new flying carpet when the earthquake started; I have no clue how I’d fix a rune on a carpet.

  I kinda want to ask Maeve to talk to the Goddess and tell her to put a charm on animals to make them think earthquakes are normal and shouldn’t be worried about. If they’re going to be increasing in severity and frequency (as we wrote on the official reports), the animals are all going to freak out. And every animal in the country freaking out at the same moment would be a very bad thing.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  We got to a town at dusk, so we’re staying in an inn. Maybe I should get up early tomorrow morning and go to all the people in town with animals. Tell them about the earthquakes and ask to put charms on the animals. But the big earthquake will be over a month from now; the charm will wear off before then on even the dumbest animals.

  Well, I could still go and warn the animal owners, and tell them to take precautions.

  I should tell Maeve and Maki to go talk to the mayor. We’ve been going straight through towns, only stopping for food, but surely it wouldn't take much longer to stop and give the mayors a report about what’s going on or something.

  And yeah, we’re hurrying because we need to get a big, official report to the big cities so they can tell everyone in the little towns… I suppose it makes more sense to just do that then slow down to tell people who will hear about it in a few days anyways.

  But who will tell the animals who aren't owned by people? Like the wolves and squirrels and ice cats…

  I should write Dad and tell him to go find the ice cats and warn them that where they live might become a volcano soon. Maybe.

  I should just… write Dad.

  Or I could put it off by trying to figure out if there's a way to calm all the animals in the country at once. Yeah. Luke has a book of magic and knows about how all that stuff works, I’m sure he’ll help me tomorrow.

  Yeah.

  Signing off,