It didn’t feel like it had taken that much time, but pretty soon 3 months had passed. Life continued on as it had. They spent most of their time working on various projects around the farm. Meira kind of took over as the de facto leader for plant care. She spent most of her time either caring for the herbs, or caring for the crops. When she wasn’t doing that she was helping cut granite, or preparing meals, or even going for walks through the meadow and surrounding forest.
On Bjorn’s end he helped Meira with her tasks with the crops and herbs. At first he they had spent almost their same amount of time caring for the plants. As they did so Bjorn talked almost incessantly, telling her everything he knew about plants, herbs, and how to take care of them. There were some things that she knew that Bjorn hadn’t but his knowledge especially on herbs was greater than hers. As time went on he spent less and less time caring for the herbs in their herb garden. Instead he moved back to working on construction.
When mid spring started to really hit their crops were starting to just barely poke their heads out of the ground. Once that happened he would walk through their fields and begin casting his light rain spell. It was one of the first times he had cast that spell after he learned how to cast the spell. It was also one of the first spells that he had access to that had a material component to it as well. His knowledge on how to cast the spell made him instinctively understand what that material component was. Which was simply a gallon of pure water.
In preparation to cast these spells Bjorn prepared a large amount of purified water. He got 10 jugs that held roughly a gallon and a half from the potter in Leefside. With each filled with pure water he would be able to do one field and have a little water left over. The only real problem with casting the light rain spell was the mana cost. It took a total of 3 minutes to cast the spell, but time wasn’t an issue. The 62 mana points that it took to cast the spell meant that he could cast the spell 1 time. Then he had to wait at least an hour before he could cast it a second time.
Doing this would completely drain his mana but that wasn’t a problem, as without casting the light rain spell he wasn’t really using up his mana anyways. With his mana regeneration rate he could only cast the spell twice a day, if he cast it more than that then he would be cutting into the next day's 2 spells. So for the time being he just cast the 2 and went about his day.
When he cast the spell it was unusual in comparison to his other spells as well. It required him to put one of the jars down on the ground. He had to be strategic with his placement of the jar, as the 50 foot radius was centered on where the jar sat. Although a radius wasn’t the right word to describe it, as it didn’t form a circle, it actually formed a square with the area that was affected. Once the spell was complete it would pull a gallon of water out of the jar. The gallon would then begin to turn into a mist and start to float roughly 8 feet off the ground, it as it spread it would slowly condense into dark rain clouds. Exactly 1 minute after the spell finished being cast the rain would start coming down. The rain lasted for 1 hour before the clouds would dissipate and the magic finished working.
The casting itself was unusual as well. For the most part all of the spells that he cast would take only a few seconds, a word of power, and some sort of hand gesture, then the magical effect would take place. Not with light rain. He more or less had to do an elaborate rain dance around the jar that was set up in the middle of the field. As he did so he had to chant slowly in a deep voice. The entire procedure looked quite ridiculous. Which Meira was not afraid to point out.
After he finished casting the spell and the water was consumed he would pick up the jar and move out of the affected area and stand there and wait. Watching the water condense into heavy rain clouds was actually quite entertaining. He never grew tired of watching clouds form at an extremely rapid pace, and then darken, and then begin to rain in the area affected. Another oddity of the spell was that the rain came straight down, and the clouds almost looked like they were being held in place by an invisible box.
After both spells have been cast Bjorn would make his way over to Meira and help her with her daily tasks. Together they would work in the garden. As time moved on Bjorn would leave her alone and start working on making more stone bricks. He did so more because Meira had made her disinterest in that type of work abundantly clear. He didn't mind it, he actually kind of liked it so he would craft so she wouldn't have to.
Over the three months of work the land began to change as well. Besides the fields and the cultivated plants, they began to shape the landscape to fit their desires as well. There were small things here and there that changed. There was a time where he took a few days to scatter the granite over the ground to make rudimentary paths between all of their work areas. He started making a rudimentary staircase in the side of the hill to make it easier to climb up with the extremely heavy bag of holding full of stones.
They also started making a fence around the herb garden as well. At first it wasn't even something they planned on doing. But one morning they found some of the plants in the herb garden being chewed on by a deer. Meira made short work of the animal, and they had plenty of meat to eat. They dried the majority on a rock out in the sun after they cut the meat into strips. As they didn't have salt, and it was fairly expensive in Leefside. After the deer incident they decided it was time to start to work on a fence.
They also made a crude bridge to cross the river. It was made out of two 4 by 6 planks that they attached together and used to span the gap. It worked for the time being, but Bjorn wasn't happy with it, and had plans to make a more permanent stone bridge that spanned the gap.
By the end of the three months Bjorn managed to finish crafting the last of the stone bricks that they needed for the basement walls. When it was all said and done the walls to the basement were a foot over level with the ground. To make that happen there were a few places where they had to lower the ground to make it not look weird. Once the walls were fully in place they took some of the dirt that they excavated to make the large hole and back filled around the walls, making it fuse seamlessly with the ground around it. Finally to finish off their work they placed down the smaller bricks to form the floor. The end product was a nice stone box roughly 20 feet wide, 35 feet long, and 8 feet tall. Though there were a few points in the box that were broken up by alcoves that they built into the walls. They ranged from a few square feet to one that was 7 by 6.
Now that they had that done they had two things that they wanted to do to continue on with the house itself. The first was to build a set of stairs that led up from the basement to the main level of the house. And then of course they needed to work on making the floor itself for the house.
They almost made a mistake during construction. They knew going into building the stone walls that the material that they use as mortar fuses the stone together, effectively making it water tight. When they finished the walls and were about to start on the floor it rained. As they stood there and watched the water soak into the dirt turning it into mud an issue dawned on Meira.
“If we fully build this floor, won't that make this a massive water tight box?”
The concept was starting to dawn on Bjorn, but he hadn't pit two and two together yet, seeing the issue. “Yes?”
“If it is a giant water tight box, what do we do if it rains, won't it fill up our basement? I don't know about you, but I don't really want a pool as our basement.”
And there it was. “Oh, shit. You're right.”
They talked about it and eventually came up with a pretty basic solution. As they excavated they had come across a small natural pocket of gravel. It was rare, but that type of thing can happen. So As they pulled out the gravel they set it to the side in its own pile. This way they had access to it if they needed it later. This was the needing it later case. They picked a corner for all of the water to drain. They picked the north east corner arbitrarily, or because it had no alcoves in that corner.
Whatever the reason they dug that corner of the basement out, they dug a hole 3 foot by 3 foot by roughly 5 feet deep. They then filled that hole up with all of the gravel that they found while digging. Creating a French drain. At least that was what he thought they called it back on earth. Once they had all of the gravel in they had to slope the floor so that the water all ended up in that drainage field.
After they had it so that the ground mostly sloped towards the drain they decided to test it. They waited for another rainstorm and made their way up to the house and this time they watched as the water slowly flowed directly where they needed it to go. With that being a success they implemented the next part of their plan.
They waited for the ground to dry off fully and then they began to build the floor to the basement. The floor took several days, as it took well over a thousand granite bricks to cover the entire floor. Not to mention that they didn’t have any precise measuring tools so the wall wasn’t perfectly straight. Even though his enhanced senses made it so that he could get close, but it wasn’t perfect. The story was the same with the bricks that they were using for the floor, they were close, but not perfect. So as they worked they had to constantly stop and shave a small piece of brick off here, or change out for another brick there. It didn’t help that the pattern they went with was a diagonal pattern to the walls.
Once the majority of the floor was in and cemented into place they finished off the floor with the north east corner. They changed up the pattern in that area and cut the bricks down just a little bit. Leaving roughly 1 inch gaps in the stone, hopefully to let all of the water drain out that way.
After that was complete all that was left was to test their new drain. Eventually when it did rain again they excitedly ran up the hill to see if their work had worked out how they pictured it to. To their delight the floor worked just as intended, small streams of water flowed across the floor of their basement heading towards the drain. It worked.
They did a little dance around each other as they watched all of the effort that they had put into building this basement over the last 6 months pay off. It was extremely gratifying to watch something they built work as intended.
They took a break that day, enjoying each other's company as they spent some time together. Those days were infrequent as they both were working hard on making their new land something that they would like to live on. But as all things were, you had to take time off and relax and recuperate. That was just as true in the Eld as it was back on earth. Bjorn realized that there was a reason why many religions had a holy day. That way they had a reason once a week why they could stop working and relax, hoping to avoid burnout.
Bjorn fell back into his old routine that he had created while living with Medera. In the evenings he would go for a run and explore their land a little bit. He had a portion of their land mapped by his minimap, but not fully, not yet. He found some interesting things while exploring, such as run down buildings, or random trees that stood out from the rest of the forest. There was even a single plant that was floating by itself in the air, no soil around its roots.
Bjorn watched the usual plant in wonder as it watched it slowly and lazily float through the branches and leaves far above his head. As he watched small streams of water condensed from the humidity in the air and flowed into the roots, wetting them and giving the plant as much water as it wanted. To his mind the entire plant was an impossibility. He watched it manipulate mana to draw the water from the air to keep itself alive, as well as floating slowly along through the air.
He wanted to get a better look at the plant, he had doubts on if he could catch it, or even keep it if he caught it. But he wanted to see what the plant was all about. So Bjorn turned towards the nearest tree and brushed off something from his youth, and started climbing the tree.
Congratulations you have finally gained this skill. This skill is actually one of the very first skills that most people gain. But it took you 3 years 2 months 27 days 9 hours and 43 minutes before you gained it. Which generally isn’t that bad, actually a quite respectable time, if you ignore the fact that you were already an adult when you entered this world. Oh, that skill is climbing. Hurray!
“Da fuck?” Bjorn thought to himself as he read through the skill gain prompt. He had seen some interesting ones during this time in the Eld so far, but that one definitely takes the cake.
As he thought about what the prompt was saying and where it came from he was reminded of the reason he had climbed a tree. Returning to the task at hand he began to quickly mount the large tree and make his way up to the strange floating plant. He quickly got level with the sky lily and started to make his way over to it by traversing a heart branch. He got within touching distance and then he squatted trying to reach out to grab the plant. It slowly floated away from his outstretched fingers soon being just ever so slightly too far away to tough.
Not wanting to give up he held that position with his hand and fingers outstretched to the plant. He stayed like that for what felt like minutes. Eventually the plant slowly floated back within his reach. It floated over to his fingers and touched them with its leaves as if feeling him. The leaf felt like felt under his fingers.
The plant began to drift away from him. Not wanting to lose out on the possibility of getting his hand on this rare plant he lunged towards it. At the same time he lunged the plant shot away from him at impressive speeds. Although it was quick, it wasn't so quick that Bjorn hadn't had any success. pinched in between his fingers was a single leaf from the plant.
His moment of victory was short lived as he had overestimated his ability to balance and he unceremoniously fell out of the tree. Falling the 10 feet he had climbed to hit the ground. He landed squarely on his back, knocking the wind out of him. He lay there gasping trying to get his breath back. As he lay there the plant floated over to him and somehow it seemed like it was looking down at Bjorn. It cocked its leaf to the side before it shot away, going to explore more interesting things.
When he managed to regain his breath he got up from where he lay and began making his way home slowly. Leaf grasped firmly in between his fingers. When he got home he took the leaf inside the tent and filled a small wooden cup with water. He placed the part where the leaf broke off the rest of the plant in the water and balanced it so hopefully it wouldn't fall in. His hope was that this leaf could work as a clipping and could propagate an entire new plant from just the leaf.
He informed Meira about it so she wouldn't accidently knock it over. He told her about the encounter with the weird plant, for some reason though he left out the part where he fell out of the tree in the attempt to collect the plant sample.
Other than the weird plant piece his nightly runs were mainly uneventful. After he came back from that he would do squats, push-ups, and curls until his stamina was fully gone. He would then crawl into bed with Meira and fall asleep.
The way he had been living his life and all of the work he had been doing made him see some results. The first thing was that he gained 1 more point in endurance, he figured this was because of how he never actually let his stamina bar hit max. Other than when he woke up in the morning he never let it get full. He also gained 1 point in strength for obvious reasons.
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Before when he was running and working out at Medera’s house he was new and didn't really know what he was doing. Now however with the teachings of Alaric and Tayla he had a better idea how to work on becoming more graceful, and more sure footed as he ran. Now he tripped less and stumbled less while he ran. This led to him gaining even more stat growth. He gained 2 in dexterity and 2 in agility.
Another benefit from his time working on keeping the fields watered with light rain was that he gained stat points from that as well. Apparently him keeping his mana below full for three straight months gave him some benefits to his mental stats. Before the only way he had managed to raise them naturally was with learning how to read and write. Which made him wonder if all challenging mental puzzles let him grow, or if that only happened because he was expanding his knowledge base. Either way it didn't matter in this case, he managed to gain 2 points in wisdom and a point in intelligence.
Last and not least was when Bjorn gained an increase in his Charisma attribute. He figured there had to be a way to naturally increase his Charisma attribute, but he couldn’t figure out how. Early on during the construction process Meira had made comments about his smell. Which he couldn’t fault her for. The long hours spent chiseling away at rock definitely didn’t do him any good. Besides that, he also was tired with how little personal hygiene seemed to matter in the Eld. He began to add in nightly baths in the small river. Which wasn’t his favorite in the early spring, but as it drew nearer to summer the water wasn’t too bad. He tried to be very fastidious with taking a bath each night, but some nights he did skip one. His increased hygiene practices gained him 1 point in charisma.
All of the work over the last half year had led to him gaining a total of 21 attribute points since the reset. The equivalent of being a level 5 as a human. It wasn’t anything amazing, but it was better than he could have honestly hoped for. As he looked at his attributes he noticed that he had become very much physical attribute focused. Which made sense, pretty much everything he was doing involved a physical trait in some way, shape, matter, or form. Which he wasn’t going to complain about. It sure made his day to day much easier.
When they first met with Aiden, Bjorn had made a mental note about a crack he saw in the cliff face. So when he had some spare time and he remembered it he explored the crack. At first when he poked his head into the crack his body basically blocked any natural light that tried to make its way into the crack. Bjorn quickly remedied that situation with a simple light spell.
As the light from the spell began to pierce the dark Bjorn found that his head was within a small short tunnel. He squeezed his way past the small opening and found himself in a tunnel that was just barely big enough that he could walk down it if he crouched. He didn’t have to follow the tunnel for long before it opened up into a large naturally formed cave.
The tunnel itself was angled upwards, and the cave was mostly open floor plan, with small bits of rock here and there hanging down from the ceiling or coming up from the ground. The main thing that he noticed was how cool it felt inside the room, if he was to guess the temperature he would say high 30s to low 40s.
The temperature gave him an idea, but he wanted to test it before he did anything with this room, and that would take time. A few days later the outside temperature was several degrees above comfortable. On that warm day he made his way down into the cave and found it to be almost the same temperature. His first thought was, refrigerator. But that would depend on if it was able to keep moisture out of the cave. He got its answer a few days later as another small early summer rain storm made its way through the meadow. Sure enough, the cave seemed to be water tight as well.
This made Bjorn very excited, as almost no one in the Eld even understood the concept of a refrigerator, or anything like it. When he introduced the idea to Meira she seemed interested but she made it abundantly clear that she thought that the idea seemed far-fetched. She then proceeded to wish him luck with his project to turn the cave into a refrigerator.
As much as the idea of finally having a nice cold drink of water, or storing food, he had other much more important tasks to complete. To make it into something like a cold storage he would have to do a bunch of work, smoothing out the space, widening the entrance slightly and the tunnel back into it. Which unfortunately made it so that the project got put on the back burner.
They also slowly became more and more involved in the community of Leefside. Aiden, the elders, and those who played in the snow that first day was just the beginning. They got to know many of the faces in town over the months that they lived and worked on the farm.
Meira's natural charm, caring nature, and friendly demeanor made her quite popular with those around town, just as it happened with Lief's Crossing. As for Bjorn he wasn't as welcomed at first. His mostly somber attitude and steadfast presence was a little jarring at first. As people got used to it their opinions shifted ever so slightly, making him almost as popular as Meira.
They ended up meeting their neighbors, which there were a few of. There were roughly a dozen different farms from their land into Leefside. Both of which were the half-elf, and the woman that had been with Aiden when he first met him. As for Aiden himself, his farm was actually the closest to the land that he and Meira now called home. Which was how his kids had stumbled upon them.
The two kids became almost obsessive with the two mysterious strangers. A week hardly went by that they couldn't be found at Meira's and Bjorn's farm. The boy, whose name was Caiden, had the unabashed curiosity that all boys of the age of 13 had. He was not afraid to ask questions, be they rude or not.
The girl had more social grace, as well as being a little bit more shy. No doubt because she had heard about what the two of them were, as well as what they could do. They were likely warned to be wary around the pair, and took that warning to heart. Adriana was more reserved and tried to keep her brother in check, albeit she often failed.
Still early in the mornings Bjorn could catch glimpses of Caiden standing at the edge of the tree line staring wide eyed as Bjorn cast his light rain spell. More than a few times he caught sight of the boy trying to mimic his movements and could hear him attempt to copy the words Bjorn said. At first he was a little embarrassed to do his magic with an audience who obviously was trying to copy him.
As time went on he got over his embarrassment and instead invited Caiden over to get a closer look at what Bjorn was doing. Even though he failed for months at a time the little boy still tried to copy the movements. Without fail though, as soon as Bjorn finished with his casting Caiden scampered off back towards his family's farm. No doubt because he was skimping on his morning chores.
Adriana on the other hand came by more sporadically, but each time she did she would say hello briefly to Bjorn and then head over to Meira. She would shadow Meira and the two of them would talk for hours at a time. It soon became apparent that the two were growing a strong bond between them. Meira learned that Adriana’s mother died during childbirth, giving birth to Cadien. She learned that for the most part of Adriana’s life she hadn't had a mother figure. It became apparent that Meira started to fill that role for the young woman.
Although he would get curious he always left the pair alone to do and talk about whatever they felt like they needed to. Every once in a while Meira would share what they talked about with Bjorn, but for the most part she kept that a secret. Bjorn never once pushed for information, he trusted his partner. He figured if there was something she wanted or needed him to know she would let him know.
As it turned out Aiden was hard on Caiden, which wasn't fair to the boy. Adriana thought that the reason why was because deep down he blamed his son for taking his wife away from him. It was not Caiden’s fault, but in the back of the farmer's mind there was always that guilt and blame. This made the relationship between him and his kids a little strained. Oftentimes they would get through their chores on the farm and then they would hide, or play together in the woods.
Caiden was blissfully unaware of the inner workings of his father's mind. All that he knew was father sometimes got angry and mean, and when that happened he would make his presence scarce. Adriana would see this treatment of her brother and resented her father because of it. As the summer went on they spent more and more time at Bjorn and Meira’s farm and less with their family. He wasn’t entirely sure as to why but he had a feeling that Aiden was a part of it, a major part.
They got to know Aiden a bit too. Which, contrary to how Adriana portrayed her father, Bjorn was pretty sure that he just wanted what was best for his kids. Sure he could be a little too hard of them, but he still was a decent man. He wasn’t perfect, no one was. But deep down it was obvious that he loved his kids deeply and tried to steer them towards a future he thought would be best for them. Which just furthered the divide between him and Adriana.
Instead of getting wrapped up in the family drama they tried their best to stay out of it, while helping teach the kids. Even though he hadn’t had much time to practice alchemy he still instructed here and there as Caiden followed him around like a puppy.
One day as Caiden was following around Bjorn asking him a million different questions he asked him. “So you know how to do magic right?”
Bjorn just paused in his chiseling and looked over at the boy. “I would have thought that was plainly obvious seeing how you watch me cast water magic every single morning.” After that he returned to lightly tapping along the side of the brick he was working on, trying to smooth out the stone.
“I know you know how to cast magic.” Caiden said hastily, trying to pretend that he hadn’t just asked a stupid question. “I was asking if you really knew how to cast magic.” He said that last part as if he was the smartest boy alive for redirecting Bjorn’s train of thought.
Instead of pushing the matter at hand he pushed it aside. “I guess you could say that. But what are you getting at?”
“I was wondering, if you would be willing to teach me how to cast magic?”
Bjorn paused once again and looked at the boy. “I am not sure if I actually could teach you magic.”
“Well why not? How did you learn it?”
Bjorn let out a light sigh. “Well, I guess now is as good a time as ever to give you an impromptu lesson on magic. There are four different ways that you can learn magic, that I know of. The first one is the easiest. That is you find a mage who is journeyman level or higher in a particular school of basic magic and they can wake it up in you.”
“Basic magic?” Caiden asked, interrupting Bjorn. That type of interruption was hardly an uncommon occurrence when the boy talked to Bjorn.
“Hold on, I will get to that. Anyways, if your body has some sort of aptitude for that type of magic you will unlock that school of magic. The way I understand it is that you will gain a level 1 spell in that school, that way you can practice with magic. The second way is the next easiest, but it is usually more expensive than the first one, and that is with spellbooks. If you find a level 1 spell book you can read it and if you have the aptitude you will gain the spell, as long as the book wasn’t made out of complete garbage.”
Caiden opened his mouth to ask a question, but Bjorn put his finger up. “Hold on, remember 1 thing at a time. The 3rd way takes a lot of time, and that is by learning the spell from someone the old fashioned way. That is through teaching, that would have to be the way that I taught you, as I am not a high enough level in any of my schools of magic. That is how I first learned earth magic. As to if I could teach you that, I doubt it. I don’t know enough about magic theory to really teach you what I instinctively know. My teacher, who was a better teacher than I am, knew considerably more about magic than I did.”
“As for the last way, I think that would be basically impossible, unless you were incredibly gifted with magic, or if you studied magical theory for a very long time. The last way is creating spells yourself. Which I can promise you I am nowhere close to being able to do that yet. So don’t ask, I promise you I can’t teach you how to make your own spell.”
“Oh.” Caiden said a little crestfallen. “Tell me more about magic.”
Bjorn chuckled and did just that, he continued to fill Caiden in on how magic worked and all the different types of basic magics. He told him pretty much everything he knew about magical theory. The entire time Caiden was uncharacteristically quiet as he listened to Bjorn talk, trying to absorb as much as he possibly could.
Now that they were finished with the walls and floors of the basement, the last thing to do was work on the main floor. Which Bjorn had an idea as to how to make the ground floor. He spent hours trying to change the main stone block he had been using so far on the basement walls. He made two bricks with 4 by 4 by 6 inches deep holes in the blocks themselves. Once he had those fully made he made himself another one of the support beams that he had used for the storage shed. Only it was just long enough that it could hopefully span the gap in the floor. Once all of his measurements were complete and the parts were made he tried putting them together.
He first made sure that the floor support board could easily fit into the holes he made in the stone itself. Then he measured, and then re-measured, and finally he re-measured. Each time he adjusted ever so slightly either the brick or the beam. When he was finally satisfied he took all three pieces up to their framework for the house. He and Meira began with first cementing one of the blocks in place. Once it was fully set they placed the beam into the now stationary block. Which fit like a glove. Finally they applied the cement to the bottom of their other block and quickly worked together to slide the block into place with the beam in the other hole.
The end result was a solid 4 by 4 beam that was the exact right size to bridge the gap between the two walls. They set it up so that the beam bridged the narrower sides of the basement. Once they were fully in place they tried to remove the beam and to no one’s surprise the beam didn’t move, there was roughly an inch of wiggle room on each side, just in case the beam grew in size instead of shrinking, but that was it. Happy with the results he began working in earnest making stone blocks the correct size for beams roughly the same size to fit into.
The work was long and tedious but in the end it all worked out exactly as he was hoping it would. They made stones that could fit beams into them that spanned the entire north wall of the house. Then they made beams that could fit into the stone blocks, and then the other blocks. Two weeks later they had everything that they needed. They then put everything in place and made sure that it couldn't go anywhere.
On the south wall of the house they built the stones and beams there differently. They made everything so that they could put in the stairs there. They made the space for the stairs 4 feet wide, and around 12 feet long. They then framed around the top of the stair hole. The entire thing took up more space than they were expecting, but gave them plenty of space to work with around the stairs. They also framed the staircase so that the stairs exited towards where they planned on building the kitchen.
Once everything was taken care of they then began working on making a floor to cover the support beams they just placed. To do so they got a bunch of nails that they had Chrome make for them. They made the floorboards out of a pale, whitish wood, it looked almost like birch wood, but it had considerably darker veins that ran through the center. They made the boards 6” by 2” by 8’ and once they had a ton of boards made they started placing the boards and putting them in place. It didn’t take all that long to get the main floor of the house built.
After the floor was in place it finally felt like they were getting somewhere with the house. They had to make a decision on what they were going to do for the house from here. Of course the house would be more sturdy and would last longer if they built the entire thing out of stone. But at the same time that would take a considerable amount of time. If they made it out of wood it would last a decent amount of time, and if they took care of it, most likely both of their lifetimes, but it would eventually decay.
The ultimate deciding factor though was Meira. She didn’t sugar coat it whatsoever when she said that she was tired of sleeping in a tent, and wanted to have a home built by this winter. And with that it was decided, they were going to make the house out of wood. They also decided on the layout inside the house itself.
There were a few things that they ultimately needed in the house. First thing was that they needed a pantry of some kind. The basement could easily fit that description for that room. They also wanted a kitchen, which they already had plans to make on the outside of the house, out the back on the north side. So that was another thing that they didn’t really need to worry about. Next they needed a bedroom, of which they decided to settle on 3 of them. The other two rooms could be used for storage. They wanted a living area to entertain guests and for them to relax in the evening on cold days. That was also easy as it could connect to the rooms, and didn’t need to be separate. The last thing that they needed was an alchemy lab. They decided to build it out of stone and have it on the exterior of the building.
So all in all what they decided on was going to be an odd amalgamation of stone and wood. First things first they started working on the frame that they wanted the house to be. They quickly drew up rudimentary plans so they were both on the same page about what needed to be done. By this point in the construction process Meira was actually almost a better wood worker than Bjorn was. So she was delegated to be the main carpenter while Bjorn did a different job.
One thing that they wanted each house to have was some sort of chimney, it was going to be a large house, so they wanted each room to be able to be warmed up as they desired it to be. So while Meira was making the wooden parts of the structure Bjorn began making stone bricks that they could use for the fireplace. One nice thing about using stone for the fireplace was that they were amazing at retaining heat. Making it so that even if the fire went out the fireplace would keep the house warm.
They had two other major problems when it came to building the house. Well less major, and more things that needed to be addressed. The first thing was if they were going to have windows, and how they wanted them to be made. Honestly the windows question had never ever crossed Bjorn’s mind. He was so used to windows being a common piece of houses that he assumed that they were going to have windows. Which led to another question, how were they going to source glass to go in the windows. Luckily for them that question had a simple answer. There was a woman and her husband in Leefside who made glass, they could more than likely provide that service.
The last problem that they faced was what were they going to make the roof out of. The answer to that question actually came on one of Bjorn’s nightly runs. He stumbled upon a large clay deposit that was pretty accessible. When he told Meira about that she was excited. So it was decided without really any need to convince her that they were going to make clay tiles for shingles, to cover their roof. In the meantime though they were going to cover the roof in wooden planks.
That clay though was a major boon, as they not only could use it for the roof of the house, but also for the roof of the storage shed. As good as that construction was, they didn’t want to entirely trust the canvas and leaf roof that the building had.
They had someone from town come out to the farm and actually build them a kiln that they could use to fire clay out of the clay from the deposit. It was a simple construct that looked similar to a chimney, just on a much smaller scale. She gave them a brief rundown on how it worked before collecting her few coppers and scampering back to town happy as a clown.
With the kiln now taken care of they finally had everything that they needed to start phase two of construction on their house.
