We had enough food.
Not enough to waste, not enough to be comfortable, but enough to get by. The stores always ran thin by the end of winter, the roots softening, the dried meats turning stringy and tough. Still, no one starved. Einar had a good sense for what to grow and when, and Ingrid knew how to stretch a pot of stew past reason. It wasn't abundance, but it was survival.
There was much to be improved upon.
I watched Einar work the land, saw how much time he spent on the same half-plot every season while the other half lay untouched. He told me once that it was to give the soil time to rest. I recognized it as fallowing. A practice as old as agriculture itself. Let one part recover while the other gets used. Basic, effective, but slow.
And slow wasn't good enough.
Back in my old life, I never thought I'd be worrying about crops. I didn't study agriculture because I had dreams of homesteading or some romantic fantasy of rolling wheat fields. No, I needed to understand when people farmed. When insurgents would return to tend goats or plant millet and poppy. When a seasonal lull would mean fewer armed patrols and more civilian movement. Knowing when a region came alive was just another tool in the belt—another variable to plug into a logistics model. One seed of intel could predict a whole fighting season's movements.
But one source led to another, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep in the methods of Sudanese flood-retreat farming, Berber terrace systems, and whatever ingenious little trick some Eritrean grandmother had used to squeeze life from rocks. It wasn't part of my job, sure it helped, but It just... fascinated me. There was one time when a lieutenant was convinced a man had been hiding weapons or HME in evenly spaced boxes in a field. Granted, it was weird, so I did some digging, and as it turned out, they were apiaries. Here we were, expecting something nefarious, and there this man was, in the middle of ISIS territory, keeping bees.
How much people could do with so little. How they coaxed miracles from dirt with nothing but patience, manure, and clever geometry.
And in one rabbit-hole of a report on sustainable European permaculture, I found something that had apparently stuck with me: a method called Hügelkultur. Raised mounds filled with rotting wood and organic matter, layered like a sponge to trap moisture and build heat. It was used in Germanic climates, far from the regions I kept an eye on for work, but not so different from where I found myself today.
It felt right. Simple enough to try, discreet enough to hide.
I picked a forgotten patch of land beyond the tree-line, where the earth dipped and trees had fallen in some long-past storm. The soil was poor and full of rock. No one went there. Perfect.
I started by practicing levitation. Moving stones. Lifting logs. The System didn't punish utility work, if anything it rewarded it. And if it happened to make the building easier? Well, I wouldn't complain.
I dug a trench first, cutting into the cold, reluctant earth by pulling the dirt and stone aside with my magic, slowly at first, but as I got a feel for moving multiple miniscule particles of dirt and stone aside I ramped up in speed. The bottom I lined with half-rotten logs and damp branches I dragged in from the treeline, some of them heavier than I could lift outright. But that was the point. Practicing levitation on awkward, ungainly shapes had been an unexpected training regimen in itself.
On top of the logs went a chaotic layering of sticks, fallen leaves, scraps from our kitchen waste, and ash stolen from the hearth when no one was looking. It stank like decay and old stew. Then came the soil—thick, uncooperative stuff that fought every inch. I pulled it into place with a mixture of raw effort and carefully rationed magic. Levitation helped, but it didn't make it effortless. The spell only lifted what I could already imagine myself lifting, and after half a day, my arms burned with the kind of ache that told me I was cheating less than I thought.
Still, the progress was undeniable. The mound grew with each hour, each clump of dirt, each wheezing breath. It was more than a child should have been able to do alone. But I wasn't just a child, and this wasn't just dirt. It was an experiment.
When I finished, it looked like a burial mound for some small, forgotten god. Rough. Lumpy. Ugly.
I planted early radishes and carrots, herbs I knew could take a chill without complaining. The kind of hardy plants that didn't mind being thrown into the cold and asked to thrive. I watered them by hand with a wooden bowl, scooped from a stream half a dozen times over, and then I left it.
My parents asked where I went during the day, and I told them I was playing. It was a flimsy excuse, especially given how I came back each evening caked in mud and too sore to lift a spoon properly. But Einar was too tired from the fields to press me, and Ingrid had a new baby to worry about. If they found it odd, they didn't say.
And maybe part of them didn't want to know. Maybe they wanted to believe that, even if I was strange, I was still a child—still capable of games, even if I was always alone in them.
In truth, it was the only time of day I felt like I could breathe. No eyes on me. No weight of pretending to be something I wasn't. Just dirt, magic, and a test of hope disguised as a garden bed.
Weeks passed. Then green. Sprouts thick and strong, leaves wide and healthy. I ran my fingers through the soil and felt warmth, dampness. It was working. It shouldn't have, not this well, not this fast. But it was.
I didn't gloat. I didn't share. Not yet.
I had never done this before, and if it were going to fail at least this way I could fail in secrecy.
It had worked far better than I expected.
It had only been a month, and already the crops—radishes, carrots, herbs—were thriving. Not just healthy, not just surviving the spring chill, but surpassing everything else around them. Where others were still coaxing reluctant green shoots from stubborn soil, my plot looked like something out of a garden magazine. Einar had planted his weeks before I started my experiment, and yet, mine were taller, greener, fuller. The difference wasn't subtle. If anyone had walked past, they would've seen it instantly—would've felt it in the air, like the ground itself was humming with energy. There was no way to hide that something here was... different.
The System noticed too. A soft chime echoed faintly in the back of my mind, crisp and bright, like the ringing of silver bells. Then, as always, the text bloomed across my vision:
~~~~~~~~~
Skill Acquired: Agriculture (Novice)
+1 Wisdom
Bonus Trait: Applied Innovation – Gain increased proficiency when using knowledge from a past life.
~~~~~~~~~
I blinked it away before I let myself smile. I didn't need the notification to tell me what I already knew. But seeing it made it real. It made the work matter more then it already did.
I had barely taken a breath when I heard the rustle—light but unmistakable. Someone was watching.
Einar stepped into view from the treeline, arms folded, face unreadable. He hadn't made a sound. He must have followed me out here. Maybe out of suspicion. Maybe curiosity. Or maybe he'd just noticed I kept disappearing every morning and wanted to make sure I wasn't sneaking off to drown in the creek.
I straightened, resisting the urge to wipe my hands on my tunic. No flinching. No panic. I'd gone over this possibility too many times in my head to be caught flat-footed now.
I turned to face him, gave him the best wide-eyed, innocent farmer-girl look I could muster.
"It's something I overheard once," I said quickly, before he could ask. "That time we were at the market, remember? There was a merchant—tall guy, southern accent, kept talking like he wanted everyone to hear him. He mentioned seeing farmers somewhere down south burying old logs and compost under their garden beds. Said it kept the roots warmer and made the soil rich for years."
I shrugged like it was the most mundane, obvious explanation in the world. Like it was something anyone might remember if they'd just been paying attention.
"I wanted to see if it would work."
Einar didn't say anything. Not at first. He just walked past me, crouched beside one of the mounds, and dug his fingers into the warm, soft soil. His brows furrowed—not in anger, not even in suspicion. Just... thought. Quiet, practical calculation. The same way he looked at seed before deciding if it was worth planting.
He glanced up at me, the corner of his mouth twitching like he was trying to hold something back. Maybe surprise. Maybe approval. He didn't ask how a child knew how to recreate advanced Germanic permaculture. He didn't say magic.
And in a world like this, that silence was more mercy than I deserved.
I braced for a scolding—some version of "if you had this much energy, why not use it on the rest of the farm?" But instead, I heard him mutter under his breath as he poked at the roots of the radishes.
"Burying logs... huh."
He moved to the other bed and examined the leafy greens with a kind of begrudging curiosity. Then, still not looking at me, he asked,
"Would any logs work?"
That was it. That was his seal of approval.
I swallowed a grin and nodded.
"The longer the better," I said. "And we'll need lots of sticks. Drier ones burn fast. Rotten ones hold the heat."
He grunted in response and stood, brushing dirt from his hands.
He didn't say anything else. But he didn't tell me to stop either.
Which, from him? was the same thing as being told to keep going.
The next day, Einar brought me out to the empty field—the one he'd always referred to as "resting." Fallowed land, left untouched to recover its strength. I'd walked past it a hundred times without giving it more than a passing thought. It had always looked like a patch of nothing. Just grass and stony soil, the occasional thistle or weed defying the wind. But now, with Einar standing beside me and pointing toward it with the weight of unspoken approval, I saw it for what it could be. He was serious. He meant to do this.
He said nothing more than, "We'll start here. I'll see what wood I can pull from the river edge, and I'll gather more from the forest." and gave me a nod before turning away.
That was all the confirmation I needed. He believed enough to act. And for Einar, that meant more than any speech ever could.
He left without lingering, without questions, his axe slung over one shoulder. He moved with the quiet resolve of a man who'd made up his mind. I watched him disappear toward the treeline, toward the place where storm-thrown driftwood gathered like bones against the mud.
I waited until I couldn't see the curve of his back anymore.
Shovel in hand, I set my stance—back straight, knees braced, foot pressed firm against the blade. I even drove it once into the dirt, shallow and slow, dragging a lazy line through the soil just for the show of it.
I was just about to toss the battered thing aside and call the magic to my hands when a familiar sound rang in my mind—a sharp, bright ping.
~~~~~~~~~~~
[System Notice]
Basic Tool Equipped.
Would you like to attune this tool as a Spellcasting Focus?
(Spellcasting foci allow for more direct action with spells and apply bonuses based on the focus used.)
[Tool]: Iron shovel
(When equipped as a focus grants Drengr further efficiency for Item related tasks)
~~~~~~~~~~~
"Yes," I whispered without hesitation.
Magic answered instantly—still heavy, still something that needed shaping, but no longer fumbling and wild. It flowed through me now with a new sense of direction. Or maybe, just maybe, I was finally growing into it.
A soft current of energy unspooled from my center and curled outward through the shovel gripped tight in my hands, humming low in the back of my skull.
The ground shifted.
Not violently. Not like a force tearing things apart. Just... willing. Roots trembled. Pebbles scattered. Then, as if the earth itself had exhaled, a trench parted cleanly before me, the soil lifting and rolling to the side in smooth, obedient streams.
It looked unnatural—yes—but beautifully so. Like water obeying new laws I had written in silence.
Magic didn't make it easy. It made it possible.
My focus sharpened to a single point, breath shallow, muscles tensed not from effort, but from the strain of controlling something so much larger than myself. It wasn't strength I needed.
It was precision. It was control.
Ping!
~~~~~~~
[Skill: Telekinesis]
Rank: E (0%)
Medium sized objects. Multiple small objects. Medium-short range. Line-of-sight required.
Cost: Mild fatigue per second.
~~~~~~~~
Alright, now that's what I call progress.
I didn't let the notification distract me. The System could wait. The work couldn't. Leofric was a growing boy, and I refused—absolutely refused—to let him go hungry this winter. Not while I had the power to do something about it.
So I kept digging. One trench. Then another. I pulled rocks from the earth and floated them neatly to the edge of the field. I set aside stones that could be useful for lining beds or anchoring the sides of raised mounds. Every motion, every breath was part of the work.
And as the sun rose higher and the field slowly transformed, I let myself believe—just for a moment—that this could be more than an experiment. This could be a start.
A beginning worth building on.