(Back to Paul)
I stopped at the edge of the Circle of Life, where the grass ceased to be an anomaly. The north wind still blew, but its bite dulled against the perimeter, as if the air itself hesitated to enter this space.
My gaze no longer rested on a landscape. It deciphered a mechanism.
The southern slope presented itself first, tilted just enough for the winter's low sun to die there each day. Snow clung poorly to it, pushed back by a diffuse warmth I felt rising from the ground like a contained fever.
Higher up, rocky outcrops broke the hill's line, their quartzite catching the Ether in bluish shards.
To the east, a rocky flat sank under a canopy of young twisted ashes, their roots gripping soil that frost had never truly penetrated. Shadow ruled there part of the day, moisture condensing into beads on the mosses.
Finally, to the west, a gentle depression ended at the stream, a tongue of black silt where water murmured without ever freezing.
Three zones. Three thermal, hydric, mineral regimes. A system waiting for an architect.
I knelt at the exact center of the Circle. I placed my hands flat on the ground, palms open, and let my perception slip out of my skin. Structural Intuition awakened, layer after layer.
The subsoil unfolded under my fingers like a cross-section plan. The bedrock plunged northeast, its layered strata parting in places to let through purer quartz veins. Groundwater circulated in discontinuous sheets, trapped in basins the frost never reached. I felt every thermal gradient, every heat bridge I had already installed, every energy leak sucked open by open faults.
The topsoil was a patchwork of hungry mycorrhizae and inert minerals. Too compact in places, too sandy elsewhere. An honest base, but messy.
I smiled. A problem of flow and structure. My kind of problem.
I took the quartz stylus from my pocket. The raw crystal immediately caught the ambient Ether's tension, its surface warming between my fingers. I held it, not as a weapon, but as a surveyor's chalk.
"Alright," I murmured to the wind.
"Let's see what you've got in you, old girl."
I started with the southern slope, the most promising and the most demanding.
Its light was a raw resource, a solar capital that winter wasted for nothing. My goal was not just to throw seeds at it. It was to sculpt it so that every ray, every drop of water, every particle of heat worked there.
I approached the bottom of the slope, where the incline softened before plunging toward the snowy plain. Rock Affinity opened new perspectives on what one called geology. I selected three horizontal lines, three ancient fractures that needed only an impulse to reopen completely.
I placed a virtual left hand on the first vein, applying no physical force. A kind of proposal for rearrangement to the rock.
The Ether flowed from my palms. I fractured nothing. I asked the rock to remember its weakness. The atomic bonds relaxed, the micro-cracks widened by a few microns, and suddenly, the earth began to slide.
It was not a landslide. It was a controlled reorganization.
The first terrace was born under my feet, a flat two meters wide that the slope expelled like a natural step. The pebbles and gravel aligned themselves into a low wall. I guided the movement with the stylus's tip, not to force, but to suggest the angles, the interlockings. In a few breaths, the retaining wall stood, as stable as if it had grown there for centuries.
I stepped back three paces and started again. The second terrace rose faster, the rock having already accepted the idea. The third formed almost enthusiastically, as if the ground itself understood the plan.
When I stood up, my lower back a little stiff, the southern slope had taken a new shape. Three stepped tiers, each holding a thickness of loose soil that I had seen settle automatically into the hollows. Melt and runoff water would stagnate there without excess, heated by the black stone I had concentrated on the surface at certain regular spots.
I stretched, feeling neural fatigue looming in the background. That dull buzz behind the eyes, familiar now, almost friendly. Etheric Economy was doing its job: the effort was no longer a brutal discharge, but a measured expense. I recovered for a few moments, hands resting on the lower terrace's wall, letting the stone's warmth recharge my reserves.
"Okay. Foundations done. Now, the veins."
I pivoted toward the east, where the ash trees' shadows drew a puzzle of moisture on the flat. Water seeped there constantly, from a small resurgence winter had not dried up. A trickle I myself had stabilized weeks earlier by sealing the rock's fissures. Until now, this trickle sank into the moss to reach the stream. I would have to teach it another path.
I knelt near the spring, where the water welled up between two granite slabs.
Structural Intuition showed me the liquid vein as a luminous line, a thread of Ether denser than the rest, charged with the mountain's energy. I plunged my fingers into the damp earth and let my perception slide along the flow.
I needed a main channel that would distribute water to the three terraces by simple gravity. At the exact spot where the water thread met the first ash root, I asked the earth to split.
A crack, four inches wide, snaked westward, bypassing the harder stones. The water rushed into it immediately, docile. I followed it on all fours, the stylus pointed at the ground, adjusting the slope. Where the channel crossed a too-permeable zone, I densified the clays with a mental gesture, creating an impermeable bottom. Where it brushed against a living root, I diverted it with an inflection, preferring patience to mutilation.
When the water trickle reached the first terrace, it naturally divided into three tiny arms, fitting into the gaps I had left in the wall. A liquid mesh formed, a network of silver veins that soaked the soil without drowning it, drinking the stone's warmth to warm the future roots.
I sat for a moment on the middle terrace, legs dangling, watching the circuit balance itself. The sound of water was no longer a murmur, but a whisper, a rustle of silk on stone. The Ether flow had densified around the channel, drawn by this controlled circulation. The water was no longer a simple liquid: it carried bits of heat, dissolved minerals, and the quiet intention I had put into it.
Next came the eastern flat, simpler in appearance. I wanted to plant crops needing some shade there, like climbing beans, Jerusalem artichokes, elderberries. Everything that feared direct afternoon sun. Even if we were still far from summer, I had to plan ahead.
The soil there was already rich, fed by leaf decomposition and the presence of the mycelium I had seen spreading under the moss. Yet a flaw persisted: an excess of acidity, inherited from pine needles that had fallen there years earlier.
I had no lime, not enough ash. But I had rock.
I selected a basalt outcrop, a few meters below the flat. Rock Affinity let me break a fragment without effort, then pulverize it between my palms into a grayish powder, fine as flour. Basalt powder, I knew, acted as a mineral amendment: it brought calcium, magnesium, and corrected acidity gently. I sprinkled it on the soil, then, with the stylus, I triggered a brief thermal impulse. This simple temperature rise of a few degrees activated the chemical reaction.
The earth's smell changed immediately. It lost its undergrowth sourness and took on a deeper, more mineral scent, that of well-fed gardens. I sank my hand up to the wrist. The crumbly structure had refined itself, the aggregates of silt and humus had bonded into an airy network, ready to welcome rootlets.
I marked the future planting spots with flat stones: three rows for the beans, leaning against the ashes that would provide support; an enlarged plot for the Jerusalem artichokes, whose tubers would swell in the shade's shelter; a narrow strip near the spring for the elderberries, which liked cool feet.
The western depression was my last task, and the most delicate.
The stream's water stagnated there in a shallow pool, constantly replenished by melting snow from around. A boon for moisture-loving plants, but a risk if frost reared its head. Until now, the heat of my Heart-Stones — the nice name I had decided to give them — kept the pool above freezing.
I made a radical decision: I would not drain the area, but turn it into a reservoir. A small lens of water at stable temperature, protected by a thermal shield I would weave.
I started by widening the basin a few centimeters with a gentle slope. The underlying rock was an almost perfect granite slab. I modified its surface, creating a multitude of micro-cavities that trapped Ether and prevented heat from dissipating into the deep rock. But the real challenge was at the surface. To block the polar wind, I condensed Ether at the water-air interface, artificially increasing the liquid's surface tension until I obtained an invisible membrane, a quantum double-glazing that let light through but trapped calories. I held the atomic vision for what felt like hours, guiding each reorganization, checking each thermal bridge.
When I opened my eyes, the sun had slipped westward. The pool gleamed with an almost metallic sheen, a film of etheric energy vibrating on its surface. I plunged my hand in: the water was far from icy but surprisingly mild. My perception's internal thermometer indicated a steady fifteen degrees. Much higher than the ambient air. The difference came from that invisible membrane, that cocoon I had just sewn between the liquid and the atmosphere.
I straightened up with a satisfied grunt. Fatigue pressed harder, a pressure behind my eyes, stiffness in my neck. Nothing alarming. The kind of soreness you feel after building an atomic greenhouse with your bare hands.
I went down to the stream, drank deeply from the water cascading into a small natural basin. Its icy purity rinsed my throat and my thoughts. Then I climbed back toward the terraces, my gaze sweeping the picture I was finishing.
Only life was missing now.
I went back to the cabin and came out with several clay pots, linen bags, and a woven wicker basket. My stock of improved seeds was ready.
I settled on the highest terrace, facing the already low sun, and began planting.
The squashes needed space and warmth. I planted them in staggered rows on the southern terraces, each seed buried in a small hollow of soil enriched with basalt powder. I covered them with a mulch of dry moss, taken from rocks outside the Circle, a blanket that held moisture without smothering. The climbing beans took their place on the eastern flat, at the foot of ash stakes I had carved.
For the buckwheat, I chose the western depression, on the strip of land bordering the pool. The plant was tough, used to early frosts, but constant humidity would help it germinate faster. I scattered the seeds broadly, a wide gesture, then buried them with a pass of a rudimentary rake. The Jerusalem artichokes needed no seeds: I gently broke the tubers into fragments bearing an eye, and put them in the ground on the eastern flat, in holes I filled with compost. Finally, the elderberries took their place near the spring, where water almost surfaced, their hard pits tight in a clod of peat.
I finished with the hazelnuts, lined up at the top of the hill, right at the Circle's edge. They would form a hedge, a living windbreak that would catch the north wind's assaults and force them to break before reaching the crops.
When the last seed was in place, I set the stylus on my thigh and contemplated the whole. Evening was falling. A pink glow lingered on the ridges, and the Circle's grass took on that bluish hue I never tired of watching. The Heart-Stones radiated in unison, their heat spreading through the soil I had shaped, warming the low walls, brushing every sleeping seed.
I smiled, despite the fatigue weighing down my hands.
It was not a vegetable garden. It was a feeding machine, a living architecture designed to last, adapt, strengthen. A hand-sewn ecosystem, with will as its needle and the laws of physics as its thread.
I stayed there a long moment, sitting on the middle terrace, listening to the water flowing in the channels, the wind gliding over the ashes.