Location: Personal Dreamscape
It was easy to lose track of time in a place like this. Ari'sora had no idea how long she spent sitting with Shadow, just talking, and enjoying her friend's company. It could have been breaks...or trials. She might have continued basking in her friend's presence indefinitely if the ribbon that Shadow was wearing didn't start to glow. The bed they were sitting on shifted as more weight was added to it. Startled, Ari'sora looked and saw that the tools the children had given her were now spread out all over the surface of the bed. They were glowing as well.
::I think...I think that you're supposed to do something with those.:: Shadow said softly.
It was more than half question, but Ari'sora nodded.
"I think you're right. And I think that I needed to wait until I found you before I could do...whatever I am supposed to do with them. They've never glowed like that before."
The real question was...
what was she supposed to do with the tools? Tools were used to build something, or to fix something that was broken. That much was obvious. Following that strain of logic...was Ari'sora supposed to fix the house somehow? Or rebuild it? If she was right about that, the question became
how was she supposed to do it? Sure she had tools...but she didn't have the first idea of
how to "fix" a house. And she had even less of an idea of how to rebuild one!
Or did she? Ari'sora glanced at the bow she had willed into existence thoughtfully. She didn't know the first thing about making a short bow, or the arrows it needed, but she had managed to summon this one. Or will it into existence. Something. Could she do that again, and fix the house that way? It was worth a try. Maybe if the used the tools as a focus somehow, it would work better.
Ari'sora looked around the room. There was so much that needed to be fixed. And the rest of the house was in the same state of ruin. Where should she start? Finally, she decided to start with the walls, and work inward. There were gaps where the walls had partially collapsed. That was the worst of the damage, so she decided to start there. She picked up a plank of wood that was lying on the floor, and held it up to the largest gap. Then she moved it until she found a spot where each end of the plank was touching the wood on either side of the gap.
She held it in place with one hand while she grabbed her hammer, and a nail. Then she got to work. In her mind, she pictured a smooth, unbroken outer wall. One with no cracks, or holes in it. With that image firmly in mind, she used her hammer to drive the nail into the wood. And it worked. Once she finished hammering the nail, the wall shimmered with a bright light that quickly became blinding. When it faded, the wall was whole once more.
So it is my will and imagination more than any actual skill at carpentry that is what will fix the house. she mused as she stared at the wall.
It looked like it was brand new. Ari'sora stared at it for a few more trills, then went looking for more wood she could use. When she finished with the walls, she used the last of the wood she could find laying around to fix the door. While there was no more wood for her to work with, there was plenty of broken glass laying around, so she gathered it up carefully, and separated it into three piles that were as equal as she could make them. There were three broken windows, so that gave her one pile of glass for each. She glanced at the tools she had to work with, and frowned.
I don't think that any of these tool will help me fix broken glass. she mused.
For that matter, I don't even know what kind of tools you would need to fix it in the first place. Unless...
There had been many times when she was a child where Mi'zuri had broken a vase, or a dish, and blamed her for it so that she wouldn't get into trouble. She had been punished each of those times, of course...but she had also had to fix whatever had been broken as best she could. At the time, that had meant taking all of the broken pieces and putting them together as best she could like a puzzle. And she had used glue to make the broken pieces stick together. Would that work here? Considering the fact that simply hammering a nail into each piece of wood she had found had fixed the walls, it seemed like it might. But in order to try, she would need some glue.
Ari'sora went back to the bed where Shadow sat among the tools. She stared at an empty space on the bed, and concentrated on her need for a large pot of glue and a brush to spread it onto the glass with as hard as she could. Like before when she had created her bow, her efforts paid off. After several bits of concentrating solely on her need, she saw the pot of glue appear in front of her.
Ari'sora grinned at Shadow, then got back to work. It was like a puzzle. She had to take each shard of glass, and try to find out where it belonged. When she did, she used the glue to stick it back together. It was long, painstaking work, but when she was finished, the three windows looked as if they were brand new once more.
The scent of almonds made her pause, and reach for her bow, but no monster appeared, and the scent faded as quickly as it had come. Could the monsters sense that she was trying to rebuild their home somehow? Was that why they seemed to be leaving her alone? Because they
wanted her to do what she was doing? Ari'sora didn't know, but she didn't much care, either. As long as they left her and Shadow alone, she was happy to let them do...whatever it was that they did when not attacking people.
The structure of the room had been repaired, so it was time to focus on the inside, and that meant the furniture. That task was both simpler, and more difficult at the same time. Each piece of furniture needed something different to "fix" it.. The wooden frame of the bed needed to be repaired, and she used her hammer and nails for that. But the bedding itself was in bad shape as well. The mattress was damp, and moldy, and the sheets and blankets were worn, torn, and in some places, even shredded. None of her tools would be of much use there, so she concentrated as hard as she could on imagining a sewing kit into existence. It worked, and she used the needle and thread to "fix" the mattress and bedding. After the bed was finished, it was time to move on to the other furniture. There was a child sized bookcase, a chest, a basin with a stand for it to sit on, and a child sized wardrobe. Each needed significant repair. But when she was finished, Ari'sora felt a deep sense of achievement. Despite how impossible the task had seemed at the start, she was making real progress in fixing the room. It was proof that you never knew what you could and could not do until you tried. And it also showed that the willingness to work hard could accomplish a lot.
Finally, it was time to work on the smaller things. Books had been shredded, and broken toys lay strewn about the floor. The wooded toys were the easiest to fix. Her hammer and nails, and occasionally her screwdriver were enough to handle those repairs. The dolls and stuffed animals required more sewing than anything else, so she used her newly conjured sewing kit for that part. The books were the hardest to fix. Every scrap of paper had to be found so that the pages could be fixed. Then came the task of carefully trying to piece the pages back together, and trying to figure out which scrap of paper belonged to which page of which book. It was like doing a very difficult puzzle. The titles written on the spines gave hints as to what the stories they held were about, and Ari'sora knew many of the stories, which helped as well. But she still had to match up the words on each page. Even so, once she had done so, her work was mostly done. Gluing the pages back together, and then gluing the "fixed" pages back into the books they belonged to in the proper order was enough to "fix" the books themselves, and the end result was a pile of books that looked brand new. These were placed carefully on the bookcase where they belonged.
::Well, that's one room done.:: Shadow commented.
::One room...out of however many this house has.::
Ari'sora stuck her tongue out at her friend for her gentle teasing. Shadow did have a point, though. Time seemed to have little meaning in this place in the sense that Ari'sora had no idea how long she had been in the house. But "fixing" one single room felt as though it had taken her a long time. How long would it take for her to "fix" an entire house?
"Standing around here isn't going to accomplish anything." Ari'sora said at last.
She placed Shadow on her shoulder, gathered up all of her tools, and moved onto the next room. She quickly fell into a pattern of sorts. Start with the outside, or the structure of the room, and move inwards. So with each room, she started with the walls, and floors, then moved to the doors and windows, then to the furniture, and finally to the "small" things such as books, clothes, and so on. As she worked, the painfully sad melody was a constant companion. The monsters kept their distance for the most part, but at times, one would appear in the doorway of the room she was working in, and watch her for a while. They never attacked, and this confirmed Ari'sora's belief that they wanted their home "fixed" as much as she did, and were content to leave her alone as long as she worked towards that goal.
Ari'sora had no idea how long she worked. She simply did. And when she felt the need for a brief break, she talked to Shadow, asking her opinion on how to fix something, or on what might happen when she was finished. When all of the rooms had been "fixed," a chime sounded through the house. Ari'sora felt a compulsion to head towards the front door, so she did, admiring the beauty of the crystal tree as she passed by that room, and feeling a deep satisfaction that she had managed to fix each and every book in both of the libraries.
The front door had...changed. It was glowing a deep shade of blue now, and it seemed to beckon to her, begging her to go through it. She glanced at Shadow, who simply shrugged. Then she gave into the urge to walk through the door and into the world beyond.
