I got up early in the m. I felt closer to Gren, but I knew retionships took time. Everything had been happening so fast, and I was looking forward to slowing down for a bit. I still wao explore the world of Amaranth, but right now I wao foy little er of it.

  I headed back to the forest after a light breakfast. Janeen wao show me that she wasn’t just easy on the eyes, she could also cook a mean steak. It was heavier than I normally like first thing in the m, and I missed my coffee, but I had to admit it was very good.

  That retty good, Enash told me. But couldn’t you fuck her just once?

  Xy intercepted me on the way home, and I filled her in on the deal I’d made. Gren would lead the first group of trolls, and then she could work out where they would go and how to use them.

  “Thank you, Abby. They really will be helpful, I think. But I’m still mad.”

  “Of course you are.” All around us I could still see the devastation. I’d be mad, too, whether it was helpful or not.

  Give into yer, Xy. Feed it.

  “I didn’t realize they needed wood so badly.”

  I shrugged. “It’s hard to know what other people need sometimes. Even if they try to tell you.”

  She kissed me a me go. She uood that the deal meant that I o take care of a few things oh, and besides, she had to meet Gren and the troll wang so she could tell them what to do. Maybe bossing them around would help give her a release for her anger.

  Hopefully she didn’t release too much at once.

  I went to the big box hardware store and got my first load of two by sixes, and ordered more to be delivered to my house. I got a dist for so much, which was nice. I also picked up some nice zero-gravity lounge chairs for outside.

  Moving ten foot long pnks is hard work, even if you don’t have to move them very far. Kathy was out w on her porch, feet up on the railing with a ptop banced ohighs, and she wandered over to chat before I had three pnks inside.

  “Is that for the fence?” she asked. “Kind of wide.”

  I shook my head. “No. You’re right, I’d want narrower sts for the fence.” I wondered when I was going to get to the fe just wasn’t a priority. “I don’t mind having Roxy and Rover over. It’s o see them, actually.”

  “Well. As long as it’s okay that I e over to fetch them,” Kathy said.

  “Absolutely.”

  She had an odd look on her face, but then it went away, as if she knew something she was trying to cover something up. Then she asked, “So what is all that wood for, anyway?”

  There wasn’t a great reason to have that many pieces of wood that big for my house project, and I k. But I couldn’t tell her the truth, either. Maybe I should have shem in during the middle of the night, although that would have caused even more questions. So I thought fast, and what I came up with was, “Building a workbench.”

  “In the basement?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking that since I wasn’t going to let her see the ent workbench, and I wasn’t going to let her in the basement, I might as well bihe two.

  “Ah. Well, I better get back tood luck with it all.” She went back to the porch, and paid attention to her ptop, but I got the distinct impression that she was still keeping a for what I to. Well, that was just hauling pnks into the house.

  To get them down to the basement, I made a backstop ahem slide dowairs. Might as well let gravity work for me. Ohere, it was harder to get them to Amaranth, since I couldn’t just drop them through the puzzle. I had to be holding them. But I could stack them right on top of the puzzle easily enough, and pull them through o a time, and thehem drop.

  Abby was strong, but her hands were smaller and her reach wasn’t as long, so I stood half in and half out, l pnk after pnk aing them drop.

  After that, it was easy. Eabie could carry three pnks at o took them three hours or so to walk dowh to the edge of the forest, and then three hours back, but they excelled at repetitive tasks. If I hem to, they could make two trips. From there, the trolls could pick up the pnks and carry them to the vilge. I had to follow the zombies the first time to make sure they could follow the dires I gave them, but after that I didn’t have to do any more of the work.

  This is a serious waste of an army of undead.

  “It’s the best use of an army of undead ever,” I told him. “They are creating peace, and people will be able to build better houses. Everyone involved is better off. We’re adding value.”

  But the whole point of zombie armies is to let them multiply. Sure, eabie isn’t much. But every time a zombie kills someone, you raise a new zombie. Five bees ten. Ten bees a hundred. A hundred bees a rolling wave of death aru. Now that’s what I call adding value.

  “pound i,” I said. “I’m familiar with the idea. But this way no one has to die.”

  Yeah, that’s the other dowo what you’re doing. You know how big an army you could have if you just poisoheir booze? And poisoning is the best, it leaves the corpse pletely intact for ter use.

  “Thank you for your diverse perspective,” I said, with more tolerahan I felt. “Question for you.”

  I bet you’re thinking about disease. That’s pretty good, too. In fact, if yht a sexual disease from Earth, they’d probably have ance, and you would get bonus points as a Seductress.

  “Oddly, that wasn’t my question. What I wao know was, what would happen if I disassembled the puzzle and reassembled it somepce else.”

  Hmm.

  Well, if he had to think about it, at least he’d be quiet for a bit. I set up the two chairs out front, w if Xy would e joi some point. I felt a little guilty for not w on the house, but my shoulders and arms were sore from lugging so much wood around. It would be nice if by letting Abel do most of the work, I was fresh as a daisy once I ged, but it didn’t work that way. Lifting things as Abby made Abel’s muscles sore, tht now, I was going to sit and drink some water. I could use a cold drink, but I didn’t want to ge back to go to the fridge. I could install a mini-fridge down below, I suppose, but if I kept putting gadgets in Amaranth I’d have to do more electrical work.

  I leaned ba my chair. I was wearing a snug blouse and shorts, and as I looked out at the forest I noticed that I was dispying an awful lot of cleavage, especially from my angle. And my legs were oo. Natural beauty, in all respects, but it was hard to focus on the forest for the trees. Or the trees, for that matter.

  I have an answer for you.

  “Yes?”

  If you could actually take the puzzle apart, which you ’t, you would probably tear the fabric of both universes in the process, causing unknowru and probably several extra-dimensional invasions. The weak would perish first, but perhaps some of the strong would survive. I think you should try it. It’s a ake a difference.

  I tched on the part where it was impossible. “But you’re saying I ’t.”

  No. But is that a reason not to try?

  anyone do it?

  Well, I think I could. Ba the day. Maybe some other powerful wizard. And I hear you almost destroyed your world by building something called a Large Hadron Collider, so maybe that would do it. I, personally, don’t even know what a hadron is.

  “It’s a subatomic particle. And anyway, there’s no reason…” I stopped. I wasn’t going to expin that the whole worry about the thing was a silly spiracy theory.

  Subatomic? Atomic like the on?

  Yeah, I wasn’t going to expin it, especially as my uanding was a little hazy anyway. Nor was I going to do any high-speed physics researear the gate. Just in case.

  Xy startled me by ing out of a nearby oak. Almost all of her bandages were gone, and she looked like herself again. In fact, as I looked at her more closely I realized she’d relocated her bandages so they made little X’s over her nipples, and she had a little bikini of sorts made of leaves below. Her skin was rgely healed, with only a few reddish spots to show where the blisters had been.

  “Hello Abby,” she said. “Are you drinking that awful stuff again?”

  “What? No, this is just water.”

  Xy smiled. “Good, I’m sure that’s much better for you. Do you have any chocote?”

  “And here I thought you were here for my sparkling personality.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  Wow. I wasn’t sure she deserved chocht now. But I gave her some anyway.

  “Wait, no,” she said, “you told me it was called ot sparkling personality. Thank you, Abby.”

  Ah. “Were the trolls useful?” I asked.

  She made a face. “Yes.”

  I nearly ughed at the way she screwed her face up when talking about them. “Good,” I said. “Have a seat.”

  She looked at the chair dubiously, and then at the way I was sitting in it. The in. She shrieked as it tipped into a perfect lounging position.

  “It’s okay, it’s supposed to do that.”

  “You could warn a girl!”

  “I could, but then I wouldn’t get to hear you squeak.”

  “I do not squeak.”

  She totally did. “I was just thinking about how much this pce has started to feel like home.”

  “Oh?” she asked, rolling over on her side to face me. I gave myself a moment just to look at her lovely, barely covered curves.

  “Yes. You, the forest, Gren, eveher trolls. Even Enash’s musty old windowless tomb.”

  Xy smiled. “I’m gd. Abby, this is nice, but do you think one of these chairs support two of us?”

  “Absolutely.” Put the two of us together and you’d barely have one of Abel.

  “Good.” She carefully mao pivot her chair up, and then crawled io me. “I’m gd I’m part of home, Abby.”

  It was strao realize that oh, I’d never said that to a woman. I knew I hadn’t said the ventional things – want to move in? Will you marry me? But I’d never said they were part of what made a pe, either. I had my life, they had theirs. I had my house, temporary though it usually was, and they had their house, apartment, what have you. Possibly, they had someone else in their life who was home.

  Maybe I’d never really been fully home in my own house, either.

  I kissed Xy, feeling her body press up against mihe slightly awkward squishy but delightful way our boobs got in the way, the soft fruit and kale smoothie fvor of her lips, the satin feel of her leg brushing against mine.

  Maybe I’d never felt fully home in my own body, either.

  She grabbed my ass, and squeezed. My cock hardened against her belly.

  That wasn’t right, I decided. I’d always felt fine being a man, and had never really thought of being anything else. But this body I had now was amazing. Abel was ‘home’ but Abby was better than home, like a mansion I’d ied from a long-lost aunt.

  Okay, I’d stretched an analogy too far, and gotten oddly specifid I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to Xy’s tongue in my mouth and the fact that she was tugging up my shirt.