The Secret Base

That was why she liked having dreams like that after a night shift or on her days off. If she suddenly woke up and the dream broke off, it was fine; she could go back to sleep and quickly pick up where she had left off.

The internet said this was a precursor to schizophrenia. Lin Er thought about it, but she had no control over her dreams at all.

She dreamed whenever she fell asleep, and there was no refusing it. If she was going to get sick, she couldn't prevent it anyway, so she might as well be happy for now.

In her dreams, she could experience flying close to the ground and practicing martial arts. Things like magic and fantasy were a little too difficult.

At most, when she suddenly realized she was dreaming and found herself naked, she could quickly conjure up a set of clothes for herself in the dream.

Her thoughts had wandered off somewhere again. By the time she came to herself, the class was already half over.

If she couldn't remember, she wouldn't think about it. Who cared where it had come from? She could use it now, anyway.

She could also feel that the world was real. Time passed second by second, injuries hurt, and the embarrassment of being called on by the teacher and not knowing the answer was real too.

But by now she could calmly take her book to the shelf and leave it there during class, then stand for half the period without a shred of guilt, paying no attention to the occasional glances drifting her way.

After evening study, she took her broom and quietly climbed over the wall to go home as usual. The bottle of water she could buy at the cafeteria was nowhere near enough for a bath. She had money now, but there was no need to deprive herself when she could afford better.

Now she dared to fly close to the surface of the river. Before, she had only dared to fly along the bank, but there were bound to be bushes and things along the bank.

Nothing was more unobstructed than the river's surface. She didn't even need to watch for twigs or spiderwebs ahead.

The water was just a little frightening in the dark. She couldn't see the bottom at all, only blackness and faint ripples.

When she passed the deep pool, she scooped up fish first, as usual. She caught lots of little white fish today. Lin Er hadn't cared much for them before, always finding them too bony, but now she couldn't love them more.

She fried them in a pan until both sides were golden and crisp, sprinkled on a little salt and chili powder, and added nothing else. Then one Bone-Vanishing Spell gave her bite-sized snacks.

Her little pen pal loved these snacks too. For them, he had even saved half his Invigoration Draught for her.

When she translated the name on her computer, it didn't quite register. She really thought it was for perking her up and nearly saved it to drink before her first class in the morning.

Then she realized that in Harry Potter, the term meant cold medicine. After writing a few words back and forth, she confirmed that her little pen pal had caught a cold.

For a moment, she couldn't tell whether the medicine tasted so bad that her little pen pal was using her place to get rid of it, or whether he really liked the dried fish and was trading the medicine for it.

She tossed the dead fish into the kitten's food bowl, then took out the fish to prepare them while the immersion heater warmed the water in the bucket.

She still didn't dare do it in the courtyard. It was neither particularly early nor particularly late, and she was afraid someone getting up in the night would smell the fish, come looking out of curiosity, and discover something.

The countryside now was different from what it would become later. At present, every household was full of people.

When she did these things in the new house, she didn't even dare turn on the lights, relying entirely on the faint glow of a candle.

The house behind hers stood on higher ground, so anyone standing at its door could see whether anyone was moving around in her courtyard.

She also had to keep her movements quiet because the neighbors were only a wall away from her house. Sounds carried more clearly at night, and it would be bad if they heard her.

Apart from the New Year, her house was basically empty. If sounds suddenly came from an empty house, a timid person might think it was haunted, while a bold one might think there was a thief.

Even if they didn't come over to catch someone, they would at least tell her grandparents the next day. Then she wouldn't have another chance to come back for a bath, because one of her grandparents would definitely come over to sleep here.

The house might look empty, as though there was nothing in it, but even if it contained only a single table, her grandparents would come over to keep watch if they knew a thief had been inside.

Her little pen pal should be having lunch around now. Lin Er heated up a portion of the food left over from dinner, put the dried fish on a plate, and sent them over together.

This time, the gift in return was a very pretty stone. By candlelight, Lin Er wondered if it might be a gemstone.

But its cross section was very rough, and it looked like a piece of pale purple quartz.

She put it in the wooden box on the shelf, which was already nearly half full. Inside were dried flowers, stones, potion bottles, and a book.

On her way back, Lin Er stopped at the deep pool. Looking at the small, lush bamboo grove on the cliff, she decided today was the day.

That night, she once again used a timed Stupefy to fall asleep, then flew out of the bathroom window at three.

The little bamboo grove really was small, six or seven meters long and only two or three meters wide.

A section jutted out from the middle of the cliff here. Over the years, soil had somehow accumulated on it, and then bamboo seeds had somehow found their way there, eventually growing into a small grove.

Unlike the green-stemmed bamboo in their area, the bamboo here was no more than a little over two meters tall, but its stalks were a deep purple.

Lin Er's hand paused just as she was about to clear it away. In the end, she left it and turned to make a hole in the cliff.

Diffindo worked well, but it made quite a racket, like using explosives to blast rock.

Luckily, the whole cliff was almost one solid mass. Otherwise, it would surely have collapsed.

After four or five spells, a large hollow appeared in the cliff behind the bamboo grove. Progress was a little slow, since it wasn't a specialized spell.

But at this rate, another week or so of blasting would make a small cave.

The new house still wasn't secluded enough, and the more she did there, the greater the chance her grandparents would find out. After all, people left traces when they did things.

At first, she had planned to clear the bamboo grove and build a secret base on the cliff.

But now she thought, wasn't digging a cave better? The bamboo grove could serve as a screen, and the cave would shelter her from wind and rain.

The more she thought about it, the better the decision seemed. It would be a private secret base, well hidden, where only she could come.

The ledge was almost impossible to see from above because the cliff was wider at the top and recessed underneath. There was nowhere to climb down either.

Below was the deep pool, with nowhere to set foot. There were no footholds for climbing up, and the ledge was at least ten meters above the river.

The only place from which it could be seen was the opposite bank, but the village on that side was far away, with fields and woods in between.

Now that she had left the little bamboo grove in place, it was even better concealed. There was no way to see what lay behind the bamboo from the opposite bank.

She didn't waste the rocks she blasted loose, either. She picked out some reasonably even ones and built a stone wall in the bamboo grove.

She might cook or boil water here in the future, and it would be bad if the firelight shone through. She threw the extra rocks into the barren hills. It would be terrible to throw them into the river; her fishing net was still at work!