Tera knelt in the dirt and planted her first seedling, knowing a beast would eat it by morning. She was a healer. Her bark-brown hands knew every herb in Feralhollow, and she dreamed of a garden where all of them grew together, with a safe home beside it for the wounded animals she saved. But her plot was open wild land. Last night, a boar had flattened the row she planted the day before. Hoofprints still marked the mud. She had seedlings and skill, but no cleared, warded ground to keep anything alive. She was pulling the crushed sprout free when a voice cut across the field. "You're planting into a stampede," the woman said. "Those tracks are two days old. There'll be fresh ones tonight." Tera stood. A short, broad-shouldered human crossed the grass toward her, a tool belt slung low on her hips. Axes, blades, and rolled cord filled every loop. A forest harvester, the kind who cleared land for a living. The stranger studied the churned soil, then Tera's muddy hands, and her mouth tugged into a half-smile. "You're the healer," she said. "Folks say you fix things. Looks like you need something cleared instead." "I can't stop the animals," Tera admitted. "Every plant I put down, they trample." "Then don't fight them. Move them." The harvester unhooked a short axe and pressed the handle into Tera's palm. "I'll cut your border and ward it. You give the beasts somewhere better to be." They worked until dark. The harvester swung with practiced ease, and she showed Tera how to grip the blade, where to strike, how to drive a warding stake so the magic held. Tera's arms burned. By dusk, a clean square of earth lay open, ringed with stakes that hummed faint and blue. Nothing wild would cross that line now. "Keep the tools a while," the harvester said, wiping her brow. "Return them when your garden's grown." Then she shouldered her belt and walked back into the trees. Tera did not stop. She raised a greenhouse at the cleared edge, its glass panes catching the last light, ivy already waiting to climb. She carried her surviving seedlings inside, where no hoof could reach them. Then she built the second structure, a tall warded hall with many small rooms, each one meant for a different creature. A place to collect the beasts instead of chasing them off. At dawn she found the problem had already arrived. A cluster of her bright mushrooms lay half-eaten near the greenhouse. A butterfly the size of her hand perched on a torn cap, pink and gold wings shaped like a dragon's. It chewed without fear. Tera crept close and closed her cupped hands around it. The creature thrashed, then went still. Her menagerie had its first resident, and her garden its first thief. She carried it inside, wondering what else her colorful mushrooms would draw out of the woods.

Tera set the butterfly in a bare room off the hall and shut the door. By morning she knew she had made a mistake. The creature clung to the cold stone wall, wings folded tight. It had not touched the mushroom cap she left. When she stepped close, she saw the real trouble. One wing bent wrong at the joint, torn near the base. The butterfly was not just a thief. It was hurt, and a bare room would kill it. She had medicine for burns and broken bones in people. She had nothing for a wounded thing this small and strange. First it had to survive. A healer could not treat a patient already dying of a cold, empty cage. So she decided to build it a home. Not a cage, but the forest it came from. She studied the butterfly's pink and gold wings, its small scaled body and curved horns, and thought about where such a creature would live. Damp shade. Soft light. Mushrooms to feed on. She worked all day. She hauled moss and laid it thick across the floor. She carried in a fallen log and pressed fresh mushrooms into the wood, bright caps in every color. She hung ivy from the beams and fitted a tall glass pane in the wall so morning sun came through soft and warm. She left half the room open. If her garden drew more of these creatures, they would have space to land. When she finished, she carried the butterfly inside on her open palm. For a long moment it did not move. Then it crept off her hand onto the mossy log. Its tongue uncurled. It began to feed on a red-capped mushroom, slow at first, then steady. Tera did not relax yet. She watched the torn wing. She ground comfrey and spiderwort into a thin paste, the same herbs she used to close a wound. With one fingertip she dabbed it along the tear. The butterfly flinched, then held still, as if it understood. By dusk the wing had stopped drooping. It lifted, trembling, and stretched to its full span. The creature was going to live. Her first resident had a home, and her hall had its first true habitat, ready for others like it. But as she cleaned her hands, a new worry settled in. The butterfly was feeding fast. It had already stripped two mushroom caps bare. These mushrooms were the same ones growing in her garden, the ones that had drawn the creature out of the woods in the first place. If it ate this much, she would need far more. And if her garden kept calling wounded beasts in, one healed room would not be enough. She looked down the long dark hall, at all the empty doors waiting, and understood how much more she had to build and grow!