Myra Sporewing had picked the clearing three days ago, and today she meant to lay the first stone. She was a small woman with pale fairy wings folded against a cluster of common mushrooms on her back. The wings and the mushrooms did not usually share a body. She knew that. She wanted the rare spores anyway, the shy ones that only settled in old dark forest floors, and she wanted them to settle on a place that already fed lost creatures. That was the plan. A hidden grove. A warm bowl for anyone who wandered in. She set her tote down on the flat stone she'd been using as a table. The lid had a metal latch shaped like a toadstool, and inside she kept her seed packets, a folding knife, and a hard heel of bread meant for her lunch. She meant to eat it after she staked the corners of the future cottage. She was pacing off the fourth corner when she heard the wet breathing behind her. A raccoon sat at the edge of the clearing. He was round in a way that looked wrong, not fat but puffed, fur damp and sticking in clumps. One paw was tucked against his chest. He was shivering hard enough that she could see the white tip of his tail twitch against the leaves. He did not run when she turned. He just looked at her. Myra's stomach tightened. She had not built anything yet. There was no cottage, no bowl, no bed. There was a flat stone and a bag of seeds and one heel of bread. If she waved him off, her grove began with a turned back. She knew that the way she knew her own wings. She knelt and unlatched the tote. She broke the bread in half, then broke the half into smaller pieces so he wouldn't choke. She set them on the stone and stepped back. The raccoon came in low. He ate fast, one piece at a time, watching her between bites. When the bread was gone he did not leave. He climbed onto the flat stone, curled against her tote, and pressed his wet side to the sun-warmed wood. Myra stood in her half-measured clearing and understood what she had done. She had promised a bed. She had four stakes in the ground and no roof, and it would rain by dark. She looked at the raccoon. She looked at the mushrooms on her own back, the common ones, the ordinary ones. She pulled the folding knife from the tote and cut the twine on her seed packets. She had until nightfall to raise something over him. A shape. A shelter. The first walls of the cottage she had only meant to plan today. She started with the corner nearest the raccoon.