She hoped Professor Botros wouldn't mind that one of his penknives from class were missing. Would he? Too bad Alice wasn't aware of any smoothing spells, if there were some that existed, and it was how he'd wanted them to smooth runes in class. He wouldn't care that she'd borrowed one so long as she had a perfect Gandr to show for her efforts at the end of this work and he got his tool back, right? Right.

Making her way down to Mr. Alder at the edge of the forest, she seated herself at the base of his trunk and began using the tool to smooth the surface out. Was it working okay? When she'd finished, it did feel a little smoother, so she hoped that meant it was.

Over the next couple of days, Alice would repeat the process, coming down to the tree after classes and shaping her Gandr more and more every day with the penknife. Afterwards, she'd give the Alder a little pat on its trunk and head back up to the castle to replace Botros' tool before he noticed it was missing. Better and better every time.