Location: Still adrift. High Fucking Altitude. Pretty sure a bird I didn’t recognise flew under the house yesterday. Didn't even know that was possible.

  Right. I reread yesterday’s entry. The one about brewing a supposedly simple calming tincture while simultaneously battling my own hair, substandard ingredients harvested from a garden clinging precariously to a floating rock, and the general existential despair that comes with being marooned miles above solid ground. And it occurred to me, with the force of a poorly aimed lightning bolt, that absolutely none of this makes a lick of sense out of context.

  Not that I expect anyone to ever read this rambling collection of complaints and questionable magical advice. But if, hypothetically, some poor sod in a distant future (or possibly next Tuesday, depending on where the house decides to dump us) were to unearth this journal, they’d likely assume I was completely barking mad. Which, alright, fair point after 437 years, but there are reasons for the madness. Specific, irritating, largely unavoidable reasons.

  So, against my better judgment, because I apparently have nothing better to do today than stare at clouds and contemplate poor life choices, consider this the ‘Context For The Utterly Bewildered’ entry. A deviation from the planned ‘How Not To Accidentally Animate Your Dust Bunnies’ segment, but arguably necessary. Don’t expect cheerful anecdotes or neat explanations. This is just… the background radiation of my existence.

  First off: The Fucking House.

  No, it wasn’t always like this. I didn’t start life on a dimensionally unstable piece of real estate. For the first century or so after… well, after The Deal (we’ll get to that clusterfuck), I had a perfectly normal, stationary tower. Overgrown, yes. Slightly tilted, possibly. Haunted by a grumpy badger spirit in the pantry, standard stuff. But it stayed put.

  Then came the incident with the Chronos-Displacement Charm and the rival warlock who thought messing with my temporal wards was a hilarious prank. Long story short: he ended up temporally displaced into next Tuesday week (permanently, I think), the charm backfired spectacularly, and instead of shielding my tower from time ripples, it seems to have… untethered it from conventional geography.

  At first, it was jarring. Waking up in a swamp when you went to sleep in the mountains tends to do that. Then it was annoying – supply runs became a nightmare of spatial guesswork. Then, eventually, like everything else in a ridiculously long life, it just became… routine. Or floating island Friday, apparently.

  Do I control it? Gods, no. If I could control it, do you think I’d choose to spend weeks parked over an active volcano, or submerged in an arctic ocean, or – my personal least favourite – that six-month stint in the dimension composed entirely of sentient, off-key singing Jell-O? No. The house goes where it damn well pleases. Sometimes it seems to follow ley lines, sometimes ambient magic, sometimes, I swear, it just gets bored. There’s a rudimentary Navigational Orb in the cellar that occasionally offers vague hints about our next destination, usually after we’ve already arrived, flashing things like ‘Atmosphere: Mostly Breathable’ or ‘Predominant Local Lifeform: Grumpy’. Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious.

  So, yes. The location changes. Constantly, unpredictably, inconveniently. Which makes gardening a bitch, warding a perpetual headache (coastal wards? Useless now. Sky-wards? Probably pointless next week when we’re underground), and neighbourly relations… brief. You learn to keep a well-stocked pantry and develop a very flexible definition of ‘home comforts’. Like learning to enjoy tea brewed with filtered cloud-water. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

  Second: The Deal. And Why I Have Hair That Requires Its Own Damn Chapter.

  Look, nobody makes a deal with a primordial cosmic entity described in obscure grimoires primarily using adjectives like ‘Capricious’, ‘Utterly Unpredictable’, and ‘Fond of Irony’ when things are going well. I was young. Relatively speaking. Maybe a century or so under my belt, which feels ancient until you actually get ancient, then you look back and realise you were a fucking idiot. I was cornered – rival mages, dwindling resources, a particularly nasty curse that was doing unpleasant things to my internal organs. Desperate times, stupid measures.

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  I found It. Or It found me. Details are fuzzy, involving a blood moon, a poorly translated summoning rite, and entirely too much cheap incense. I asked for power. Enough to protect myself, enough to ensure I wouldn’t be cornered again. And longevity. Time to learn, time to build defences, time to just be without constantly looking over my shoulder. Standard desperate witch requests, really.

  The Price? Oh, It was delightfully vague. ‘A reflection of the power granted’, ‘a constant companion embodying the threads of fate you now weave’, ‘something to keep you humble’. Cryptic, flowery bullshit, basically. Sounded harmless enough at the time compared to, you know, dying messily. I agreed. Power surged. Felt fantastic. The curse receded. Rivals suddenly found other continents much more interesting. Longevity settled in – that weird, floaty feeling of time stretching out infinitely. Success, right?

  Wrong. The ‘constant companion’, the ‘reflection of power’, the ‘something to keep me humble’? Yeah. That was the fucking hair.

  It didn’t happen overnight. Took a few weeks. First, it just grew. Fast. Annoyingly fast. Then faster. Soon it was trailing on the floor. Then it started… moving. Just little twitches at first, like static electricity. Then more deliberate coils and ripples. Then the day came when I dropped a key, and before I could bend down, a section of hair snaked out, wrapped around the key, and lifted it back up to me.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t scream. Or maybe faint. Possibly both.

  Apparently, ‘embodying the threads of fate’ meant literally becoming a living, semi-sentient, occasionally helpful but mostly infuriatingly independent extension of my own magical life force. It’s tied to my longevity, tied to my power. It grows as I endure (hence the floor-length situation). It reacts to magic – mine and ambient. It has moods. It holds grudges (don't ask about the time I tried to cut it – the silent treatment lasted decades). It’s strong, surprisingly dexterous, and has an uncanny ability to know exactly what will annoy me most at any given moment.

  So, yes. Witch? Check. Long life? Check (currently 437 years, still look like I’m nervously approaching thirty, another cosmic joke). Power? Check. All thanks to an ill-advised chat with a sarcastic deity who thought eternal, sentient hair was a hilarious price. It didn’t specify whose fate it embodied. Turns out, mostly just mine, in the most irritating way possible.

  Third: Living With The Follicular Menace.

  Which brings us back to the 'Hair Management' part of this ludicrous guide. You can't just ignore several pounds of animate hair that has opinions about your spellcasting technique and occasionally tries to 'organize' your potion ingredients.

  Is it useful? Sometimes. Begrudgingly, I’ll admit it. It’s acted as a third hand during complex rituals more times than I can count. It’s deflected minor curses aimed at my back. It once, memorably, tripped a particularly smug tax collector down the tower stairs (claimed it was an accident, I maintain it was malicious compliance). And yes, it occasionally finds lost things, though its methods are questionable (see: retrieving my earring from the butter dish).

  But mostly? Mostly it's a nuisance. It gets tangled. In everything. Door hinges, cauldron handles, passing birds if I’m not careful outside (one of the few benefits of being stuck on this island – fewer birds). It requires its own specially brewed, magically pH-balanced cleansing potions, lest it decides to rebel by developing knots the size of small rodents. It interferes with spellcasting, sometimes out of mischief, sometimes, I suspect, because it genuinely thinks it knows better. It has 'moods' – sometimes it lies completely still for days, other times it ripples and flows with restless energy, tapping things, braiding itself, generally being distracting.

  And no, I can't just cut it. Tried that. Once. Around year 150. Took iron shears blessed under a triple moon. The shriek it emitted (yes, apparently it can do that, sounded like a thousand tortured mandrakes) cracked every mirror in the tower, and the severed section dissolved into useless, inert dust while the main body refused to move, speak (in its own way), or cooperate for about twenty years. Not worth it. We have an understanding now. A very strained, mutually resentful understanding built on centuries of enforced proximity. It is, quite literally, a part of me. The most annoying part, but still mine. Or maybe I'm its. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

  So. There you have it. The ‘why’. Why my house is currently auditioning for a role in a sky-pirate epic. Why I look like I raided a Rapunzel impersonator's wig collection and it came to life. Why I’m a 437-year-old witch documenting basic charms and complaining about hair. It’s all connected. All part of the same stupid, cosmic joke I signed up for centuries ago.

  Right, exposition dump complete. Felt almost… productive. Horrifying. Back to ignoring the vast emptiness outside and figuring out how to make the sad chamomile less sad tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just try to teach the Hair to dust. That should end well.