A Slight Magical Inconvenience. Mirthbound, #1

In Larkaven, magic rarely behaves with dignity. Buildings have moods. Teapots offer unsolicited advice. Emotions alter the weather, streets occasionally reconsider their geography, and household objects become restless whenever Brenna Warrengale tells a lie. Brenna has lived with Larkaven's everyday enchantments for six years. She knows how to reason with furniture, interpret the opinions of lampposts, and accept that her slippers may never agree about which one belongs closest to the bed.
The district's magic is unpredictable, inconvenient, and usually harmless. Then it begins acting with purpose. Lampposts flash in patterns resembling a forgotten language. Buildings murmur to one another after midnight. Lanternfold Alley experiments with different versions of its own name, and tremors rise from somewhere beneath the cobblestones. Even Brindle Cassomere's latest invention cannot explain it.
His Neighborhood Harmony Optimizer merely complicates matters by animating every neglected object within range, inspiring the local brooms to unionize and sending wheelbarrows marching toward the Commons. But beneath the comedy, something ancient is awakening. Joined by Brindle, emotionally expressive Orielle Veth, meticulous researcher Rune, and the mysterious Finn-who has known Larkaven far longer than he admits-Brenna follows the disturbances into a hidden clearing inside Lanternfold Alley.
There they discover the Latent Core, an artifact created during the district's founding to collect the emotional life of its community and return that energy as the ambient magic flowing through its streets. For centuries, Larkaven's enchantment was sustained by people living, feeling, and caring for one another. Then the community fractured, the Core withdrew underground, and the district entered a dormancy that lasted two hundred and thirty years.
Now it has begun searching for a way back. The Core has spent years quietly drawing together the five people it needs: Rune's knowledge, Brindle's creativity, Orielle's emotional resonance, Finn's connection to the district's oldest spirits, and Brenna's inconvenient but essential honesty. Awakening the Core will not require a legendary hero, a forbidden spell, or a battle against an ancient evil.
It will require five ordinary people to stand together, offer exactly what they are, and trust that community itself can be powerful enough to restore what was lost. But bringing Larkaven fully awake will amplify every enchantment within it. Feelings will become weather before they can be hidden. Objects will remember their histories. Buildings will express thoughts they have stored for generations.
And unless the five can stabilize the Core without repeating the failures of the past, the district may retreat into silence once again. A Slight Magical Inconvenience launches Mirthbound, a cozy enchanted fantasy adventure series filled with opinionated household objects, eccentric neighbors, ancient magical mysteries, heartfelt friendships, emotional weather, unexpected pastries, and the discovery that the strongest magic is often created by people simply choosing to show up for one another.