"Either would be pleasing - the opportunity to talk freely is refreshing."

"It is good to hear the repairs go smoothly.  What's it like, smithing metal?"

"Oh! Well ..."

Lhemur thinks about how to explain it.

"It's not really like other crafts, because you have to be very aware of the temperature of everything involved," he begins. "But if I had to pick a point of comparison, I think it is most like working with clay. It's not a very close analogy, though. Working with metal, you can't really just slap parts back together, unless you melt them down all the way. To smith something, you really need to figure out how to make the final shape by drawing or beating your stock, with a minimum amount of joinery. See, metal sort of retains ..."

And Lhemur launches into a long explanation of metal stress, the effects of temperature on different working techniques, the differences between iron, copper, and tin, and the problems of inventory management they cause.

Eeferi conjures imagery approximately matching whatever Lhemur describes- faint heat rises from false forge-flame and metal clangs quietly when struck with imaginary force.  "What's it feel like, when it goes smoothly?  What do you think about, as you work?"

He drums his fingers in thought.

"It's ... when it goes smoothly, it's a bit like running," he says after a moment. "Where you make sure you can keep up a steady pace, since you know it's going to take a long time, but once the hammer starts falling in rhythm, it seems to take almost no time at all."

He's finished with his meal, so he sets his plate and knife aside and engages with Eeferi's illusory forge.

"There's a movement to it," he continues, taking an illusory hammer, and showing himself shifting his body — just slightly — around the anvil to get the right angle for strikes. "Because you can reposition the metal, but it breaks the flow. And you can't hammer in exactly the same place each time, or you won't make progress — or you'll make it too thin, or brittle. So you kind of watch how the shape changes, and then have to move yourself into position to keep up with it without hurting yourself."

He sets down the hammer.

"And then when you have finished the hammerwork, and you're dealing with barstock or something soft and delicate ... it's slow, and smooth, but still with the same underlying power to it. Your strength the only thing separating the metal as it is now from how you want it to be. I honestly don't know of anything like it. I admit that I get pretty sick of making nails after a while, but I like drawing just as much as hammering, really."

"As for what I think about ... I mean, usually I'm thinking about the metal, right? But it's not in words — just the sort of impression of how its shaped, and how I'm changing it, this constant awareness that took me a long time to perfect. It almost doesn't feel like thinking at all, sometimes, but more like balancing on a boat, with your body moving in time with the waves without conscious thought. Although there are also things to keep an eye on, so it's never completely automatic. Like the number of pieces you've produced so far, and whether anything is melting."

He sits down, shaking his head.

"One time, when I was an apprentice, I got into that state of focus for probably the first time making nails — I hated nails at the time, because they're such common apprentice work. I think I single-handedly supplied the village with two years of nails that week — but I got into focus for the first time, and I completely lost track of how many I had made. I only noticed when the quenching bucket spilled some water on my foot."

"Nowadays I'm a lot better at keeping track of things. That's the half of smithing that they don't tell you about, though. A village like this doesn't have a need for a truly full-time smith, so a lot of my time is spent doing inventory management for the kiln, and the charcoal fires, and our various raw materials. Plus maintaining tools, of course. You'd be surprised how quickly tongs can wear out, if you're using them seriously."

He blinks. "... I'm sorry, what was the question?"

Satenag snorts. "I'm pretty sure you answered it somewhere in there," she notes.

"I asked, 'What's it feel like, when it goes smoothly?  What do you think about, as you work?' and you answered.  I'm glad you shared that, with me."

Eeferi holds themself ready to answer further questions, or even ask them, if the opportunity arises.

"Well, I'm happy to have satisfied your curiosity!" he responds. "I'm always happy to talk about smithing."

He furrows his brow for a moment, trying to remember what he was going to ask before being (pleasantly) derailed.

"Oh! But I had a question for you as well — Rastenu was telling me about the information you'd shared on wishing, and I noticed that you said some wishes were able to manipulate ... wishers and genies, when they otherwise wouldn't. Like, mental changes, I think you said. And I was wondering why wishes would affect genies differently?"

"I don't know why the rules are as they are, they seem to simply be.  Genies are almost always protected from interference or modification in their ability to grant Wishes, from which freedom from one's lamp at the sacrifice of the ability to grant Wishes is an exception; rather than sharing a person's protection from almost all mental change, of which Masters are themselves mostly exempted."

"I suspect the rules are meant to protect themselves and prevent certain outcomes, but I do not know what, if anything, they strive against."

"... huh."

Lhemur has not really put much thought towards what the rules of wishing might be trying to prevent, instead treating them more like natural variations in terrain, like the hills that mean there's only one place for a good, flat road out of the village.

"Alright then," he muses. "Thanks."

Lhemur's impromptu lecture has carried them through most of dinner. Tomatoes are handed around as dessert, and Penþa walks to stand on the steps of their house. People generally re-orient themselves in Penþa's direction and quiet down.

“I stand to call a meeting. There is a matter that must be heard,” Penþa announces, using the traditional opening words.

"We hear you, organizer," the crowd replies.

Penþa recaps the situation and what they've learned so far, for the benefit of anyone insufficiently nosy to have heard already from their neighbors.

"... and so we will be hosting Eeferi while Satenag is determining the wording she wishes to use," they conclude. "I hope you will make them feel welcome."

People turn in Eeferi's direction and click in an acknowledging, welcoming way.

"But for something so momentous, Satenag has asked for our help in working out what she should wish for and how she should phrase it. So I'd like to open up the discussion; I'll moderate. Eeferi, would you be willing to take notes for us again?"

Penþa looks for a place where Eeferi could put another blackboard, and eventually settles on a spot just to their left. The organizer's house, which Penþa has been proud custodian of for some time, was built with the assumption that people would sometimes come up on the step to be more visible during meetings — letting them look out over the sea of faces sitting on benches or blankets throughout the courtyard, past the overhanging eaves of the cookhall and serving tables to the side, and down the clear space between the houses to the lake beyond.

It's a familiar view, from years spent holding meetings to discuss things like land allocation, prices for trade goods, and the state of the food stores. Or from years before that as Curtel's apprentice, sitting on the step and weaving notes as fast as they could.

But the blackboard was a bit wider than the step, so Penþa gestures for people to make a bit of space against the weathered boards that make up the organizer's house, and the people who had settled down there agreeably shuffle back into the crowd.

"Certainly!  One meeting coming right up!" - They pause for a moment, glancing at the lamp from which they still billow - before their form decoheres.  There's a figure, but it does not turn when it moves - it is merely an impression upon the movements of smoke, whose position and bearing are occasionally different.

There's an energy now, a thrumming in the air.  The smoke, once billowing lazily with the wind, now spirals itself both inwards and out.  It forms into solid but plain stone walls [with brazier-lit exits] and a domed ceiling of darkly purple tinted glass keeps out both the sun and the feeling of wind.  The blackboard grows and self-sections, with individual fires keeping each part visible even as the light from the outside is lost.  Besides each citizen in attendance form chalkboards, chalk, cleaning rags, and sets of beaded strings.

Near Satenag, the lamp softly glows.

The villagers gasp, the sound echoing oddly off the newly forming walls. Penþa flinches, before regaining control of themself. Anþasta grabs the corner of the blanket she's sitting on and pulls it over her head, tucking herself into Đani's side. Daskal watches with wide eyes. Lhemur whispers to his neighbor that this might be a solution to the tong problem.

There's an echoing murmur of voices, as several people try to talk over one another.

Penþa whistles, the sound loud and piercing. The crowd quiets down. A few people poke their heads out from under blankets or arms.

"Thank you, Eeferi," they say. "Alright — maybe this will make clear the scope of what we're dealing with. As I said, I'd like to open things up to moderated discussion. Put your hand up so we don't all talk over each other."

"What about getting a volunteer to grant wishes, and freeing Eeferi sooner rather than later?" one of the outlying farmers — a prophet and a vintner — suggests. "I mean, a deal's a deal, but surely that would be fairer and let us learn what being a freed genie is like, and whether anyone else might want to become one, so that we can get more than two wishes overall."

"Is granting wishes at all like practicing a trade?" Anþasta's grandmothers ask. "Because if so, it might be worth freeing the volunteer first, so we have an experienced wish-granter to set things to rights if something goes wrong."

The figure standing at the 'front' speaks, their voice echoic and muffled.

"Even if it seems unto you as a kindness, it would .. be something I would regret, to not fulfill an agreement.  Even of those Masters I came to prefer I had never met, I still valued in a minority of them the pattern of holding to their word.  I understand, with every Wish I grant that is not my freedom, it is less likely that most Masters would free me .. but I have long been imprisoned, and I am used to granting Wishes."

"I have little experience practicing a trade, and so do not know firsthand, but from my knowledge, no.  The granting of a Wish is, perhaps metaphorically, a channeling of power into truth, the experience is abstract.  It lies beyond my knowledge of how I would perform an illusion of it.  Its an involuntary, reflexive thing, to my knowledge akin to the inevitability of fighting to breathe when drowning."

"Sometimes, it seems to me that I have power over the way a Wish reshapes.  Certainly, some have formed as I would have chosen them to, if they were my choice.  However, I recall times where the result of a Wish was not within my predictions - or preferences."

"Yet besides all this talk of what it has been like to be me ... I say this to those of you that would become Genie.  Please, understand, it is not like being a human.  That much I know quite well, for my own skill at illusions is grown through practice, and it is as changing many a foreign thing in ways strange and sometimes unexplained."

There's a general pondering, as people try to imagine what it might be like and how they might react.

"Alright, so even if there's no benefit to skill, we should still plan to use both of Satenag's wishes with Eeferi," Penþa concludes. "So that's one option — have a volunteer become a genie and then be freed, so we know what the process is like and can judge whether other people would be willing to become genies as well, or if there are obstacles to the process. But let's hear other ideas, or thoughts about ends to wish for, and not just means. Anyone who would be willing to volunteer for the experiment, put your hand up and I'll note you down as the next discussion happens." 

Lhemur speaks up.

"I think we might be planning for the wrong thing, honestly," he says. "Because it's like having metalworking tools — if some fraction of people are willing to become genies, and that works without other problems, we're going to continue having access to wishes. So it's not necessarily a matter of planning wishes that last forever on their own; we can plan for having an expanded set of tools for handling things."

There's a generalized murmuring as people chew on that thought.

"We still need to prioritize, and make sure we aren't left in a bad situation if the supply of wishes dries up unexpectedly," Bardamma points out. "Maybe turning someone into a genie only goes wrong one time in six — that still means we'll run out."

Another villager speaks up.

"Well, what if we wished for more ... tool-like magic?" they suggest. "So not genie magic, but some independent kind of magic that could be taught separately, as a backup."