If they work and I go through a whole set of them I won't lay hands on a 'grace' until it's the only thing left.

Bad luck on that front, huh?

I am not graceful. But it's a good test, I just need to draw all the symbols on bits of paper and put them in a bowl and pull them out, maybe a few times to be sure.

And paper, pens, ink and a bowl are swiftly acquired.

Kiri writes out all the symbols, one of each, and goes pick pick pick through them until:

"Yep." She picks up the last one. "This is grace."

The Elves are delighted and fascinated. And then scouts return with more information and they turn to choosing a location for a camp.

Kiri starts trying to draw blessings for Elves.

"...weird."

What's up?

One can draw blessings for other people. I'm trying to draw blessings for locals and I got my own birth blessings and then I got Aleko's and then I got the non-elemental blessings. The magic on blessings isn't overt enough for me to just literally fail to pick things up so I think this might be what it looks like when it's not working.

So we're unblessable?

Apparently. I wish I'd tried this for some non-Welchin humans.

There are supposed to be Men in this world somewhere.

I meant ones from my world, who'd be working on more of the same underlying rules about magic, so I could isolate how much it matters to be from Welce in particular.

All the primes are always Welce natives?

They're always related to the relevant family - like, our great aunt was the last Ardelay prime - and I don't know if they can be born outside the country or not; I found two missing primes outside the country but they left after they were born and had birth blessings.

Huh. What restricts it to that country? Have blessings always been a thing, do you know?

Don't know, in either case. Maybe if somebody who blessings worked for left Welce and blessed a baby the baby would have blessings work for them, the borders might not do anything except define where the cultural habit tends to live. If there are any babies around whose parents want me to bless them I can do that.

Elves don't have children in wartime but that's very kind of you.

It might have to be within three hours of birth, too.

We'll just have to wonder, then, there won't be new births until peacetime.

Anyway, if you think of any uses for the minor divinatory powers of blessing draws that apply solely to myself and Aleko let us know.

Can you use it to get a guess at whether your magic works on Ainur?

I suppose I could try. Tell me a little more about Ainur? Specific questions like that are sometimes best addressed with a limited blessing set.

We're mostly interested in whether it'd work on Moringotho. Ainur are the powers that created our world. He sends some images. They vary, a lot.

Hm. Kiri rummages for "triumph" and "endurance" and "creativity" and "luck". She shakes them up and focuses and picks one.