Blue leans against the edge of the cave, focusing on the wall opposite.

Purple continues to– whatever.

Then after a bit, Blue disappears.

It's somewhat weird – if you were looking at him, you'd see him go, but it doesn't actually feel much like anything's changed.

Promise is a sorcerer and pays attention to her surroundings.

"Oh!"

"Bye, Blue," says Purple, still focusing on the water.

Doesn't seem he even looked up. He's not even facing the right way to see that Blue's gone.

"You weren't even looking. How'd you notice?"

"Hm?" he asks, distracted, then he turns to face her. "Oh, uh – you said 'oh', so–" he shrugs.

Then he frowns. "Nnno. … That's not– that wasn't it."

"I could've said that about a lumen breakthrough or something. What was it?"

Frown. … Bit more frowning.

"I don't know," he says. "Apparently– frowning doesn't help much. Unsurprisingly. He was just, uh, gone. Definitely gone."

"Did you get any memories or anything?"

"Not that I noticed," he says. "Or, not that I noticed that I noticed."

Squint. "… Make that a yes, but I don't think I noticed – I have different angles on some things."

"But that's not how you could tell he was gone?"

"I don't think so, but it might have been – I don't know what my subconscious gets up to, maybe it's got a new addition from weird duplication and it pokes me that he's gone if I get new memories or something, I don't know if it can do anything that complex, I don't know if the magic does it for me." He shrugs. "I don't know – this is all just weird and– not providing neat feedback for me to work out how or why things are."

"I'd consider figuring it out pretty urgent if I were you but I guess you're less freaked out by sharing your head with somebody than I would be."

"I mean, I'm not really– worried about what he'll do with my memories, it's not like he'd go around trying to do anything to harm me, I don't think, and he's pretty competent about some things, and he doesn't actually seem like a terrible person, but yeah. It's weird that he's sharing my head." Hrrm. "I haven't tried poking at it much, but I think I probably should," he says. "I'm not sure I'll get anything out of it, though, so far it's just been temperamentally 'by the way this happens sometimes.'"

He squints a bit. "… I guess that's possibly a reason I'll get something out of it."

"Possibly."

So he decides that he will in fact do that at some point but right now he's busy trying to do water purification.

The rest of the day will probably proceed without incident.

And Promise will close the gate behind him and go.

He tries to poke at the thing, but it doesn't actually seem to be giving him any feedback. Right now he just remembers a few scenes from multiple perspectives.

He decides to see if there's any weird feeling when Blue next appears.

He's back at the gate the next day, as usual.

So's she. "Morning."

"Hey," he greets her.

Presumably more water purification.

Yup.

"The reason people don't usually start with this instead of fairylights is it's harder to tell when you've done it. The water will taste different, though, unless it was really close to pure to start out."

"… Mm," he says. "Would it help if I got some sort of food coloring and added it? I could do that for tomorrow."

"That could help."

Well, he continues practicing for a while today, eats some food, and then decides to mess around with some lumen.

Whee, small diagrams and weird fractal shapes and– actually it's really not very blobby at all, huh.