Since he's awake enough to watch her hands this time he'll mostly do that.

It's like she's manipulating an invisible object of an unpredictable-to-him rigidity and tendency to deform on its own.

She's done with her morning prep in about half an hour and collects her stuff to go to school. "Last minute anything?"

"Um, can you maybe start the light over?"

"Yes, but it won't last. I'll start asking around for permanent torches, and if you get really freaked out about it you can go sit in the kitchen with the halflings, they've got the cookfire to see by."

"Thank you."

"Wish I could do better." And she takes the cloak off the hooks and sweeps off into the tunnels.

He gets to trying to write down useful words while the light lasts.  Numbers, 'thank you', 'sorry', 'help', 'yes' and 'no', 'I don't know', 'hello', 'I'm Belmarniss's', 'she told me to stay here'.  'Please'.  'I'm hungry / thirsty / tired.'  And all their English translations.

He's most of the way through trying to selectively erase things and rewrite them as small as he can manage when the light goes out.  He shuffles over to the hammock and tries sculpting the air to see if he feels anything.  What if he imagines wiggly gears and stuff while he does it.

This accomplishes literally nothing at all.

Well, he wouldn't necessarily feel if it did, and also it's not like he has any better entertainment options.  It's better than sitting here and letting his thoughts get dark.  Though - this is much more endurable, than last time.  He's had the context explained to him, even if it's really bad, and he's learned that the context can be explained to him.  He can sit in the hammock.  He has an approximate sense of when Belmarniss is going to come back, that isn't 'maybe never'.

He's tired, but not in a way where he's really ready to try sleeping again, which isn't the worst mindset to do things that accomplish literally nothing at all in.  He can pass at least an hour or two on this, easy.

They don't appear to do lunch down here. That or the halflings forgot he was there.

He's not going to ask for food until he has a better understanding of exactly how expensive it is, and maybe not even then.  ....However, he does need to figure out how to use the chamber pot (without even a cloak on the doorway, ack, and also without a place to wash his hands afterward, ack) and then go in search of water.  While kind of awkwardly hovering his hands away from everything.

Well, it's pitch dark in the room, but if he kicks around to find his way to the aperture he can juuuust barely see the reflected firelight from the kitchen cave down the hall.

Yep, that's where he's headed.  Reeeeally slowly.  (He's actually capable of doing this without falling over or bumping into anything too hard, as long as he takes it at molasses pace.)

Yeah, it's no longer obvious where his feet are at all. At least there's no real reason to hurry.

In the kitchen there are a couple of halflings, murmuring to each other while one sweeps the floor and the other - pickles? some fish and mushrooms into glass jars. They look up when he comes in.

"Hi."

"Hi," giggles the one with the broom.

Oh no.  "I'm Beau.  It's," it's not nice to meet them; it's so aggressively not-nice-to-meet-them that he might look like an idiot if he says that it is, "uh, hi, who are you?  - I mean, what are your names."  He is immediately going to forget their names after this.

"Yin." (The one with the broom.)

"Via."

"Hi," he repeats inanely.  "Um, is there a way for me to get water, here?  For hand-washing."  He's also pretty darn thirsty, but maybe if he asks about them separately, then they'll end up being separate.  A guy can hope.

"No, there are rags to wipe off your hands and then when the sorcerers are here they clean it. Water is only to drink and cook," says Yin. "It has to be carried all the way from the river or the temple."

"Okay.  Thank you.  Where are the rags?"

Yin points. They're hanging from a hook carved into the wall.

Wipe wipe wipe wipe.  Is there an obvious dirty pile.  (He shouldn't volunteer to haul extra water; it's bad enough how desperate to be useful he must seem to Belmarniss, and it seems like it might be dangerous instead of just embarrassing for other people to get that read off him.)

There's a sort of hamper-nook carved into the wall. Yin hags up another rag when he's done from a fresh pile in a cupboard-nook.

Hamper nook!  "Where's the drinking water?"