"All done."

"Good, uh, morning."

"That's not really idiomatic, but sure, good morning. I'm going to prep spells and we'll eat breakfast and then I'll get Rynaeri and negotiate lending you to her, okay?"

"Okay."

Out comes the spellbook. She pulls spells off pages and manipulates them into their hanging configuration and puts them on her scaffold.

Is there anything he can notice about this process that he didn't have the context to before?

She's pretty fast at it, spending more of her time on her gnarly-looking second circle spells than the simpler ones.

It's interesting to watch even if he's not getting much out of it informationally.

And then she's done, and breakfast (mushrooms!) is there, and then she can bring Beau out with her to talk to Rynaeri.

"Here he is, Mom, but I don't think he's very used to anything strenuous, please don't break him."

"When've I ever broken your things - don't answer that -" Rynaeri, who looks a lot like Belmarniss, looks him over. "Well, the only way to get stronger is to practice. I'm not going to have room for you on the floating disk while in the mine so you'll have to tell me immediately if you're running low on the ability to walk and climb, understood?"

He nods several times.  ...It's hard to tell whether it's stupid to ask questions or stupid to not, but if he's not starting today then he can ask Belmarniss before it comes up.  And also ask her for advice on how to talk to her mom.

"Come along then - have a good day at school, Niss, give me a light for him on the way over -" Rynaeri takes the glowing rock, gives it to Beau, beckons him into the tunnel that appears to be the "street" their family caves connect to. "I haven't got Light myself, but there's a Continual Flame down in the mine - the orcs don't need it but there's a few halflings and a couple other humans who do."

- It might as well happen that he's starting today.  He would have asked a lot more questions ahead of time if he'd known this was happening, but...

Does Belmarniss look surprised by this?

Belmarniss doesn't look surprised but then she notices that Beau does. "Remind me why you decided not to take the day off after all?"

"Oh, the alternative was dinner at your grandmother's. The only thing that will get her to leave me alone is remuneration." Rynaeri rolls her eyes.

It's things like this that really make a guy wonder how much he's pretending to be a slave and how much he just is one.  And how much the people keeping him think he's one or the other of those.

But he follows Rynaeri.  It wouldn't help to do anything else.

Rynaeri turns out to be chatty. Mostly not at him, but they pass people she knows and she'll say hi and ask after their daughter/education/cave expansion/pet spider. They have an otherwise uneventful hike to the mines.

The mines have fresh air, somehow; the dust and grit that look like they should pervade the air waft upwards harmlessly and vanish. There is a Continual Flame and Rynaeri arranges to post Beau near some halflings who are grading and sorting ore. Beau's job, Rynaeri explains as she casts her floating disk, will be to take what they sort into THAT pile, load up the disk, and then follow her while she brings the disk to the next destination of these rocks.

How vertical does it seem on the way there.  She said he might have to climb?

There are a couple of places with ladderlike situations carved into the rock, and some spots with stairs.

...He raises his hand.  "Um?" 

"Yes, what is it?"

"Is there a way for me to see on the way back?"

"I do have one cantrip that sometimes comes with strange lights. It mostly makes me look spooky and sometimes that involves lights. But it only lasts for a couple of rounds. When we're all done hauling if I have a casting left I can put you on the disk."

He is going to die in these mines, or at least get really hurt here.  Which is worse.

But for now he can nod and then start lifting rocks.

The rocks are heavy. Rynaeri whistles, chats with the overseer, does some prestidigitating to polish a gem of dubious quality.