"You were talking. Sovi says I talk in my sleep too but I didn't know of anyone else who does till now. I guess I don't advertise it myself. You can go back to sleep if you want."

"Okay..."  He sits up enough to rest on an elbow.  "I shouldn't if the schedule change isn't happening but should if it is."  Yawn.  "I think."

"Rynaeri said you didn't speed her up by much on net and probably won't till we get a Continual Flame you can carry."

"Okay."  ....That means the sitting up one, right?  Probably.  He sits the rest of the way up.

"Sorry about the change of plans on whether she'd be working today, I'm used to her stated intentions being loose guidelines but I should have realized you wouldn't be and avoided surprising you in front of people."

"It's fine."

"Uh, unfortunately, even if you're really fast at cantrips, non-drow with spells make people nervous. Sharp objects nervous. So it's not as simple as 'figure out Light'."

"Oh..."  He doesn't really feel like trying to come up with things that might help, especially when they never do, here.

"Yeah, it'll mostly be useful in private and not for, as Rynaeri put it, remuneration. I think I can coast on the books and gear a good while, though, before I'm pulling down more than I should be on the cavehold finances."

"Private like the rest of your family could see, or private like just you?"

"Just me. I wouldn't bet your life on Sovi and Rynaeri keeping their mouths shut."

"Mm."  If he gets too down about being stuck in the dark all the time, there are going to be so many opportunities for being a little careless to fix it.  And even if he doesn't.

"I picked up some blank books on my way home so I'm going to start copying 20,000 Leagues if there's nothing else you want to talk about right now? You can practice with the spellbook while I'm at it."

"Thanks."  He definitely didn't get a solid eight hours of sleep, but that's probably not strictly necessary at this stage.  It's not like he can tell whether he's actually accomplishing anything, anyway.

Scrivener's Chant requires Belmarniss to keep up a low patter of repetitive magic words.

He's curious whether the result comes out in English or whatever language she speaks.

If he looks over her shoulder it's English.

Hm.  Well, the talking's distracting but eventually he can tune it out enough to attempt to run through the spell.

After a few of those he realizes that his bleary figuring was wrong, and if he wants to be in the hammock he does need to be sleeping while she's around and sitting around while she's sleeping.  He follows through with several more attempts - he's gotten to the point where he can get to the end without feeling like he's messed it up, at least some of the time, with the spellbook reminding him.

It might be bad to interrupt her, so he climbs back into the hammock without comment.

If he isn't going to sleep too terribly long she'll wait for him to get up naturally.

Yeah, he slept enough last night that he can only manage a few hours.  In that time, he says:

"Yeah, I dropped it off... on the way to school."
"I can't see..."
"No.  ...Mhm."
"Sure, Mom, got it..."
"What's the transfer fee?  Mmph."
"Okay..."

She Scrivens till he's up and then kicks him out of the hammock to have it to herself.

Time to sit on his bag for eight hours.  With no light.  He's either going to get really good at the thinking part of the spell or he's going to get really good at a slightly wrong version that he makes up on accident because he can't check the spellbook.

He does doze occasionally.

She certainly can't call him on it; she's asleep like a responsible wizard. In the morning she gets up as usual and has breakfast and spell prep.

He'll eat any breakfast that gets put in front of him.  Mushrooms again, he assumes?  (Ouch ow, his legs are so asleep.)

It's mushrooms again! They do at least have a lot of kinds and he hasn't had this one before; it's a skinny long variety, almost like noodles.

"Do you want me to claim you wrote the book?" Belmarniss asks, while they're eating.