"My poor now-deceased pocket everything! All the proof I have that a civilization exists somewhere that is great at chocolate."

"Is it like chocolate in any way besides being superlatively delicious?"

"There are similarities in taste!"

"Are you sure you don't just like yours better because you're used to it?"

"I suppose my memories might be unreasonably generous but I think our chocolate is just better."

"I'll hope I get a chance to try it, then."

"Seems veeery unlikely but if it comes up I'll arrange you so much chocolate."

"Yum."

"Work going all right?"

"I'm in a bit of a rut, I might switch to protoyping chassis soon."

"What goes into that part?"

"Blacksmithing. If it will amuse you to supervise me shirtless in a forge hitting things with hammers, this is your chance."

"Gosh, now that you mention it..."

Kib giggles and kisses him.

Oh good.

Kib works on chassis. He needs a lot of surface area, so he's planning to build the golem out of strips of iron wound around each other, and etch the instructions in with a diamond-tipped puppet after.

His roommates are very distracted by having More Babies but are excited to see progress on that.

Eventually he has a miniature which should if scaled up have plenty of room.

"How do they move their limbs exactly -"

"...what do you mean? Golems don't have to be articulated like puppets and automata."

"Yeah, I know, that's the thing I'm wondering about. What is going on, mechanically, when they move?"

"They bend? It doesn't warp or weaken the material... I have to mark the chassis and define its range of motion in terms of how the marks move relative to one another."

"But it doesn't matter if the material is bendy under non-magic circumstances?"

"No. It's better if it isn't, you can do wood but you wouldn't make a paper golem."

"That's so weird."