"I guess! But at that point I'd still go for Tall Keron and, well, probably something kinder than Clumsy Keron, let's say this Keron is, um, you can't go by species, what hair colors do humans have?"

"...People use bynames, they're just less formal than ancestral names. 'Clumsy' is a little unfortunate but it's not the worst I've heard."

"It's less arbitrary than a bunch of stuff at home, I shouldn't be picking at it."

"Okay."

"We got distracted, how's the house coming?"

"Kinda isn't. I'm almost starting to get a feel for how the diagrams actually work, and knowing which colour is Structure helps, but I still really don't have enough information to guess which diagrams will let me build a house. Actually, I guess it's possible that there's a diagram somewhere in here that literally builds an entire house on the spot, but I'd need a huge drawing plate to get a result that big, and I haven't seen any diagrams that look complicated enough."

"Can you do lumber? Or any plants large enough to cut down for same?"

"Well, we're going to need some more tools than we've got if we want to build a house out of fast-grown apple trees."

"You mean like axes? Because axes we've got covered."

"You do?"

"Did you wonder how Luvei and the others buried Dakker? Frost giant magic. Luvei's good enough to freeze shapes as fine as 'shovel' or 'axe'."

"I saw the shovels, I just don't know if ice is going to make good construction tools, partly because I don't know what the characteristics of a good construction tool are."

"Intense quantities of stubbornness?"

"That'll work for cutting down the trees; I'm not sure it'll work for assembling them afterward..."

"Yeah. There seems to be enough room for everyone in the existing structure for now, but..."

"But there won't be forever. Well. I guess I'm going to do a lot of diagram testing."

"And we could experiment with construction methods."

"Yeah. It'll be fun!"

"Apple trees are probably not actually optimal for these purposes but we work with what we have."

"If I experiment enough maybe I'll come up with better trees."

"Excellent."

He grins.

"How long were you here before we arrived, anyway?"

"A... while. I lost track a little."

"I reiterate my open-ended offer of help maintaining psychological health."