"Right! Well, nearly — so the problem is really to do with moving money. You can't just assume that any given message will make it between two banks. So imagine that you have a large merchant company, with accounts in multiple cities. And they want to move funds between one bank and the other, to make up for a temporary trade shortfall. So the messenger goes to one bank, and gets a traveling check, to present at the other bank. If the messenger runs aground, or loses it, or is waylaid, the money would be lost. Therefore it's a risky way for the company to move value — although not necessarily much riskier or less convenient than trying to move an equivalent amount of cargo — and the company would really like to be able to get the bank to re-issue a lost traveling check."

"And, of course, banks want to attract big ventures like merchant companies, because they make money by having active customers like that. So banks want to be able to offer that service. But it massively complicates accounting — the receiving bank needs to keep a log of incoming checks, in order to ensure that someone doesn't attempt to present a duplicate, among other concerns — and anyway they need to agree with the destination bank on standards for checks, agree on credit limits for just-deposited checks before they can get confirmation, etc. So it only makes sense for a bank to offer the service for sufficiently safe and populous trade routes, usually by charging an additional fee that depends on the frequency and security of the trade route."

"Oh— but you wouldn't know the geography. So, Island Without Trees is tiny, as regions go. They have perhaps three sixes times as many people as this village does, but spread out over a good number of islands. Despite the name. There's one main island, but many scattered smaller ones. And the sea there is difficult to navigate at the best of times, let alone when there are storms. They don't have much to trade. But 'not much' is still some. And it would be potentially attractive to a few small-time merchants, except that moving money out of the Island Without Trees was so difficult, you see."

Penþa coughs. It sounds suspiciously like "loss rate".

"Right, right. So yes — the loss rate is the amount of money per year operating a credit service with another bank is expected to lose the bank, and therefore the amount that decides whether or not it's worth it," Oskeli concludes. "Merchants also calculate loss rates, of course, but banks make a big difference, because being connected to the main group of banks is one of the things that makes a trade route more profitable."

"That all makes sense. My people have somewhat similar issues on a larger scale. Groups like my weave can talk wherever we are but there's limits on how big a weave can be so a lot of communication between spaces or over long distances within a space needs work from intermediaries. We usually have enough abundance that money isn't the focus of those messages though. Within a space we have ways of sending messages that are very fast and reliable with the right infrastructure."

Oskeli gives her a weird look.

"Normally, more abundance means that people need to move money more," they point out. "It's the poorest people, who are just barely scratching out what they need to live, who have less surplus to trade with others. The easier it is to get enough food, the more time people have to do non-farming things, and therefore the more trade goods they can produce, and the more use they have for money."

"You gave me food without asking for money because you have enough food that giving me some doesn't mean you have much less relative to how much you have. When you have more abundance more and more things are like that. The people who made the translation magic didn't do that because they were being paid but because it was a project they were interested in working on. Most of the things that are meaningfully limited are very local like land on the shore of a particular lake and money doesn't always work very well for things like that."

"... and they don't need the money for food, or to pay for tools, because those are so cheap they can just have them," Oskeli extrapolates, growing wonder entering their voice. "We can afford to host a guest for a short time without worry, but if you were going to stay for two years, we'd need to incorporate it into the budget. But if two years of food is cheap enough for people to give away ..."

They lean back in their chair, thinking through the implications.

"I have no idea how that must work in practice. You probably don't even ... Are there things that are still expensive enough in one place that it's worth transporting them?"

"Exactly. There are things that meet that bar in some spaces but they're usually related to what make those spaces unique and trying to move them to other spaces can be hazardous. Sometimes spaces react badly to having people try to bring in impossibilities. There's also some trade among people who care a lot about having the original version of a piece of art rather than a reproduction."

"Well. That's quite a thing."

"So how does your society produce so much food?" Penþa asks. "If you're willing to share, that is. Or does magic reduce the amount that someone needs to eat by so large a fraction that you can provide for everyone out of a relatively small portion of farmers?"

They look conflicted for a moment.

"... also, I'm not sure how to say this politely, if your culture doesn't have money. But I would feel terribly rude if I left it unsaid at all. One of my main jobs as the village organizer is tracking exchanges between people, and if you were from another village in the region, I would want you to know that I am paying attention to how valuable your knowledge is, and that we will certainly pay you back if there is anything you need or want from us — besides simple hospitality, of course. I do apologize if it seems ... uncivilized, from your perspective, to be explicit about that."

"For people like me, who spend a lot of time away from the rest of our people, it's mostly the thing where we don't need to eat. I can also transform water and rocks into edible food if I have a craving for something. It's not really efficient but it's possible.

"In denser areas, there's a lot of different answers. Some people do things to make transforming unappealing matter into appealing food easier, other people use machines to allow one person to do the work of many people. Still other places have machines that can do the work of transforming material themselves without magic. And many places use a combination of all of these."

"I don't think you're uncivilized for valuing my contributions to your village or trying to assign a number to that value. People still make agreements without money and many people still use money within certain spaces to mediate agreements around things that still take substantial effort. It's not a part of how I live my life but my life is centered around spending time with people who live differently than how I do."

Penþa nods.

"That does make sense. Would you be willing to share the templates for turning rock and water into edible food? Once we have a few more people with magic, that will be very useful. We're all prepared for this winter, but we could do a sort of trial run, to see how much of our stores we have to use with magic available, and use that to do agricultural planning for next year."

Ðani does something that makes the other girl's hair stand on end. She waits for a moment, and then the other girl crosses her arms, and Ðani goes back to holding her hand and concentrating.

"It's among the templates I'm planning to share. It's actually a general template for transforming materials, it works better the more similar what you start with is to what you want to end up with. There's a related template for storing patterns you can use to tell the template what you want to make based on things you have around you."

"Oh! Hmm. That's pretty general-purpose," Penþa remarks. "Although if you hadn't said it was usable, I wouldn't have assumed that 'rocks' and 'food' were close enough to be converted."

They glance around at the village, mentally tallying how many objects could be produced using a template, instead of by hand.

"... I think that template is probably the single most valuable thing in the history of the village. Um. Do you have any interest in being made into a — well, actually, the word is a hold-over from Orthodox North-Eastern Marnesi Trade Language, so it has grammatical gender. The neutral version is 'Loka' — into a Loka?" they ask, before realizing Maenik certainly lacks context. "Ah, Loka is the most honorable title the village can grant, given to people who have done something that fundamentally transforms our way of life, to an extent that cannot be repaid. Granting it requires a full vote at a village meeting, if I remember correctly, so I can't promise anything, but if that is something you would like I can call a meeting for tomorrow. We probably need one to discuss magic anyway, actually."

"I don't do what I do in search of recognition or honors. If it would make your people feel better to give me the title I would be happy to accept it. What's important to me is that I've met you, helped make your lives better and learned about you in the process."

Penþa nods. "I think if you've achieved your own aims by giving these things to us, that people will find that sufficient. But just to be sure, I'll ask around at dinner and see how everyone feels about it."

There's a distant dinging sound.

"Oh! Which it is apparently time for already. How time passes."

The villagers push themselves to their feet. Genilha gives Oskeli his arm.

Ðani sighs, but clumps up with the others as people throughout the village slowly make their way towards the large clear space in the center.

"Maenik, I didn't quite manage to share magic with Anþasta, and I was wondering— No, actually, sorry. Maenik, may I introduce my intended, Anþasta?"

The girl who Ðani had been attempting to empower waves.

"Hello!"

"Hello, it's nice to meet you."

"I was mostly just trying to see if I could saturate her with my magic, sort of," Ðani explains. "Only there was this ... pressure, I guess, that made it harder to keep smoothed evenly. And I wanted to check if that was the right general approach and I should just keep trying, of if there's a different trick to it."

As she finishes speaking, the group emerges from between a house and the garden into the central square. The area is dotted with wooden benches, some tucked under the eaves of the houses, and some scattered about the central area.

There's a large building on the far side, against which is a large table filled with food. Villagers are queuing at one end of it, picking up plates, and serving themselves. Afterward they fan out and find benches in twos or threes, having quiet conversations while they eat.

She moves in concert with Ðani.

"The important thing is to make sure the magic goes everywhere rather than focusing on keeping the concentrations even. If you think it would help I could awaken someone else and let you try to sense what it's like. It's also possible to collaborate on awakening someone but that's not always the best way to teach the skill."

"Everywhere, not necessarily evenly ..." Ðani muses. "Alright. Thanks. I'll give it a try after dinner, and we can go from there? Oh — no working during dinner, that's the custom. Not that it's likely to come up, I suppose."

Ðani and Anþasta both take a large plate and begin serving themselves. The order of the day seems to be lots of vegetables, perhaps because it's harvest time. The first food item on the table is a large bowl of salad, already mixed with a dressing that smells slightly of vinegar. The salad has mushrooms, kalhornaðor, cubes of soft cheese, and thin slices of something cucumber-ish.

Next to it is a tray of steaming rolls, made of a dark, dense bread. After that, there's a thick vegetable stew (and a stack of bowls), that smells strongly of garlic. Its primary ingredient seems to be squash, with beans a close follow-up.

Beside the stew is a stack of cups, a kettle containing weak herbal tea, and a kettle containing plain water. Not everyone takes a cup.

The last item on the table is a stack of thin eggy pastries; people fold them into a little pocket, and then scoop a mixture of berries, honey, and cream into them in small portions. While everyone is serving relatively large portions of the salad and stew, the rolls and deserts seem to be one-to-a-person.

"Sorry we don't have any meat today," Ðani remarks. "It's just that it makes most sense to eat the vegetables while they're fresh, since fish is easier to smoke and preserve."