Lhemur's eyebrows jump up.

"Oh! Well, that's something different. So really we just need to worry about water, and that's not so bad."

"The lake freezes over," Penþa tells her for context. "But we can either get water from the river — which also freezes, but not as much, because it's moving — or by cutting holes through the ice. Some years it gets pretty thick, but we can manage. We harvest a lot of ice for food preservation anyway."

"Can people with magic still get sick without learning your magical anti-disease technique?" Gornet asks. "Because being hungry makes people without magic more vulnerable to disease."

"The organisms that makes people sick can still get inside you but your magic will stop them from doing substantial harm. The barrier magic is something I do because I spend a lot of time around people without magic; it prevents me from passing bits of disease from one group of vulnerable people to another."

"Hmm. So we should worry about passing disease, but we don't necessarily need to plan for a wave of illness if we run out of food," Gornet summarizes. "That's good. Still, I expect people would rather have food, and we do have plenty stored already."

"I'm sure a few people will stop eating," Penþa counters. "Naterta, at least."

The other two click soberly.

An eating disorder of some sort? Even if they're mentioning it, she doesn't really want to talk about someone's health without them there. "I can talk with anyone who wants to make that choice. There's ways to make that work better than it would by default. Eating generally has two purposes. The first is that it gives you energy. That's the part that magic is best at helping with. The other thing eating does is that it lets your body replace things that got turned into poisons with fresh material. Magic can do that on its own by transforming the poisons back into what the body needs but it works better with some guidance."

"That would be helpful," Penþa agrees. "Oh — we're going to have a town meeting tomorrow, to announce all this and talk about what to do. I can ask at the meeting for anyone who wants to try it to talk to you."

"So is there any actual advantage to eating, once you have magic?" Lhemur asks. "Or is it just something to do because its pleasant?"

"I think it being pleasant is an advantage, to get into it more there's a lot of comfort in routines and in giving your body what it expects. It's also the case that if you don't eat for a long time your body can start to lose the ability to eat safely. Magic can reverse that when the time comes but it's easier to keep that part of your body in working order."

Gornet rubs his chin.

"Hmm. So we probably want to limit the people who try fasting for the winter just in case," he muses. "But that's fine because we are all prepared for a normal winter. If you'd arrived in the spring this would probably be a somewhat different discussion."

"I know you had mentioned having magic to transform food out of stone and water as well," Penþa says. "Could you give some more specifics about that? How much stone and water are required?"

"I'm thinking that if we stock up on stones before the ground freezes, and save the template of some fresh vegetables, we could have fresh vegetables through the winter. Especially the ones that don't store well. Normally we eat a mix of dry grains, salted or smoked fish, and the few vegetables that store well," they explain, for context.

"The easiest thing to transform into food is material made of plants and animals. Rocks was more of an extreme example than a recommendation. You can do it but rocks don't have the things that make up food in the same proportions as food does so a lot of it gets left behind unless you do much more time consuming magic."

"... well, we don't exactly want to transform firewood; we're still going to need the same amount of that," Penþa muses. "Unless ..."

They chuckle. "Unless magic solves that too. Maybe I should just ask — what problems do people with magic even have, in winter?"

"That is very much the right question to ask. I think, unless you invest a lot in other efforts, you'll still want firewood. You can keep yourself warm with magic even in the worst of winters but that doesn't protect animals around you or keep your house warm. I think to ground what I say next you should know that I'm more than two sixes of sixes years old. People with magic can die to injury or accidents and our minds can eventually succumb to the march of time but we don't die from much else. A lot of that is based on training rather than instinct but it's training I can give you. The things you need to be concerned with are around upkeep for the village rather than the survival of your people. Magic can help with those too but that gets more complicated."

Gornet nearly drops his tea in astonishment.

"Well! Yes, that does put a perspective on things," he agrees.

"Upkeep for the village ... so we probably want to still heat the houses, and also to harvest some ice. And we'll need to clear the roofs if the snow gets too deep, and do all the normal crafting ... well, no. Maybe not all the normal crafting, if you could, say, transform a broken basket into a whole one."

Penþa pinches their nose. "So a perfectly normal winter, except that we'll have some people not eating, we'll want to turn some of the food into fresh vegetables, and we might be able to use magic to help with crafting. Okay. That's not too hard to plan for, I don't think."

They consider for a moment.

"The other topic I wanted to ask about was laws regarding magic, but maybe first I should ask if there's anything you're curious about, around our normal wintering."

"I think I have a decent sense for it. I did hear a reference to being snowed in but based on what you're saying I think that's either not literal or the exception rather than the rule."

"Yes, indeed. The winds off of the lake mean that we get a lot of drifting snow, sometimes," they explain. "And during the worst winters, it can pile up nearly as high as the houses, and make going out impossible without digging a path. But more normally we only have to contend with a foot or two at once, and it's still possible to go hunting to supplement with fresh meat, or go out on the lake for water and ice."

"But we still have to plan for a bad storm to fill the village, so everyone's wood and food have to be split up according to what the household is going to need — ideally before we expect the first snows. And people are generally less social in the winter, so that makes people just stay in, which is where being snowed in might get a little metaphorical. The first snow has been getting earlier over the years, as well, and the winters worse. Not by much, but by enough to notice, comparing the previous organizers' notes to mine."

"Thanks for explaining, as for winters getting worse that could have a number of causes but none of them are things that can really be changed. It might help predict how much worse things might get but that's not particularly urgent."

They make an affirmative gesture.

"Yeah — it's been going for years, and it's not particularly threatening yet. Just a trend to keep an eye on," they agree.

"Well, in that case my other question is — are there obvious things that need to change about the law, when people have magic? I know you're not familiar with our laws, and they try to be pretty robust, but maybe there are new considerations that magic introduces that places tend to have a hard time with."

"Laws are something that varies a lot between cultures. Some of them, like a prohibition on seriously injuring or killing other people are more or less universal and prohibitions on stealing are almost to that level but beyond that no two cultures are quite the same. Even there the reactions to those offenses varies a lot. That said magic usually has three impacts, first it increases the range of what people can do in moments of extreme emotion, second it removes some of the reasons for what I would call acts of desperation, and third it gives people more options for concealing evidence of what they've done."

"Hmm. When you say it increases the range of what people can do, do you mean it makes new acts possible that previously weren't? Like ... cursing someone to be unable to drink milk? Or just that it means you don't need a bow or an axe at hand to kill someone, that sort of thing?" Penþa clarifies.

"It's closer to the second one. There are things you couldn't do without magic but in terms of hurting people suddenly; magic is just a means to make heavy or sharp things hit people. If there's a mix of people with and without magic there are more options but not that many more."