"And your day as well," Penþa agrees, before heading out toward the lake shore.

The cook-house is already the center of a hive of activity. Several people walk out with breakfast, either for themselves or to deliver. Inside, a tall person in an apron directs the flow of things. Against one wall is a large basin full of neatly-stacked dirty plates, although it does not seem as though anyone is attending to them yet.

She adds the dishes she's carrying to the pile then walks over to the person she's guessing is Okanel. "Hello, I thought I'd offer to clean the dirty dishes since I expect I can do it a lot faster than your usual methods."

"If you're willing, that would be helpful," they agree. "I've already sent Gamesa down to the lake to fetch some water — is there anything else you need, to clean them?"

"I don't really need water I just need to know where I should put the dirt and grime."

They blink.

"Ah, right. Well, the compost heap is just through that door," they say, pointing at a door on the far side of the building that opens out onto the gardens. "That would be the right place for it."

"Thanks." She walks over and examines the plates. They're made of wood and a bit scratched up but mostly in good shape. Wood is porous so a surface contour won't quite work she does have a repair template for wood though. The cups are glazed clay, so they're better sealed. She starts there, one cup at a time she separates everything that isn't clay from the cups and makes it fall into the basin. It only takes a few seconds per cup so she's done fairly quickly and has a nice feedstock for fixing the wood.

With a bit of feedstock in one hand she gently applies enough to fill in the cracks, sanitizes any microorganisms that have found homes in the plate and then pulls off the excess detritus. The multiple steps mean this takes maybe twice as long as the cups but she considers it time well spent. When she's done she gathers up the pile of detritus and makes her way to the compost pile to deposit it.

She could have applied a finish to the plates but that's something she should probably talk about first. With the task done she walks back to Okanel.

"That was fast," they comment. The kitchen seems to have hit a bit of a lull, but a few people are still chopping vegetables, fresh with morning dew.

"Do you want more tasks? Right now, we're mostly preparing things for the day's soup."

"I have some other things to do. I hope you have a nice day."

"Of course. Thank you for your help," Okanel replies. "I hope your day is nice as well."

They turn back to dicing some onions.

Maenik gives a click and then goes to find Ðani and Anþasta. Their house seems like a decent first place to check.

The village is not terribly large; it's easy to find her way down to the lakeshore, where Anþasta is holding her grandmothers' hand with a look of concentration as Ðani tries to explain what sharing magic feels like. Genilha stands on the sand, studying his own hands with a grave air.

"Ðani, I love you dearly, and none of that is helping. Let me just try this for a moment," Anþasta is saying when Maenik approaches. "Maybe you can go next door and get Boralhiv?"

"Hello, I see you're trying to scale awakening?"

"Yes!" Ðani agrees. "I think I've figured it out, but if we want to share magic with everyone, it will go a lot faster if everyone pitches in. I think we might actually be able to get the whole village in two days or so."

"That seems pretty likely. How can I be helpful?"

"Do you think you could teach Anþasta, Genilha, and I how to ... work with templates? Then we can pass that on to people as we awaken them," she suggests.

"Sure, providing you access to my library was part of my plan for today anyway. An archivist made me a version of the index in your language while we were sleeping."

Ðani is momentarily confused, before she realizes that this must be someone from Maenik's home that she corresponded with.

"Oh, wow. That's really fast to learn the language and do translation," she comments. "But I'm glad. Does that mean that you have, like, one big template that contains all the individual templates that you use?"

"It's a little more complicated but yes. As for the translation the index is designed to be translated magically so the archivist was mostly just spot checking. I shared the language packet I got from you so they could do it."

Ðani nods. "That makes sense; of course you would have made it easy to share these things, when you share them so often."

She calls Genilha and Anþasta over.

"Alright! So what do we need to know about working with templates."

"Have the two of you tried using the rock I gave Ðani? That's probably the simplest kind of interactive template. I could make a template that's entirely static if that would help but those aren't usually too useful."

Genila crosses his arms.

"No, not yet. Ðani, do you have the—"

Ðani hands him the rock.

"Actually, what does that template do?" she asks. "It was definitely useful for feeling out my magic, but I think the only thing I figured out for sure was how to trap my finger with it."

"Oh, right I didn't explain. It's a way to let you step into the air and then stay there. If you practice a lot you could probably get to the point of actually walking but there's better templates for moving through the air if that's what you're trying to do. It's a demonstration of a template that shapes your magic to react to unstructured magic."