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Maenik visits the southern fishing village.
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"Alright, thank you."

Penþa mentally unwinds the conversational stack — a skill that every organizer picks up eventually.

"So we don't want to fully rely on single patterns of things, or stop our farming in its tracks for several reasons. But with more vegetables available, we do probably need less time spent farming. Does anyone have a problem with finishing this year as planned, except that we store a pattern of each of the food items for later use, and then figuring out that reduction during the pre-planting planning meeting in the spring?"

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There are no particular objections, but Lhemur does signal that he wants to speak again.

"I do think we also need to figure out an organizational system for who stores the patterns, though," Lhemur comments. "We should make sure that we don't lose any patterns."

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"I was talking with Maenik about that earlier, actually," Ðani interjects. "There's a way you can embed a pattern in a template, and then store the template in an object. So perhaps we should consider keeping copies of the patterns safe to be one of the organizer's archival duties."

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The meeting drags on from there, devolving into a large number of ideas for how templates and patterns should be stored, what kind of property laws should apply to them, and various related topics. Eventually, Penþa wrangles another short-term compromise. The last topic discussed is that of sending a delegation to the Archive with all their various patterns and templates — although that proposal is uncontroversial — and then the meeting is over, and people break up into smaller groups.

Several of the groups continue arguing about different proposals, but most people simply head off to bed.

A handful of people come over to talk to Maenik specifically.

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"Hello," a particularly old woman says, as she slowly makes her way over.

Anþasta gets up to offer her a seat, which she accepts.

"Penþa mentioned that if any of us wanted to try going the winter without food, we should come talk to you," she remarks.

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"She's right about that. You don't have to share if you prefer your privacy but I'm curious about why you want to."

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"I was already planning on going for a long walk in the woods after the festival," Naterta responds.

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Ðani makes a sympathetic noise.

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"And it seems to me that someone needs to figure out the limits of surviving on nothing but magic, so that we can plan around it," she continues. "So it might as well be me, rather than one of the young ones, who'd be at risk of harm."

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"Ah, well the first thing to know is the easiest and worst way to go about it. If you just stop eating your body and your magic will keep you alive as long as you're still breathing and drinking water. If you want to actually be comfortable there's a template I can give you, that will basically remove your need for food more directly. It does a lot of things and I can explain them if you want but it gets pretty complicated. Your magic could work them out in theory but it wouldn't be as consistent at it so it would go between doing nothing and panicking instead of maintaining you at a more steady pace."

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Naterta frowns.

"You make the magic sound alive," she replies. "What would it mean for my magic to 'work something out'?"

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"Whether the healing effect our magic has is intelligent is something people debate. It doesn't seem to remember things but it does respond to novel situations and try to address problems in our bodies. It isn't perfectly consistent either even small differences in a problem can mean it solves it in different ways. Starvation is a complicated ailment because it's both a caloric deficiency and a number of nutrient shortfalls and so your magic will try to address each of those. We think we know everything magic does in these situations but the order varies from person to person based on factors that are hard to measure precisely and harder to explain."

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Naterta hums, and taps her walking stick against her chin in thought.

"So the template makes it do things in a particular order, so that the results are more consistent?" she reasons. "Because in that case I do probably want to use the template. The whole point would be to know what to expect if other people had to do it."

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"Yes, that's the point of the template, that and comfort. It's a simplified version of the one I use to let me survive if I can't eat or drink or breathe."

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Naterta raises her eyebrows.

"That sounds ... very comprehensive," she allows. "Is there a benefit to only using the simplified version? Water is easy enough to obtain, but it could be good to know ..."

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"I'm going to guess that the simplified template leaves more of your magic available for other things, such as healing," Anþasta ventures.

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"The one I'm using is more manual, it takes practice to learn to use and you can potentially hurt yourself with it like most complicated medical templates."

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Naterta nods.

"Then I should be pleased to test the simplified version," she concludes. "Are there any things in particular I should do while using it, other than continue to breathe and drink water?"

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Maenik tilts her head a little to the side for a moment. "If you want to make it easier on your body and your magic you might want to drink more than you're used to especially while your body is healing. You're also going to defecate less, I guess that isn't really something you need to do though. Your urine and sweat may also look and smell different."

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"Drinking more water isn't trivial," Naterta says, after a moment's thought, "but as long as we don't get a really bad winter storm I don't think it should be a problem."

She is silent for a moment.

"I wasn't expecting ... By healing, do you mean becoming young again? Ðani said it would happen, but I can scarcely imagine it. I didn't plan for it ..."

She trails off, staring up at the stars that have started to come out.

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Maenik looks up as well. "That is what I mean. Your magic won't actually make you younger but it will repair the damage time has done to your body. Yesterday, you imagined yourself as being at the end of your life. And today, that's not true anymore. It's a big change. You don't need to rush into it. You have time."

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She snorts.

"I suppose I do, at that," she agrees.

"How do your people handle it? Not having such clear signs about when you should go, I mean? Or do you still have them, just differently?"

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"We still have the signs, they aren't as clear though. Not everyone takes them well. There's almost always ways to cling on for just a little longer, some more extreme than others. It's one of the things people have very different opinions on."

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"... maybe its different, when nobody can starve," Naterta replies. "I mean, I'm sure some people will cling to life no matter what. But for us, as we were before you arrived — it's a choice between me, with my aches and pains and fingers too weak for leatherwork, and my great-great-grandchildren, with their life ahead of them. I don't know of any great-great-grandparent who wouldn't make the same choice."

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"I don't think it's a bad thing," Ðani interjects, resting her hand on Naterta's knee. "That you can make the choice on your own terms, I mean. Its like if we'd broken new farmland."

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