There isn't an emergency?

Maybe if you don't have wizards - oh, yeah, they probably don't have wizards or Mending wouldn't be so exciting - maybe then you make hideous noises like that before dawn for non-emergency reasons?

Well, dawn does appear to be about to break, outside the occasional frosty window. The orange of twilight is spreading across the plains of white.

Someone who seemed in charge at dinner yesterday heads over to him and stands attentively, a questioning look on his face.

He shakes his head and goes back in his room and drops the mace and prays.

The community bustles into action beyond him. There is the clatter of feet in the hall, eventually petering out.

When he emerges, the hallway contains an eight-or-so year old spinning cloth. They stand and say 'good morning sir food's this way!' and dash towards the dining hall, waving.

Which he can understand, since he has prepared and cast Comprehend Languages! He goes foodward. He's got another Create Food and Water in him. And you can get really quite a lot of fruit and vegetables out of it, if you lean hard in that direction, since it's limited by calorie count and not by volume. Though first he should check if they have anything of their own, like if a shipment that had been delayed got in overnight or something.

There's about fifteen people in here, most of them cleaning up. Looks like most people already ate breakfast. They are in a pretty good mood overall.

"I swear, Bran is just not going to believe it at all- I wonder if Mister Miracle will stick around."

The other one snorts. "You saw June yesterday. She certainly wants to stick something."

"June is June. It's not like any of her other prospects are very good, now are they?"

"S'pose so... Anyway, this isn't anything solved for good, mind. I'd hardly believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but there's still plenty that can go wrong. We don't even know when the next storm will be."

"Well, make the best of every day, that's what we'll do. Just think, there's a few old cores- We might be able to get the pumpjack going again, maybe even build a hothouse."

"Or build some kind of expedition vehicle."

"Or that, yeah. Make contact with New London, see if they're still around... They must be, right?"

"We'll only manage that if those New London brats are actually worth anything. Eating our food, burning our fuel..."

"Come off it. They know their stuff," someone not involved in the back-and-forth comments. "Kevin's teaching your kid math, isn't he?"

"-And it's not like the rest of us are helpless- Oh, there's the man of the hour. I'll go fetch more seal for him."

A young-ish man stands and greets Blai. "Hello! Welcome again to our humble home. I'm supposed to teach you English since I've got a limp and can't hunt anymore. Not that I know where to start. But maybe you can fix my prosthetic, eh?"

"Max, you're going about it all wrong! Small words! Sketching!"

"Prosthetic?" Blai inquires.

He looks startled. He taps the opposite arm, one that hasn't been doing much. It thunks. He pulls back his sleeve- It's metal, with a grabby claw at the end.

"Prosthetic. Broken, it doesn't grip anymore. But I'm used to the weight." Shrug.

Blai nods and beckons him over to sit down so he can start Mending it.

The boy is very excited and will babble mostly aimlessly during the chant, unless it seems like he should shut up. Someone puts a big bowl of Meat in front of Blai. The cleanup crew finishes cleaning up.

None of this distracts him from Mending the arm. There, now it's all done! He breakfasts upon Meat.

One of the women cleaning gives Max some basic tips on how to teach properly and hands him a slate and chalk and rag, before running off. Max doesn't interrupt his eating. Instead, he marvels over the working prosthetic, grinning and awkwardly practicing with it- He has to wind it up by leaning on it repeatedly, first.

Okay, Max appears to be his designated person to talk to. He gets the Share Language. Boop.

Max jumps up and scrambles away, cursing in mixed languages.

"I apologize for startling you!"

"How many miracles do you have in your pocket, man???"

"New ones every day, or I would have done this last night."

"Where do they come from? Is it the power of evolution*, or deliverance from God, or- Some kind of technological marvel from before the frost?"

*He uses a loanword from English for this.

"I'm a cleric of Iomedae, goddess of defeating Evil, and my spells are from Her."

"Huh. Not much evil around here unless blizzards are evil."

"They usually aren't, no, but my spells work even in situations not of particularly high-level interest to Her overarching goals."

"Those blokes from New London seem to think their precious Generator is a god, sometimes. Or maybe the Captain. It's not super clear to me. Uh... Well, we certainly appreciate not freezing to death because the oil pump that was on its last legs is fixed now. Thanks for that."

"You're welcome. I can mend more things today, and have also prepared Comprehend Languages so I can understand people besides you for a while, though you're the only person who will be able to understand me today."

"They were talking about assembling everything in a long line for you to look at, so that's probably what everyone else is off doing. Maybe planning out things to put back into service, but there's only eighty-seven of us. Even if a bunch of this broken junk was fixed, we wouldn't even be able to use it all. Also, everyone's wondering what you'll want to be paid with. It's not like we've never heard of charity, but it's scarce when desperation rises."

"Shelter will cover it. I have no way to get home right now and nowhere else to stay but here."