"What, so you have to write poetry to do your kind of magic? That's kind of cool, I guess."

Giggle. "You're not wrong."

"I have seen wands that are like, one word only. How does that work?"

"Those are the cases where brevity is preferable over energy. The artificer needs to pay a bit more attention with the materials they pick, but it isn't an insurmountable obstacle."

"The way our stuff works, the better you understand what you wanna do, the more clever shortcuts you take that break the rules the least, the cheaper it is or the more it'll go at a time."

"Well, that technically still applies to our magic, if less directly."

"I guess so. So, what next?"

"Can I have a few strands of your hair?"

"Why."

"To apply a potion and weight them."

"What are you hoping to learn from that? Will it do anything to me? Adam, will that do anything weird to me?"

"I don't know. I am not a witch."

"I was hoping to learn how much alchemical saturation your body can take safely. Which, implies some things about a bunch of other things. It will take a while, so I was going to leave it in the background while did other tests."

"So many tests that I don't really understand. Makes me nervous... Give me a tiny coin or something for my hairs?"

"Sure? Do you mean tiny in terms of denomination or in size?"

"Denomination. When in doubt, get paid. My dad's an idiot but he was right about that much."

"Aha. Okay... let me fetch my coin purse."

This is, of course, accomplish through telekinesis. A small sized coin purse. She opens it and investigates the contents. "Huh, Adam. How much should I pay him? I have ever purchased hair, but it wasn't human."

"I don't know... maybe a cent for the hair strand?"

"Okay fair enough."

Temperance extracts the hair (by pulling them out carefully).

She gives Nico a copper coin, which Adam confirms as being of the right value.

"Alright. Do you want to try using a bit of black magic next?" Temperance asks while she puts the strands in individual bottles with glowing liquid.

"I can't use just black I think. Well... I can, but it's really boring."

"Why?"

"Using pure black on something just makes it tougher. Boring."

"I mean, I don't think magic is ever boring. But the point was for me to take a look at your magic."

"Fine, fine." He grabs his floating pebble out of the air. "I'm gonna end the floaty thing early if you want to watch that."

He does that - it's just a sudden blanking of the magic - then invests a point of black magic to make the pebble a slightly tougher pebble.