"Yeah! just two smooth criminals! Breaking the law! I think. I have yet to see anything resembling law enforcement here."

"Even if there's no law against breaking into dorm rooms it still feels kind of wrong."

"I mean... yeah." She picks up Keeper's list. "So your Bevin being nice is because of powers?"

"Yes. And I'm pretty sure that having more powers also makes it nicer independent of what the specific power does—I noticed my Bevin had a growth spurt after I got the control power even before I started using it."

So if she were willing to spend years on it, she could make her Rockhome nicer. Maybe she should just try to import stuff, it can't be that hard to bring in like a generator or something. Could she plug things into her nose and power them that way? She shakes her head. "So what does this mean?" She points to 'Drinking Starlight' on Keeper's list.

"Oh—in Arbor the stars are all different colours, and there's a power that means I don't need to eat or drink if I stand under the starlight. It works on other light sources too, but it's better when there's more different kinds of light."

"Heh, I could go for that, just sunbathing when I'm feeling extra lazy and don't feel like eating. What does it, I dunno, feel like?"

"It's nice! Soothing."

"It's odd, a lot of this isn't what I would've conceptualized as a 'power', y'know? I mean some of it is! Enhanced strength is a classic, but things like knowing how to make a flask for a healing elixir or..." She looks for a suitable example on Keeper's list. "Gathering sand? It's not what I expected."

"Technically what the gathering sand power does is give me a sense for how much sand I can take from where without messing things up, and for where to find more sand. I could just scoop up the sand in a bucket either way, but if I wasn't careful about it the flowers would die and I would be sad."

"Hm." She looks at her own list. "Do you know what powers you could get at the academy?"

"The one I'm working on right now feels like it's going to be pretty similar to the Bevin control power. I'm hoping I'll be able to use it to clean up after the Fibsplosions. And maybe make the Arbor gazebo a little nicer... there's definitely more powers than that, but I don't have a clear view of all of them. The other one I've caught a good glimpse of looks like it will involve people coming to me with their problems and I'm definitely saving that for when they won't be so upset about me."

"Right, that's neat. Uh, do you get the impression that you could learn to... transform?"

"You mean like a magical girl? I'm not sure... if there's a power like that out there, I haven't caught wind of it. But maybe I just don't have the prerequisites? For some reason, the architectural control power seems to be rooted in the specter-related one. I didn't see it until after I had that one."

This was all starting to sound uncomfortably like a skill tree. She would be tempted to try to draw one out based on their shared knowledge, but if she did she might start seriously contemplating Solipsism. That was obviously wrong.

"Maybe I have a power that you don't. I've gotten a lot of use out of it. But then again I do go into combat a lot, I didn't get the impression that you wanted to fight things."

"Fighting things sounds difficult and stressful! I would much rather stay home and make jam."

"I have found violence to be pretty therapeutic. I mean, also stressful, up until the point where it was not."

"I think perhaps you and I are very different people."

"We both like jam though!" 

"Very true."

"If I can fight and you don't I could evacuate you into your Bevin whenever we run into something dangerous. Even if you don't want to go anywhere dangerous, if you stick around the academy you might run into a monster. I still don't know where they come from."

"I've been there for a while without seeing any, but I might just be lucky..."

"Hm." She goes over the lists a couple more times. "Well, what do you want to do now?"

"I'm not sure. I should finish my book and start reading yours at some point..."

"Ah. I suppose I should go check out the bridges. Though I should stick around for when Fib shows up."