"Yeah. That sounds more productive for now."

Nick is well equipped to teach airships one-oh-one. He's not a teacher, but he really knows and loves the material.

Valanda pays close attention. Airships are great.

They are! Also complicated, but you have to start somewhere.

He tries. He's not terrible. He might be better when he's less starved.

Evening comes.

You don't fly at night unless you're desperate. Collision hazard. Nick finds an island to set down on. This part is a bit tricky and involves getting over an island, venting a bunch of gas to settle on it, and then quickly going out and trying the ship down before the wind knocks it off.

And then he makes a simple dinner for the pair of them and brings a chunk of scrap wood about the right size for his gold to it.

And then it's a much smaller chunk of gold. "What do you do if you don't find an island in the evening?"

"Shiny. Fly through the night, don't sleep. It doesn't come up much."

"Sounds tiring, I guess it's a good thing there are so many islands. So why gold, are you going to use it for alloys?"

"Gold is shiny and rare - for now - and therefore very valuable. Until people get used to a sun mage existing and people who have a lot of gold panic and desperately try to sell it all at once, I can get lots of various useful things for this little chunk."

"Will that hurt people? If they have their savings in gold? Should I stay secret for a while?"

"It will hurt people, but people who can afford it more than people who can't, I think. And you'll make everyone richer and better off on average after a few months or years, so some short-term turbulence is likely worth it in my opinion."

"Okay. I'll trust you."

"Trust, but verify. If you don't actually make a lot of gold that would probably help soften the blow. You can be a worrying rumor rather than a terrifying reality for most people. Though, gold will be useful for some alloys and, say, integrated circuits."

"What do integrated circuits do?"

"Complicated information handling, reacting to inputs and producing outputs. They're crucial for computers. I could make a RADAR unit that automatically stopped the engines if it detected that the ship was about to hit something with circuits, and integrated circuits are a compact and efficient way of making circuits. More or less."

"It's amazing how much magic you can get done without doing any magic."

"That's a charming way of putting it, you know. It's more science than magic."

"I guess so."

It's an uneventful night.

The next morning Nick does a little work in the rooftop greenhouse after setting the ship in motion again. Brunch includes fresh-picked tomatoes, some of Kar's pork, and bread (the origin of which might by mysterious to Valanda).

"What's this thing? Is it a plant?"

"It's bread. It's made by cooking a plant, but is not one itself."

"Huh. Bread. It's some kind of grain thing?" That's what he's getting from the language magic, anyway.

"Yep. Grains, ground up, some salt and sugar and butter and water and yeast."

"Butter... oh, I've never eaten dairy before. Guess no one in Har thought of trying it."