"The pipes are for steam," a woman tells Genea. "Yeah, saw you lookin'. Steam comes from the generator and goes along the pipes, heats up the buildings, nice and toasty. They say it'll get even colder outside, but the Generator will keep us warm as long as we stay in."

She's more accustomed to heating done by mages than by something like that, but she knows how bathhouses and the like work.

Nod. "Thank you. That's good." 

And, that's enough rest. Where's the Captain?

"It is indeed. Engineers work miracles. Steel and steam are now our servants."

The Captain is at the Generator with a few other people, doing some kind of work on it.

"They seem like very good servants to have." Servants that can do work you need done and help your people be secure and aren't people you're torturing. Certainly good to have.

('Engineer' is also an exciting concept!)

She won't interrupt but she'll stand around so that she's easily noticed. And look more at the Generator.

They're shoveling some coal into it and lighting the coal on fire while carefully looking at a set of gauges and controls.

Steel pops and groans as the heat spreads. The crew shouts instructions to each other, makes small adjustments to the controls, and watches anxiously.

Lots of novel things! She reaches out magical senses. She knows what fire is - what's the coal? What's that they're looking at?

She continues the not interrupting but being around.

The coal is sort of like very dense, rock-like wood. It's burning steadily in that big central core, heating it up like a house-sized cookpot. They're watching pressure and temperature gauges slowly rise. With the pull of a lever, steam vents from somewhere on the thing, and it starts ever-so-slowly moving. And picks up speed a bit. And the engineers are all cheering now.

The steam inside the machine spreads to all its extremities, and down the pipes they've been laying out. A thin stream of smoke starts pouring out the top. (They look reasonably approachable, now.)

Sense will tell her that about coal. The way they're looking at the gauges looks like getting feedback from some magic working, and she can tell those are numbers, but not for what. She attempts to trace where the gauges are getting their information. 

That is pretty epic!

Do they notice her standing there?

They do notice her, they're glancing at her, but they consider the generator more important at the moment. The gauges are getting their information from conditions inside the generator! How they work is a bit strange, but the information that '115C' refers to temperatures above the boiling point of water, and '23 PSI' means the steam is under a fair bit of pressure, is readily available in the engineers' minds.

"I'll be with you in a minute, Aye. Unless it's urgent?"

She does not countersay their priorities.

Interesting! And what a useful translation effect.

"Not at all!" She waits. Can she figure out what any of the other controls do?

Maybe by observing what happens when they're moved? That one controls how much some slots for air to feed the fire open - they're periodically widening it as the furnace of coal gets hotter and hotter. That panel of levers seem to control which sets of pipes the steam goes into, and how much of it...

At length, they seem to have the generator working and stable.

"What a marvel of engineering! If only we didn't need it. Hello again, Aye. I think we can talk for a while now, if you want."

ooh.

She definitely agrees on the marvel. 

"I'm all rested." (Not really - some things just take time even for her - but she's certainly not doing it any more at the moment. And is perfectly able to do a variety of other things). "Anything else you wanted from me?"

"Nothing urgent. I want to have a long talk about what you can do, what we can do, and if any of it can be done better together. For example, if you can keep the Generator running without coal, that would be handy. But it's not urgent, we have enough for three or so days already. At least at this relatively low power level."

Affirmative sign. 

"Doesn't have to be urgent! And I can talk whenever you want to do that."

(She passes this on to Genea as information.)

'Three days at low power' does not seem like very much. Probably they have more coming, but. 

"Your effort is a resource that I don't understand. And also, that I don't want to start to take for granted. Generator's on. Tents are up. Everyone else knows their jobs for the rest of the day. May as well discuss things now, no? Let's appropriate one of the shiny new tents. Home sweet home."

Affirmative hand signal. 

"Shall I call Genea? She may be more able to describe some things than I am."

(That sounds, by elements, like a good way to think (understanding; not taking for granted - in as much as taking for granted might threaten these people, and as thinking about not doing so might be a sign of concern for the user of effort's agreement), and like something to make her wary again ('resource' and the like).)

"That's probably wise."

Genea receives said call and excuses herself from the work at the next moment she can do so.

And they can follow him to wherever he wants to do this.

Into a tent they go. He sits cross-legged near a heater, a small metal thing sticking up from the pipes laid on the floor.

"So. Magic. If you can create matter and energy from nothing, that fundamentally breaks many of our best theories about the way the world works. I think between questions of my own, you two should ask whatever questions you have. I'll explain our world to you and we can see where things don't line up. How does one get magic? Can it be taught?"

"Theories about how the world works?" (Also, is it alright if she takes the coat off here?)