"I like the sleeve, but it's the only asymmetrical element you have and it's not enough of a statement piece for that to work," he says. "Can you think of anything else you'd like to unbalance?"

"Maybe I could unbalance my horns, but that could hurt my neck . . . One leg as one arm, for harmony. Oh, it looks like my spell has opinions! How about a legging?" She extends one leg of her shorts out from under her skirt and into her boot. "Hmm, that helps, but it looks a bit plain right now. . ."

"Your spell does costume consultation?" says Nelson, bemused. "You could lace-ify the legging too."

"My spell does seemingly random true statements from nowhere, of varying levels of usefulness." She lace-ifies the legging, first in the same pattern as the sleeve and then in a slightly denser one.

Both kinds of lace are about the same. Nelson asks, "How'd it react to those versions?"

"No real difference between the lace patterns, but having it be lace at all is good."

"That might mean that this lace is better, but matching is also important so it's giving you a bonus when it's the same as your sleeve, and updating the sleeve to something more like this would be an improvement."

"Could be!" Shifting the sleeve and the legging through lace patterns in sync? 

Matching is definitely better and the magic liiiiikes - ooh, that one!

"Oh, you were totally right, matching them is better! This pattern works best of the set; think it could benefit from some gems like the sleeve has?"

"Probably, makes it matchier. I think maybe you want the gems a little smaller so they don't overwhelm the lacework."

Little tiny gems on the sleeve and the leg!

Yay!, says the magic, metaphorically.

"Excellent!" says Margaret, literally. "Say, what are your thoughts on decorative boot buckles? Yes, no, tongues shaped like tiny dragons . . .?" She inquires of Nelson and the magic at the same time.

"Have you tried metal filigree to match the lace? You could also go harder on the dragon motif, but you're not overall shaped very much like a dragon even though that's the obvious extension, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of synergy out of it unless you wear a lot of little dragon symbols. In general unless you're walking a particularly difficult razor-wire of minimalist elegance whenever you ask 'should this be less plain' the answer is yes."

"I guess what the magic reads as dragonish isn't the same as what a random human does, huh." Filigree metal buckles down the outside of each boot, in a pattern that matches her chain bracelets! And she can probably push the heels a little higher now, too; she's gotten better at using her wings as a balance aid rather than an encumberance.

The magic likes all these things, though it's less impressed by the high heels than the filigree.

What if she makes the heel itself out of metal filigree, huh, what then?

"Filigree's good, going to see if I can push that a bit . . ."

(She leaves it dense enough not to collapse under her weight, but that isn't much of a constraint if she goes for aluminum with the blue opal as a color layer.)

If she makes the high heel out of filigree that's good!

She takes a few steps back and forth to confirm that the weight is how she likes it, then adds "That helped!" to Nelson.

How about a single little sapphire in one of the holes of the filigree on the back of each heel? Or a couple? She turns around and points so Nelson can see what she's doing, and says, "Trying some gems, not sure how to arrange them."

"Hm - my first guess would be in a swoop along here, and then one strung onto the metal here, and the corresponding swoop on the inside."

She has to turn around and watch his hand gestures to get clear on what he means, but then: that.

The magic thinks he has a good eye, apparently.

"You might want to do more variety of setting like this elsewhere, see how that takes."

"Nice! And more settings sounds good . . . " Margaret doesn't really know that much about how to set gems, does he have example descriptions or pictures or anything?

Nelson shows her some different gemstone settings. "And that's for conventional manufacture; you can also make the stones improbable, fragile shapes and anchor them to underlying materials in hidden ways."