She giggles and blushes, and uses her fan to hide her face for a moment.

"No, men are magically - well, some kitsunes can also get energy from having sex with women, maybe... A fifth, a tenth? But with men is universal, and it's a much stronger source than most others. Specifically, semen. It does leave them - the effect is about like an hour of field labor, regardless of how long they last, per, ah- Shot. I think I want to keep any hurting pretty mild. I usually would hang out at taverns and wait for someone to be... Charming, you know? Or cute. Or shy in a cute way. No hurry."

Xolkensa nods.

"If you want people to come up to you and be cute at you, you should wear pink," she advises. "And hang around at an outdoor café or in a community space. It is the color for wanting to start new relationships or have sex. There are more specific signals, but until you are more used to reading clothing, it's best to keep it simple. Actually — has Weiss told you about our clothing?"

"Pink! Alright, I'll make sure to change later. She said you would translate a book about it? And to not bother anyone wearing red."

She nods.

"Yes, that's the main one. The basic system is simple: red, someone is overwhelmed, do not interact with them. Orange, they are near becoming overwhelmed. Green, blue, and pink are all social colors with different meanings. Purple means that they are working," she summarizes. "Colored head lights largely override robes, but many people still prefer using robe colors. The book goes into more detail, but those are the important parts."

She taps out another message to dispatch.

"I'll check whether they've finished the book, in case you're interested. So ... I have this baking competition, —"

Which Weiss is making good progress demolishing.

"— getting computers for both of you, getting you the law book, showing you some places in the city that you can meet people, checking in with the hospital about healing, and taking Weiss to see the museum on my list. That's a good list to start with, but please let one of us know if there are things that should be added to it."

"Oh, I'm sure she appreciates the baking contest very much- I had the thought to bring some seeds from Tirra, actually, as a sort of gift. Hmm... Oh Weiss~ Can you turn me pink, please~?"

She feels a little guilty about enjoying the bakefest so much, hearing them discuss it!! But this is all really good!! A panoply of sweet, soft, crunchy, savory, sour... At least her clear numerical feedback is probably welcome? Still, her tail wagging and ear twitching slows down a bit.

"Mmmh? Okay, sure."

She whips something up for Megi, failing not to blush as the implications of that color pass through her mind.

"That'll do you for... Twelve hours ish?"

Her hair is a vivid hot pink. Her jewelry is rose gold. Her robes are nearly-white fading to deep pink, with some valentines-heart accouterments that Weiss added in a few seconds of attention to weaving the illusion. It looks fully real. She's very pink now. Megi does a spin, grinning at the way her robes-cum-dress flare at the deepest-pink hem and shows a lot of thigh.

Sinnah ducks in for a moment around this point, and the kitsunes take a few minutes to discuss the Rift in obscure Notal and sometimes Ancient Tirran terms. 

The short version of the conversation is that Sinnah is planning to ask for a miracle from the Light Gods to stabilize and possibly move it, and Megi prayed for answers and got a positive feeling, so she thinks that'll work, but they really ought to make it as easy as possible for the gods. This will be accomplished by studiously graphing its response to magical nudges along various axes, and then using Weiss's excellent Spirit World navigation and Megi's attunement and Sinnah casting a custom spell that does 'show the gods exactly where this energy flow ought to go'. 

So, Weiss and Megi have some tedious but important work to do between diplomatic conversations.

Xolkensa shakes a hand appreciatively.

"You look lovely, dear," she tells her.

They chat for a while, and Xolkensa makes sure the scores from both of them are correctly recorded and sent off. In a few hours, a number of grateful notes and new variations on recipes will find their way back to Weiss.

In the mean time, Tatenika and Sinnah have reached an agreement on fair prices for her services (to be paid in a mixture of diamonds, precious metals, and local currency). And Emergency Services has rounded up a class of the eight best learners with high scores in geometry and (some measurements of) willpower in the city (who passed a Notal competency test) to begin learning magic. Even with so many criteria to filter for, the students are still noticeably better suited than a class gathered on such short notice from Tirra would be.

They sit in a comfy þereminian-style classroom — one wall devoted to windows, bright, sunlight-spectrum lights overhead. The students are arranged on various beanbag chairs, with notebooks, audio recorders, and silent stim toys. A low table sits in the middle of the room, for writing and demonstrations, and a projector and whiteboard turn one wall into a display — although Sinnah might not get much use out of the projector.

In addition to the students, an Emergency Services observer sits in the back, ready to diligently take notes for later study by people who could not be in the room for this initial lesson.

Diplomat Tatenika shows her in.

"Your class, Teacher Sinnah. I'm sure they're all very excited to see what you can teach them."

She has, during negotiations (and only sounding slightly distracted by it), made two dirt-simple light crystals as testers, hunks of quartz with a pair of bare wires attached to them on either side. She paces the space by the blackboard.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Sinnah. I don't like standing on ceremony. If you've got a question ask it, if enough people ask questions that I can't make progress clearly I'm doing something wrong and need to re-evaluate. As I understand it the goal of these classes is to create a local wizards who can successfully design and cast spells. For lack of a better idea for a framework, I intend to follow the same initial steps that a new wizard apprentice would go through, at least at first."

She hands the testers to the nearest two students. 

"Exerting will is the fundamental action of wizardry, so I'll cover this before even the foundations of theory. Free casting, preparing materials for wizards to use, activating scrolls- All of these things require exerting will. You simply cannot do this variety of magic without it. This is a mental action. There is no physical analogue, though some people find physical metaphors useful. To me, exerting will is a natural application of my own native stubbornness. I expect that magic damn well better move for me, I won't stand for it not doing so, and it does. Some describe it as wishing. Some describe it as determination. Some describe it as blinking your eyes without blinking, or breathing with your soul, or pushing with a hand made of magic. Many find it helpful to use accompanying body and hand motions to focus. Successful exertion of will while touching both of the wires with your skin, shall make them light up. Go ahead and try it. Please pass these around every few minutes. Any questions so far?"

The two students with the tester take a minute to think, and then start trying to make it light up.

One of the students on the other side of the room raises a hand.

"Is there only one kind of exerting will? Or it is like a physical motion in that there are different directions or variations on it that we will learn as we get more accustomed to it?"

"Exerting will has an intensity. An amount. It also has timing, when it is applied. It also has a location, in that it emnates from your body. Masters can control it to do so from multiple independent points with different timings and intensities. These factors affect the shape of magic, and the final shape of magic is what has effects on the world. Other than that, no- It has one 'flavor', I suppose you could say. Most spells are designed to accept a wide range of possible intensities with the timing being the largest skill factor."

The students nod and absorb this fact. The two with the will exertion detectors focus on them.

No additional questions appear to be forthcoming at the moment.

"This is not a class on the Spirit World, so I will only cover it briefly. We don't understand why wizardry is the way it is, exactly, but it is. Unlike other forms of magic, which largely depend on - willpower, accumulated talent, symbolism, divine energy, or the collective unconscious depending on who is theorizing - two wizards performing the same spell with the same diagram will get precisely the same result, in the same way that two people dropping a stone from a high tower will. Perhaps the more chaotic forms of magic are explicable but not explained. Perhaps they're fundamentally subjective and mutable. Regardless, wizardry is wizardry. Exerting will produces more intensity when the Spirit World is close, and less when it is thin, distant, or blocked. But the same intensity has the same result, thick or thin."

She starts drawing on the board. A large circle. Then a list of runes.

"The classic form of wizardry involves drawing a circle, then drawing the correct runes in the correct orientation and position around that circle, and then channeling will into it. Will travels along the circle, and interacts with the runes in ways that cause lines or curves of will to enter into the circle. The patterns of will that form inside the circle correspond to physical effects in the world that the spell then causes. Here is an elementary example. We want to create a perfect hexagon of will in the center of the diagram. This rune is firthe, and this rune is lai. Firth casts a straight, perpendicular line with a progression speed of one. -The progression speeds are scaled relative to firth. Lai alters the trajectory of nearby runes according to the inverse square of its radial distance from the affected rune and the projective force of the affected rune..."

She goes through a demonstration, drawing lines and applying numbers, and projecting a hexagonal shape in the center of the circle with six firthes and six lais.

"The physical effects of patterns produced in spell diagrams can be, at times, difficult to predict. We don't necessarily understand why they are what they are. However, there are extensive reference tables of the effects of certain shapes, and there do also exist spells which convert physical conditions back into will-patterns. If you, for example, compare the output of cold metal and of hot metal in such an analysis spell, it is possible to derive a final will-shape that will heat metal. It is then possible to construct a set of runes and timings that will create that will-shape, and thusly invent a spell to heat metal. That, however, is an advanced topic which I won't necessarily cover more today. This spell that we have just constructed-"

She draws a circle in the air with her hand. An LED-like mote of light appears, stationary in midair. It winks out after about a second.

"The perfect hexagon produces white light. So long as that hexagon of will exists in the air where I have drawn my circle, so does this light. However, when the will stops being fed into the circle, the lines shorten, the hexagon ceases to exist, and the light vanishes."

She'll pause the lecture for questions during all this, of course, and answer any that come up. Probably there will be many.

There are. A few of them include:

"I'm not sure I understand — you drew the runes on the board, but to actually cast the spell, you just drew the circle. Is that a shortcut you're taking by manually controlling your will, or are you somehow getting runes ..."

"What happens if you have a malformed circle? What are the tolerances like?"

"Is this spell an approximation to a reproduction of a particular light, or constructed from first principles?"

After a minute of back and forth, however, the first student produces a flicker on the will detector, and grins. He passes it to the person behind him, quickly jotting down what the experience was like in his notes.

"I did mentally draw the runes as I mentally drew the circle boundary when I did that demonstration. The act of mentally drawing spell circles without any kind of assistive tool is called free casting, and it is an expert move. You will only be able to do that with substantial practice on page casting, scroll casting, and chalk casting first. I will try to keep in mind to demonstrate basics with the actual tools going forward. Incidentally, note for later to the observers, next session please include hand-chalkboards in student supplies. To practice chalk preparation and casting."

"Malformed circles and incorrectly placed runes do disturb the lines and distort the resulting shape. This can result in inefficient will usage, or in egregious examples completely unintended effects, which can be dangerous. Beginner spells are thus designed in a 'fail safely' manner- If the lines are off, no valid shape is produced, rather than an incorrect shape, as much as possible. The tolerances definitely depend on what exactly you're casting but they can get quite tight. Spells are classed in difficulty mostly by how small the tolerances are, they determine whether it is basic, intermediate, or expert, and what mediums are suitable for it."

"The perfect hexagon is considered a first principle at this point. I don't know how it was discovered, that's ancient history that I'm not specialized in."

First student to will-project gets an acknowledging nod. "You'll want to practice doing it consistently, later."

The class continues in the same vein; three people manage to get the will-detector working fairly quickly. Three more manage it by the end of class, and the last two have no luck.

They cover a lot of theory, most of which probably needs to be re-confirmed in a lab. One other quite important question comes up about halfway through the class, however:

"If you can store intent in chalk in order to make magic circles with, can you make an item that stores intent and releases it on command?"

"That's called a wand, or a ward, or a magic item. You have to define the conditions where it will react- Usually a command word spoken while being held. And you need diamonds. And it's an advanced topic."

That said, for the last part of this scheduled block every student can try using her pre-prepared diagram chalk to write out a spell and cast it. She has four beginner spells to choose from: Light, Condensation, Static, and Stillness.

Well, they all want to see all the spells, obviously. The students divide themselves evenly between the four options, and carefully start drawing out the spells. After a quick clarification that it won't interfere with the magic, one student produces string that everyone uses to draw accurate circles. In positioning the runes, the students show greater average spatial awareness than Sinnah's previous students ­— but then, they were specifically selected for aptitude with geometry.

Once the diagrams are drawn, they each attempt to cast.

Sinnah has cast an analysis spell in the meantime, to give timely and pertinent advice as the casting is attempted.

They're beginner spells for a reason. Light makes a light, height of it off the circle controlled by one's intensity. It's good consistency practice. Condensation beads moisture onto the circle. A basic survival spell and also useful if you want a dry room. Static builds up static electricity. This one takes a modicum of timing skill to keep up. Stillness can be tested by spinning a top or coin in the circle- It stops much quicker, and small dropped objects fall noticeably slowly. It won't work if the circle has low precision.

Five out of eight students manageable visible effects. Two more she can tell are at least on the right track. The last-

She doesn't actually know how amenable this is to practice but the general consensus is 'not enough to make it worth trying to apprentice someone who can't manage a spell in the first eight hours of practice, even if they're otherwise brilliant'. It's not her who's deciding who her students are, though.

Not everyone can be good at everything. The students are going to practice, of course — not least of all because the scientists are going to want to record a lot of trials to have some data to work with.

But if she expresses that sentiment out loud, the þereminians will nod and agree to shuffle the participants if anyone doesn't have it by next class. There's no shame in not having an aptitude for something that literally three people on the planet can do right now.

Sinnah is pretty happy to fill up 16 hours a day with teaching and/or testing object crafting.

Maybe 12 if they're going to be more relaxed about it.

The entire planet is extremely excited about magic; they want to learn everything, as fast as possible.

... which naturally means a nice, sustainable pace that won't make Sinnah (or the students or support staff) feel burnt out. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, as the saying goes.

þereminian jobs are typically a bit more than one fourth of a day, two thirds of the week. They used to be much longer — and still are, in some places — but þereminia is pretty proud of having been able to decrease the work week as productivity has increased over the past few centuries. But if Sinnah has a higher tolerance for long work periods (and she's an alien, so it's plausible), they can run two shifts and work with her for a full half-day.

They're particularly interested in magic item design (for which they can supply plenty of diamonds) not least of all because they strongly suspect computer-controlled scribing and casting will let them create substantially more controlled and complex effects than a pre-industrial world can manage even with good tools.

She can lean the theory to that, sure. Scrolls before artifacts. Many of the skills are transferable anyway. Some people with really steady control will be needed to make the ink.

...She'll need feeding, in the kitsune fashion. She is not very discriminatory. Someone mentioned sex workers in her hearing range once before, she thinks? That could be a lovely intersection of sustenance and relaxing fun.

(Also, it turns out magic does not really ... work on most of the globe. The same effort produces dramatically less intensity of will exertion away from the environs of the Rift, aside from one or two small exceptions.)