"Do you have any magic advantages at understanding animals, or is it just practice and being a thoughtful person?"

"Some of both? There's magic for it from my world, which I've got a knack for, but it takes practice and care to actually use."

"That's really neat! How does the magic work?"

She explains! A lot of it runs off of intuition, experience, willpower, and careful consideration, rather than necessarily memorization or such. It's instinctive for some people, but most have to learn it the hard and somewhat frustrating way. There's a lot of meditation involved in getting good at it - it's important to know your own mind before you can know others', let alone the world's, is a saying Silv heard more than once.

"That's pretty cool. Not the sort of thing I'm especially good at learning; it's good that you're talented at stuff you like."

"Well, do you like the stuff you're good at?"

"Yeah, but I don't know if that's because I liked it enough to do it until I got good at it or if I liked it because it came easily to me or what. I guess if there's anything that someone is both good at and interested in they'll tend to get better and more interested."

"Can be hard to say..."

"Yeah. Still, it's nice that it works out that way."

Margaret spots a pretty spiralling shell on the seabed, scoops it up with her tailfin, and passes it to one of her hands for inspection. It proves to be empty of critters.

She turns into an octopus to get into some odder nooks and crannies and also open some things, exploring.

"Yeah, it is..."

Octopi are very cool but octopi who are Silv are the best. It's not long before they have everything Marel wanted plus some souvenirs.

Cool!

Back to the building, then? (...Silv doesn't super want to end their conversations with Margaret just yet...)

Margaret doesn't want to stop talking to Silv yet either, so possibly they will just swim very slowly. They're carrying so much more stuff now, after all. 

"So what sort of thing do you like to do for fun? Not that this job isn't more like fun than work."

"I like exploring. Getting out into nature. Talking to people, learning their stories... If there's something specific I'm trying to learn how to do, I'll usually try to find an elder or expert or someone and wheedle them into explaining their take on it, sometimes across multiple people, which is fun. I like art... I really get into calligraphy whenever I learn a new language - writing's cool and fancy writing is just super cool. I like acting, too, whether like formal theater or informal improv games."

"How about you?"

"I read a lot--mostly historical stuff and old fiction. And I like to build things. I'm in a group at my school that builds a robot every year and enters a competition with it, and I build other stuff on my own. And I've really been enjoying the exploring I've been doing for this job, so I'll probably do more of it in the future. There are a lot more places I can go now, and ones I can go more easily."

"Cool! If you want to explore - I know some places I've been on work trips, that I wouldn't mind heading back to for a pleasure trip?"

"That does sound like fun!" Also she should definitely come up with a way to bring Silv to outer space safely, because outer space is awesome, but she doesn't want to bring that up until she has an actual plan.

"Is after work today a good time for you?"

"Definitely!"

"It's a date, then."

Eeeeeeee a date! She really hopes that was meant literally but obviously she can't just ask, so she'll have to convey her own dately intentions by grinning and doing a loop-the-loop in the water. Also if they're not parting ways when they get back to base they can swim a bit faster.

Sure! Silv picks up the pace to match Margaret pretty easily, and soon enough the underwater dock (with a clear 'shop' aesthetic still) is visible.

"It's really neat how the building adapts to different environments, isn't it."

"Yeah! Though I don't really know how... Might be something like my shapeshifting?"

"I feel like I don't have enough of a gears-level understanding of your shapeshifting for that to explain anything. I guess I know you don't follow conservation of mass."