"Incentives!"

She rolls her eyes, fondly.

"Fine. But I'm onto you. Whatever it is you're plotting about Elodir and—" She stops, mouth still open, then shuts it as she starts to turn a bit pink. "Are you. I. I don't even know the phrase for it. The precise opposite of jealous?"

"The word I have seen used nowadays for that emotion would be 'compersion', I believe."

He does not answer the question.

"Mmhmm. Good to know. But it'd be better to know the answer to my original question."

"Wouldn't it just."

Vetareh flicks an illusionary butterfly at his nose, rolling her eyes fondly.

"Fine, keep your secrets. But dating is scary and you notwithstanding I'd like to take things rather slow."

"It has only been a few days, after all," James agrees easily.

"I should not fling myself at everyone available in my first week of arrival to the world," she says, nodding sagely. "Even if my boyfriend thinks I'd be cute with someone. Which you do."

"For the record, sylvari are significantly less hung up on this than species that have any actual childrearing," he adds, apropos of nothing.

“That makes sense! Still not going to fling myself at anyone available, though.”

"Oh, it was just a fun fact."

    And here comes Elodir, arms full of strange artefacts, most of them made of stone with glowy runes and veins.

"Of course it was," says Vetareh, deadpan. "Welcome back, Elodir, what toys did you bring?"

(Oh no, why did she have to use that phrasing, after her previous conversation with James her mind is immediately going to - well, things that would not be unwelcome in a sexual encounter, nooooo whyyyyyy!)

"Long explanation or short explanation?"

“Long!”

Insert long explanation here!

They're basically various different flavours of the same thing, though, with changes mostly along axes of sensitivity or how to operate or how delicate they are or size or how replaceable they are.

Hmm!

Okay, so they should have something very sturdy and hopefully not difficult to replace should it get dropped in a volcano or something. Not because they plan to do this, but because this device will be handled by herself and James. And, well. She motions to James to demonstrate, in lieu of trying in words. ("And while I think I'm better about wanton destruction, I don't actually think that's saying all that much.") Difficulty of operation isn't a problem. Axes of sensitivity is the tricky prospect here, but they should focus the most attention towards the principle school of aggression, and flavors of magic that trend towards madness when unstable.

So he proudly presents them with a cube. It has a circular depression on the top which "lights up different colours depending on background magic". It doesn't do much else—it was built exactly for the Commander's type of situation, so it's designed to withstand a lot but doesn't have much of an interface, which would be more fragile than the device itself. Any data it collects can be read by another device, locally in the OoW headquarters, and it's actually quite detailed. It just, well, does need to be read by the specialised bit of equipment here.

Excellent! It sounds perfect! Vetareh will take it and keep it safe(...ish) in her mesmer bag. She is very excited to do more magical field research, and also hopefully not go insane.

    "So, I think... that's all?" says the sylvari, sounding a bit disappointed.

James nods slowly but looks at Vetareh with a questioning look in his eyes.

"For now, I think so, yes." Poor Elodir, losing his new nerd friend so quickly! "But we will be back soon enough with data, and maybe if we're feeling very efficient I can make up my mind about joining the Order of Whispers or not, hm?"

That seems to cheer him up.

"Then let us be off."

"Let's!"

She has no idea where they're going next, but! Yep, let's go there. She will be following James. Does James know where they will be going?

On their way out: "So, do you want to go fetch some Bloodstone magic right now or later? I believe it is not that urgent, or Elodir would have been more worried, but we can get it out of the way already too."

"It seems like the sort of thing we should work on solving sooner rather than later, considering. But then I don't know what else we would be doing instead."

"We could take a wrong turn on the way out and I could do you against a wall until you lose all ability to form coherent thoughts," he suggests casually.