"Hm?"

If, I don't know, you'd have been willing to explain the lights to my father on the condition he not tell anyone else or arrange for them to be likely to find out, he'd have happily agreed to that, and if it was fine for us to know about the lights as long as we didn't try to stop you working on the dangerous thing, we'd have agreed to that, too, and - in general we'd rather have more information and more constraints than be moving blindly. 

"I'll think about that. I honestly wouldn't describe it as a dangerous thing."

The pieces of the situation that are most clear to me are that you were previously some place very bad and that there is an astounding amount of information about how you work that you're deliberately concealing. I don't quite get how the work fits in but - it feels like a risky sort of state of affairs, overall. 

"I can understand why you'd see it that way. The thing I am doing that I'm not telling you about contributes almost nothing to the overall risk profile."

Nod.

I want you to be and feel safe.

"Thank you."

He nods. He heads out.

(She checks all her gates. They haven't settled.)

She fills up on dew. She goes looking for Lohte's father, who has told her to call him Writer. (Since they don't like reusing nicknames she's having him call her Plainspeaker.)

He is playing with modeling clay, or maybe doing important magic design work, they look pretty indistinguishable. He looks annoyed to be interrupted for the half second until he recognizes her, then waves her in.

"If this is a bad time it's not urgent."

"No, you're fine. - this is more important than the things most people'd bother me with but you're more interesting than them."

"Your eldest said you'd want to see this." She holds out her hand and makes a little light above it. "I haven't decided exactly how much to explain about it."

"Ooooh. Is it permanent? Is it effortful? Did you do it just now or was there a preparatory step?"

"It'll last a long time but not literally forever if I leave it. It's not hard and doesn't drain me or anything. I did it just now."

"Can we learn it or is it specific to you?"

"I don't know for sure."

"I want to try."

"I thought you might say that."

He walks over to get a closer look at it. 

It's a little yellow-white light, floating in the air, sourceless, heatless.

What happens if you poke it.

When intersected, it is invisible, but it's still there when he removes his finger. "If you do that a lot it'll go out," she tells him.

"Huh, why?"

"Technical reasons."