"What do you want to look at?"

"Can I see where mom is?"

"No."

"S'not your spell."

"I can do that. Do you have a picture? I can do without but the failures are higher - the failure chance is higher."

She digs through her bag and produces a small ink sketch with no color. "Does this help?"

"Couldn't you - try her father instead - "

" - do you guys know where she is?"

"No."

"No."

"Maybe you can look first and if you think she shouldn't see -"

" - thank you. Yes."

"This'll take me an hour. I'll let you know when I'm nearly done."

And he pulls out some water and a silver mirror and starts doing magic.

She combs her niece's hair out and puts it up into cute little braided buns.

She lets her do that. She looks up and watches clouds, and sometimes she watches Mahdi.

He comes back with pastries and ham and cashews and some carrots, which he starts a fire to roast.

Oh cool! She likes all of those things. Especially cashews, they never get to have cashews.

Oh good. Cashews are neat.

"Korva says they're too expensive."

"Well, adventurers make lots of money. Also spend lots of money, and the universe cares what percent you spend on charity and doesn't care if you have a lot of work expenses, but still, it's a pretty good gig."

"Sounds like one. Apart from the dying a lot."

"Personally I have never died at all. Fazil used to prepare Raise Dead and then got sick of never getting to prepare something he'd actually use so he made a scroll instead."

"You can be more careful than adventurers usually are, and retire once you're successful enough to just sell the occasional spell and support your family, and not die," Fazil says. "It's not perfect, but nothing is, and you should aim to follow a god who you trust enough you wouldn't be annoyed if they wanted you early."

"I don't think I have any of those."

"Well, if you'd like to hear about mine, or Mahdi's, you could ask us sometime."