After dinner she circulates the places Jonabeth said she might be found.

Jonabeth is in the park, not actively playing music or anything, lying on a low stone wall and apparently star-gazing.

"There's so little light pollution here."

She twists to look over, grinning. "Yeah. Dunno if that's just us being mostly rural or if we use way less lights than before the Rages, though."

"Both."

"Makes sense. Building go well?"

"Yeah, got a robot doing my salvage for me now. Got a good pathfinding knack for it too. Tinkering around a knack is fun."

"I can imagine! I always like - playing music that does stuff, more than just noise?"

"I would too if I knew how! Are there underlying principles, if I sing random top 40 pop from home might it turn up with a knack or develop one as I forget and fill in lyrics..."

"Closer to the second, though it's - a bigger deal if you're doing that on purpose? And... Stuff that... I guess you could say changes your audience to hear? Is gonna have way more of an impact. I'm not at that level but there's, like, stories, of world-class singers doing some really amazing stuff."

"Changes them to hear like, it's an emotionally affecting performance?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Or - sticks in their head meaningfully?"

"What kinds of things happen if you sing a real sticky one?"

"Makes it easier to do - state changes, I guess? Especially to humans. The, like, credible stories are mostly someone singing to an auditorium full of the sick or injured and healing them."

"...that'd be amazing if it could be made to work in my world. I suspect it can't but now I wanna know if I can build a singing robot that can do that."

" - Huh, yeah. Dunno if - something that can't make knacks can do music? Haven't heard of recordings working, though I think live feeds for amplification do work to spread an effect if they're set up right..."

"I could make something that altered a song on the fly, read the room..."

"Hm... Problem is I'm not a theorist, if there's any non-human like monkeys who can do knacks I wouldn't know about it... Might be worth experimenting with, though? Even if you just managed, like, really good live feeds so one person could cover fifty places or something."

"Won't port home that way but still worth having, yeah."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, no clue how portable knacks are inter-universe."

"Well, I'll work on it anyhow, since it'd also be nice here."

"Thanks."

"Thank you for alerting me to the possibility."

"Thanks for - wanting to do something with it. And welcome."

"Do most people not want to do something with it? If they're musical enough to do magic in the first place?"