"Brrr!"

Honestly, it's bracing.

Also her tail is still on fire somehow.  So hopefully she can heat it up a bit.

She doesn't stay in for all that long, though.

"I guess we're not about to suffer from hypothermia here. ...I'm staying out here and floating, though. To clear my head."

"Alright, I still have videogames to catch up on."

Feelings are hard. And twisty conversations really ought to wait until Alicia's Red Dream is fully over and she's settling in as a proper kitsune.

Didn't she decide ahead of time that she'd be fine if it was just... Sex, with no attachment? Well. Apparently not. She has caught some feelings and it's not fun. Anxiety in her belly.

They're going to be working on diamonds for a while, together. That thought helps.

"Hey, that thing have multiplayer?"

"Looks like, yeah!"

Would she like to play wizards game, Alicia wants to play wizards game.  But there are other games she just knows she likes this one.

Sure, wizard game. It'll be nostalgic of Smash, maybe.

(She would offer 'SSB however many versions later the future has', but, with all due respect, fuck the Joycons.  Wiimote+nunchuk or bust.  She's gonna figure out how to rig this thing up for diverse inputs.  But not right now. That seems far too tedious.)

What's this game about anyway? They can probably kill a lot of time like this. And it's nice sitting next to each other and slightly snuggling to see the screen. Her tail can brush up against Alicia's.

Wizards!  And you fight things!  There's also a timeloopy thing going on but that mostly doesn't even matter really.

...

...

...Ooh.

(Completely beneath her conscious ability to notice, her tail twines around Nicole's.)

This is nice.

Eventually she will take it upon herself to cause lunch to happen. And maybe get out those notes on spell control mechanisms.

Ooh yeah spell control mechanisms she's gonna need to - oh she can do things with magic now!  ...What even do though!  Too many options!  "...I'm thinking of making a keyboard.  And mouse.  If there's not some way of getting them from my toolpouch or something."

"I've had typewriter-wards thoughts myself. There's a low power fire spell that kind of - singes into paper just so - but getting it to do shapes is quite difficult. What would yours interface with, the console?"

"Yeah.  But as far as your typewriter thoughts.  Laser printers.  They don't have to memorize individual characters, just dot patterns.  But then the question becomes how small we can make the circles and the dots..."

"And then also... Hmm... Break it into modules, this one receives input and produces singes, this one translates a keypress into an input..."

"Yeah.  But also, like...  How different from actually making a typewriter would this even be on its own?  I think what maybe we want is some kind of -"

"...That wouldn't work straight, surely...

"...but could it?  No, wait, surely not...

"...can't make diamonds out of non-carbon anyway, but -

"...still, accurate, well, to within measurement error, references...

"...Okay so.  I don't quite believe there's anything as bullshit as diamonds here.  But.  What if we made a thing that could print spell circles.

"You have a sheet of paper.  You put it over here.  Possibly you deform it to a sphere before you print so the projection doesn't get skewed but I bet the math's not that bad, it smells like matrices and...  Oh we don't have...  Wait, no, do we have...?  Generating sines and cosines and things like that?  Is that even how map projections work?  Anyway.  You have a single instance of the paper-singe circle that's mounted in some gimbals here - it only rotates, doesn't translate.  And you have your data processor over here that rotates the, uh, wheel-y things that rotate, because all I'm sure of recalling is 'gimbal lock', and feeds or does not feed power to the singeing unit."

"...I think you run into the fact that templates already exist, and you have to draw in will-soaked ink or chalk, or diamond dust, to make a functional castable circle? Or do it freehand for, like, cantrips."

"Could you differentiate between singed and unsinged paper to soak the magic ink into?  Magically?"

"I... Hmm. Well. Maybe if the paper was slightly waxed and the singe burned away the protective layer...?"

"...Wax might could do...  but dripping would add a complication..."

"I admit to a predilection towards prototypes, but I believe this is the kind of thing that calls for prototypes to see what works?"

"Maybe!  Do we have the stuff?  Ooh, or what if we put the ink in the waaaa---, no, remov...al...  ...Maybe?  ...Dilution.  Would add up.  Probably better to just waterproof."

"I have uh... Some random various bits of scrap metal. And I can go get wood and fiber to spin cordage. Be an excuse to use our toolkits. And I have a few sheets of scroll paper. The wax though... Hmm I'm not sure... Some sort of plastic would be ideal, just thin enough to be waterproof..."

"...No, it needs to melt?  ...Oh, I have it; the trick is to start from the inside and melt outwards?  I think.  About the dripping."

"So, paper goes here, like it's on a wall. On a disk. And then that disk slowly rotates, and at appropriate times the fire cantrip melts off the wax coating. Then we stamp the whole thing with ink? Is that what you're picturing?"

"...Oh of course we could...!"

"No, not really, but I think what you just thought might have been more viable than what I was thinking to start with."