"Fox's Cunning."

Bellona sets to work rather quickly.

"Do you want me to explain more things while she works on that?" Emma asks Belmarniss.

Nod.

"Just what I think of, or something specific?"

"First thing."

She starts going down a list of laws she knows off the top of her head - most of the probably confusing ones are traffic laws. Do they have cars where Belmarniss is from?

They do not!

Right.

Cars are a type of machine used to transport people and goods around. They need a fairly flat and even surface to run on, but they can go anywhere on that surface. Most places have roads designed for cars. Most places, especially cities, also have laws about where cars can drive - Central especially has sidewalks, which are paths to one or both sides of the road that're slightly elevated. Cars aren't allowed on sidewalks, and people walking aren't supposed to go in the road in the middle. Intersections are where two or more roads meet. In a big city with sidewalks there'll usually be a crosswalk between the two sidewalks. Cars and people can both go over crosswalks, but cars are supposed to yield to people. Sometimes the people driving cars are idiots, though, so you need to look around before crossing a road, to make sure you're clear. Crosswalks have white or yellow painted bars in a path.

It's a bit different in small towns and rural areas, where you might not have sidewalks. Usually there you just walk in the road and step aside if you see a car coming.

There's also trains, which are like very fast and big cars that only run on specific tracks. The tracks are two pieces of metal this far apart (she holds her hands up demonstratively) with wooden crossbeams connecting them underneath, which run parallel to each other for very long distances. Usually the tracks are on long, narrow hills, since trains need tracks to be mostly level. Cars can usually stop if someone's in front of them. Trains cannot. If you're not used to trains, just don't walk directly on actively used tracks - which are generally ones without plants growing in them - though it's okay to cross the tracks if there's not a train around. Trains do blow a very loud whistle if they're approaching somewhere the tracks intersect with a road. Some places have bars that'll lower to prevent people from driving up onto the tracks anyways before the train gets there.

Central City also has barriers to keep people from climbing onto the tracks, but most places don't.

All this is interesting!

Yeah. Cars and trains are a pretty recent thing, too, but they're really good for connecting people and goods. Require a lot of infrastructure, though.

Belmarniss takes plenty of notes.

Infrastructure's probably not the sort of things that ends up in singular sets of blueprints, so she gives an overview of that - roads and tracks she's mentioned, but also bridges designed for them, factories to make them, fuel to make them go - coal or petroleum, which is actually really unideal as a fuel source because it pollutes the air - and people to maintain and repair them when they break. Cars just need one driver, but trains need a team. Laying the railroad tracks throughout Amestris was a huge project that required a lot of precision engineering and math, and was done mostly by labor teams with only marginal help from alchemists.

Belmarniss will find this interesting as long as Emma wants to indulge her.

Bellona's working through the cipher faster than they'd been working on it combined, earlier. Emma might take a break to make a show of going to ask after some texts she knows they don't have, though. Maybe pick up some blueprints even - a lot are stored here, and alchemical ciphers are weird enough no one will really question it.

Belmarniss can refresh Fox's Cunning several times, on request, though infrequently enough that probably Bellona wants to save it for flashes of insight and then catch up on what she laid out in between so she doesn't get ahead of herself.

Yeah; that seems to be the best rhythm for this, especially since a lot of cipher work is flat out tedium.

- And, partway through the day, Belmarniss notices a shadow she can't see through out of the corner of her eye.

She's on her way from the bathroom back to where the natives are; she pauses to look at the nearest plausible article of decor and casts detect magic as unobtrusively as possible, which is to say with a gesture but no words in a sorcerer slot.

Really magical - the aura's strong. Just that one shadow.

Well gosh.

Suppose she sings a charming little song, in a language from another planet, under her breath, signing along with herself, swaying her way back toward the bathroom like she forgot something there, and casts Silent Image, and follows her image very closely, and casts Vanish, and leaves her image looking in the mirror fixing its hair while she tiptoes back to the natives.

It's hard to tell what, if anything, the shadow is doing or looking at. It was possibly originally moving away from the room she's now going to. Still, the shadows near her image get thicker, harder to see through, in addition to the shadow she first saw.

Yup. She ducks into the room with the girls and checks all its shadows while Vanish wears off. Casts Tongues.

Shadows here are normal.

"What's up?"