As she's depositing him outside the guest room area, Savil appears. She looks harried and distracted. "...Oh, Lucy, Wilbur. Are you...?" Meaningful glance in the direction of the building with Lancir's office. 

"Uh huh."

Savil switches to private Mindspeech. :How did your talk with him last night go, then? Mine was...interesting: 

:He wants to keep it a secret while he figures out politics. And our minds look really weird to Mindhealing Sight. And we're to start this morning. And it's a really good thing Gala's body was right at his feet and there'll probably be enough of her in the urn too.:

Savil stops in her track. :Oh, gods, I did not think of Gala and all and I'm an idiot: She rubs her temples. :Honestly, I...think I was kind of not-thinking about the details. But that's really good: 

She makes a face. :My conversation was... Well, first he chewed me out for unilaterally deciding to dig up Tylendel's grave while passing it off as Heraldic Circle business. He pointed out that I am not very good at politics or tact and could easily have offended Vanissa badly: 

:Speaking of which it would probably have been good if I had known Tylendel had a twin when we were digging up graves anyway. I'm a twin, I don't really wanna think about what losing Wilbur would be like. Um. I'm not mad at you. I knew you were traumatized and I was deliberately not asking questions. But I wish I'd known.:

Another flinch. :I really wish I'd thought to tell you. Anyway. I told Lancir that I was aware that Vanissa's reaction could have been a lot worse, and that I didn't particularly want to wait for a more tactful person to ask, because, well, Van. He agreed that was fair. So I guess we're fine. I am glad I somehow managed not to horribly offend her although I'm not sure how, I really am untalented in that department: 

She reaches to take Van's hand. :Anyway, I'd best let you get to it: 

:Yeah. See you later.: 

And with Van handled she turns back human and re-clothes herself and goes to find the promised lab setup. 

Lancir meets the two of them out front, and he brings them to a room around the back of what he explains is the Healers' Collegium – the building that houses the lessons for students, not patients. It's meant to be used for alchemy-type work, and has its own door, not passing through any hallways, and very good ventilation to the outside. It does have a nice big long table. There isn't indoor running water, but he shows her the nearest pump outside, less than ten yards from the door, and there's a bucket to transport water. And all the glassware she requested; Savil was up late making some of it, the rest is all just borrowed from existing Healing research. No one else should have any reason to use the room anyway, and he's had the dean of Healing mark it down as taken for the next week.  

He's found everything on their chemicals list that Lucy will need for the first day, and promises he's working on the rest. 

"Thank you very much." 

And then she gets to work. 

The first step is to isolate the Tylendel-stuff and Gala-stuff from the rest of the ash. She fills the bucket, purifies the water, and fills several pieces of glassware partway full, then refills the bucket again just so she won't have to stop in the middle of something for more water. She carefully funnels the contents of the urn into a larger piece of glassware, then rinses the urn with purified water a few times to ensure she gets the maximum quantity of relevant ex-biomass. She stirs the container, evaluates the thickness of the current mixture, adds some more purified water, then sets it to heat. Then she washes the funnel, positions it over an empty piece of glassware, makes sure everything is stable, and then, carefully, over the funnel, bites her wrist open. 

Once the glassware is full of ichor, she allows her wrist to scab over, then washes the funnel again. She checks the temperature of the water-and-ash mixture and takes it off the fire. She dips her finger in a beaker of purified water and draws a sigil on the table, then sets the mixture down on top of the sigil. She lets it cool like that for a moment while she measures out a handful of the first chemical, then pours it into the beaker. The contents of the beaker immediately turn a bright red and fwoomf out a ring of smoke in the same color. She nods and sets it over the fire as she measures out and mixes more dry ingredients and the beaker slowly changes to a dark purple. When it darkens so much it's almost black, she takes it off, places it over another water sigil, adds one of the mixture piles, stirs it some more, lets it sit for a while, and then pours it through a filter into another piece of glassware, discarding the sludge left on the filter. 

She repeats variations on these steps for several hours, until finally, shortly before noon, she smiles triumphantly and puts what's left on the filter in another piece of glassware, adds some more water, and sets them both on the fire. She stretches, goes out to the pump to wash, and goes looking for lunch. 

Neither Savil nor Vanyel are there. When she gets back, though, Lancir is waiting inside. "Sorry, didn't want to interrupt. I have the rest of what you wanted." Some of it is plants that have the chemicals rather than the chemicals themselves in pure form. 

"Thank you!" 

And she gets back to work. 

Now, though, while something is on the fire, or cooling, or otherwise having-to-wait, she chops plants and soaks them and dries them and grinds them and arranges them into complicated arrays, then stabs a finger in the center, causing parts of the dust to fly inwards towards her finger. 

Night falls, and she works by firelight. The two vessels containing significant quantities of the earthly remains of Tylendel and Gala are poked and prodded, poured in and poured out, sigils drawn on and under. On several occasions she pours quantities of ichor into them and swirls them around until the colors settle. She boils off water and goes out for more. She sweeps the dust of removed-water-impurities and the parts of the plants that are not the chemicals she needs into the wastebasket beside the table. It gets fuller and fuller. She barely notices when the sun rises. 

Midmorning, after she's finished extracting the chemicals she needs from the plants she was given, she finds herself at loose ends while ichor-bolstered beakers simmer. 

:Yfandes? I'm slightly at loose ends. Is this a good time?:

:Oh? Now’s fine. We’re just in the gardens: She sends an image of a secluded bench behind lots of rosebushes, and a sense of the direction.

Lucy dumps a bucket of water over herself to suppress the smell of alchemical fumes and heads over. 

Vanyel is sitting with Yfandes. He isn’t crying right now but he clearly was at some point in the last hour. He doesn’t seem to notice Lucy’s approach. 

She sits down next to him and hugs him. 

He lets his head rest on her shoulder for a bit. 

:This is so stupid: he sends finally. :I can't DO anything. I...wasn't this much of a mess before, I swear, I could do magic and help people and...why can't I do anything now? Should be - good news - what you're working on. Why is everything worse: 

:Because hope is scary.:

He starts crying again. :I wish - I could handle scary things better: 

:I mean, you do have a massive hole in you. I realize under most circumstances it might not be helpful to point that out because having a good reason doesn't solve the problem itself, but.: 

:We're on the last stretch. We got through all that travel and now it's just a couple more days. And you know what? No matter how much the next couple days suck they will eventually be over.:

:I'm trying to remember that. And... Thank you: And Vanyel will hang onto her for as long as she has before she needs to back and resume her work. 

That will be about half an hour, and then she kisses him on the top of the head and hurries off to attend to her beakers before something boils over. 

She continues to measure and pour and mix and draw sigils out of water all over the place. She snatches another hour in the afternoon to go hug Vanyel. 

Night falls, and she keeps working, pacing and humming and reading when she has a little spare time because Vanyel is asleep and there is nothing she can do about him. 

The sun rises, and the colors in the beakers have begun to diverge. One is consistently a sort of bluish color, and the other one maintains various shades of red. 

The sun ascends, and Lucy adds the last of the ichor, and watches. 

The sun crests the apex of the sky and finally, the last of the moisture in the two beakers boils off, leaving one a sparkling sapphire blue and the other a deep, brilliant carmine. 

Lucy shrieks in victory, raising her fists in the air. 

:You guys! I DID IT!!!: she calls to Vanyel, Savil, Yfandes and Kellan. :I haven't said the incantation, I don't think they ought to wake up in a laboratory with just me, but I'll be right over!!!: 

She stoppers the beakers carefully, then hikes her skirts up and runs towards the relevant parties as fast as her biped form will take her. 

By the time she reaches the guest-rooms building, they're all out front together, Savil in the lead, holding Vanyel's arm. He seems like he might fall down without it. 

:On reflection: Savil sends, :I think we'd better do this in a Work Room with shields. And wait for Lancir. If he, er, panics – if either of them do, honestly – that's a lot of Gifts that could get thrown around. Follow me: