"No... It's... A second time won't help because of the way we work. Actually-"

Glance. Sigh.

"-Yeah, I feel bad, I'll tell you a little bit if you promise not to act on it for like a week at least, okay?"

"I will make no plans to act on any information you give me, for at least a week. I promise."

"Why're you helping whores for free? Just - sympathy?"

Ame sits back a bit.

"Not sympathy. Professional solidarity was the reason I gave, and that's closer to the truth."

Ame shrugs, thoughtful.

"I... believe in what sex is, to people. I believe in what it means, to make sexual experiences accessible in their own right, for their own sake. I've been a prostitute since I was twelve years old, in a place where the profession is reviled beyond the bounds of sanity. I've been hunted, beaten, robbed, kidnapped... and the law where I'm from would paint me as the victim of rape in literally every sexual encounter I've ever had, but only as a means to the end of demonizing sex work even further; I could expect no sympathy. But I still believe. And I have power. So the answer to your question is. Whores are the people I most want to enable and encourage, the people I most want to make feel good about what they do."

"You feel really strongly about that, huh. Idealist. Of a sort.

Telling you this would get me tortured horribly and then killed if my kin knew about it. I sort of feel like you're going to wreck everything for them and I've got complicated feelings about that but also fuck 'em, I'm done and you can probably guess already. We're shapeshifters. Every one of us. And 'us' is - tens of thousands? More? Not sure. You set my shapeshifting so it considers this the 'real me' and it's not a strain to be this-shaped, but it didn't fix the underlying magic problem. Maybe I could get one more go to pick up a new face right now? To make my not-so-great escape with."

"Of a sort."

Ame holds out her hand.

"Shapeshifters. Why is that a death sentence? And what does the church have to do with anything?"

"No offense but I'd need to trust you way more than I do now to give you the full picture. Trust isn't fast or easy or cheap and I feel like I'm in debt from what I said already."

Focus. Touch. She - shifts - and now she's shorter, wider, more buxom to just barely within her shirt's tolerance, brunette instead of blonde, different face, different accent, different posture.

"This'll do. Got a lot of practice being new people."

What to even call it when she bestows the [mind > body] thing? 'Healing' feels like the wrong word.

"At least tell me which sources of information about this church I shouldn't trust, or which I should."

"...Mm. Well, not themselves, but most outside sources ought to be fine. Don't trust governments that actively promote the Lady. Maybe read some of it anyway to see what uses the tool is being put to... Well. I can probably get what I need now, so thanks. I'd better do my best to vanish before you do anything attention getting with all this. Sorry not sorry for dumping it on you. Maybe we'll run into each other again some time."

"Bye."

Sigh.

Ame heads back to the inn, but before she joins Elizabeth for lunch, she goes upstairs and writes the salient points of what she just learned in her Quest Journal.

Nothing interferes with this.

Elizabeth is reading her shadowhorse spellbook and muttering and scribbling in a journal of her own, in the inn's lobby.

"Hey. Luuunch. New spells are risky, I'm getting nervous, break time."

"Lunch."

Ame's not in the mood to be picky today, either, and will go with whatever Elizabeth's lunch plans are.

Once they're seated, with food in front of them, "I had a confusing conversation today. Do you know anything about this 'church of the grail'?"

Sandwich place!

"Confusing how? They worship the Lady of the Lake, who aids all noble and valiant seekers of the Holy Grail, supposedly. They talk about knights and maidens and monks a lot? The Grail isn't a physical object, it's like, an ideal? They say they have evidence of actual real miracles, no really, but every big church says that."

Ame takes a moment to appreciate the sandwiches. She could so get used to eating like this, to eating food that it's actually possible to tell was possibly alive at some point.

"Huh. That doesn't really make the conversation I had any less confusing." Ame lowers her voice. "Do you have any guesses about why someone might find themselves afraid of being murdered by this church?"

"Not really. Unless they're a criminal somehow, especially a betrayer. They hate betrayal. Someone feels threatened by the Grail Church?"

"That's what they implied." Hm. "...they might've been."

Ame shrugs.

"So hey, you were going to tell me about Windsight."

"Everyone has windsight potential but you need to kinda - meditate and focus on a strong source right next to you to level it the first time, then you can practice by feeling out magic. Once you get that down, you can start nudging the Winds around in little ways. Spells are kind of like sewing mixed with painting and putting together a puzzle, but it's possible to miscast and miscasts can make dhar or do other very not-fun things."

Ame swallows a bite.

"I might need to learn this more urgently than I thought. Can you cast something easy? Or just, do something with a Wind that I can feel?"

"Channeling the Winds without actually casting anything is an apprentice exercise. Not in the middle of lunch, though. Or you could light a torch or brazier and look for aqshy, the wind of fire is the easiest to get a concentration of totally non-magically."

"Probably shouldn't do that in the middle of lunch either."

Despite her words, Ame swallows her next bite and then sinks into a meditative calm, leaving Axiom aside. She already has the sense, she just needs to... open herself to it. She takes each of her other senses, catalogs their inputs, and then sets those aside as well, until only the mana sense is left. It's like being thrust into a pitch-dark room, Ame figures. Blind at first, but her figurative eyes are open; she just has to remain in darkness long enough for them to adjust.

It's not... Exactly her mana-sense. Something adjacent to it. And maybe she's imagining it. But if these vague impressions are to be trusted her fork is just there, tinges of something and something else on it. Elizabeth is right there, something stirring around her head area as she watches Ame, and to the left something is sort of radiating in through the windows.

Ame latches on to this mana-adjacent sense, this must be it.

She lets it fill her mind, fixing each impression and then looking for new ones. This doesn't count as a success until she gets a Skill level...

Like this sudden burst of one of the somethings from the fork shifting and folding and forming shapes in the air?

...Forming letters, something clicks and her mind refocuses. Letters that say 'EAT'.

Her meditation bursts like a bubble as she bursts into giggles.

Elizabeth is laughing too!

"I figured you were trying it! You got it in like, two minutes, gosh."