"I don't think this is worth it unless you can get much snazzier effects than 'reduced reliance on structural elements'. I rebuild my dress pretty often and I usually notice if I put a circle in a suboptimal place by how magical I feel, not by whether I am on fire."

"That is very fair. I mean, you can get much snazzier effects, the Correspondence is very versatile, but I don't know what kind of snazzy you're looking for exactly."

"Uh, I don't have anything specific in mind? What do you do with it?"

"--I don't, actually, do that much with it in practice, honestly. I innately know how to speak Correspondence fluently, but--knowing how to speak it and knowing how to do magic with it aren't quite the same thing. It's like--speaking versus singing, sort of? And it's not hard to figure out how to sing, but there's a difference between being able to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and being able to sing opera. So I've figured out how to do things like this," she smooths down her dress, "and I've had lessons in how to fight with it, in case I ever had to tangle with the likes of Veils or the Thief of Faces, and if there was some specific thing I wanted to aim at I could probably figure out how to get it done, if not with maximal elegance, that's how I figure I'll figure out how to get us back where we came from someday, something like that could take a while, but for most of what I've had to do so far in my life my innate abilities have mostly been enough."

"Do you know what other people use it for?"

"I think the Judgments use it for, like, approximately everything, except the things they have other people do instead. Like, they think moving is beneath them, approximately all the things they do involve speaking Correspondence instead of taking other kinds of action. But it can't do superluminal travel, at least I don't think so, that's something that Messengers can do that Judgments can't and the way Messengers do it does not involve speaking Correspondence."

"I lack... context. For instance, I don't know what Judgments do do, so 'they do it all with Correspondence' doesn't help me much."

"Yeah, sorry, I, actually don't know that much about it either? I haven't actually spent that much actual time on the Surface talking to my grandfather and we had other stuff to talk about."

"That's fair. Do non-Judgments besides you do magic with Correspondence?"

"Yeah, it was one of the Masters who taught me how to fight. Mr. Irons. They're--not the kind of person you can trust to be ethical unsupervised, but they are the kind of person you can trust to follow their incentives reasonably. I realize this doesn't sound like much but it's better than a lot of them and, like, I don't just mean 'will cut out unethical things in exchange for gifts and prizes,' I mean like noticed who I am as a person after a reasonable conversation about it and started dismantling unethical things before I even found out about them."

"Xander is right, you'd be concerning if we didn't know your thing was resurrecting the dead."

"Should I be concerned about that? Lots of people don't realize things they're doing are bad and if I'm doing bad things without realizing I want to know about it so I can stop."

"Uh, I don't know. I haven't seen you doing anything definitely bad, what I think we're picking up on is something more like - signs that your process is not necessarily very methodical, in a way that, against a backdrop containing people different from those you're used to, might lead to destabilizing things better left stable or adjusted gently."

"Yeah, that sounds fair. I'm trying to be more methodical but, uh, it is not something I have had a lot of practice with." 

"It sounds like you accomplish a lot of cool things! I just don't have particular reason to think this system is governed by Space Entities and not, say, democratically elected politicians."

"Yeah, that's reasonable. Usually when I'm trying to accomplish something I'll find out halfway through that it has a dozen prerequisites I couldn't have anticipated, and maybe 'usually' is an overstatement depending on how you define 'accomplish' but it is at least often enough that methodical does not really describe how I have achieved anything. I will try not to destabilize things better left stable but, uh, I am really glad to have you along to sanity-check me."

"Happy to help."

"Thank you nonetheless for--being the kind of person sane enough that it's possible." 

"You're welcome!"

(Oh no Isabella is sane and cute and Lucy has not hugged anyone in much too long. Okay, time for Hello Victorian English Repression My Old Friend.) 

Lucy pulls out one of her new notebooks and starts scribbling in Correspondence about what she's learned today, both in terms of science and in terms of not immediately escalating to stalking up to people in her best impression of an angry goddess and demanding they cut it out. 

Isabella also notebooks. Xander bought a snack cake at the store and eats that.

Scribble scribble. DNA! Stellar plasma! (which Isabella mentioned earlier but Lucy sort of assumed was a kind of ichor, not Like Gas But Moreso) Other science stuff! Democracy! 

Not immediately destabilizing things. Hmmm. Best-case scenario she waltzes up to some people in charge and goes "hey I can raise the dead!" and they're like "Awesome!" but this is probably not that likely on account of the thing where they are letting the air get poisoned in places where people live. Maybe best plausible case scenario is that they're like Irons, not actually good people but happy to follow the road of their best interests away from people getting hurt if Lucy can curve that road appropriately. How does she do that when dealing with random humans that do not have grudges against people she's already thwarting and also old injuries to fix. Probably raising their personal dead loved ones, right, she already talked about that, don't get so caught up in comparing people to Masters that you forget they probably usefully have those. Okay, that maybe solves this problem, if not poisoning people is something simple and easy that they can exchange for fabulous gifts and prizes, but if they don't continue not poisoning people when she's not around to supervise then she can't super leave and still consider the problem solved...part of the problem here is that she doesn't really know what the problems are besides people being dead, and with this many billions of people she can't solve that problem at scale until she has her own light, which is going to take A While no matter what. 

She writes down her current idea of how the light should work, including the breeds-true bit Isabella pointed out, then closes the notebook and her eyes and meditates on light. 

Eventually Xander hugs his sister goodnight and goes to his room to sleep.

Isabella climbs into bed and bags herself.

Lucy snuggles up in her blankets and thinks about light some more until sleep claims her. 

Morning finds her scribbling thoughtfully in her notebook some more.