He makes the efficiency modifications he can to his spells - well, or takes notes on them, for any change major enough that he would need to actually redraw it in his spellbook. 

He tells Parmida that he thinks the magic item is worth saving up for, though it might take a very long while. And - he's not second level yet, of course, but once he is, even a couple of minutes seems worth having sometimes. If he plans exactly what part of his notes to review, marks out the places where he can feel that there's a critical insight just barely out of reach.

Parmida is an excellent sounding board and he tells her so and maybe she'll feel less out of her depth after a while. 

A Headband of Vast Intelligence that does just one standard deviation - weaker than the spell, which does two - will cost 4,000gold. If he learned how to craft magic items he could do it for just the cost of materials, which might be half that. It's an astounding sum of money and Parmida boggles at him a bit but she doesn't argue. 

When there are revolts somewhere far away in the Kelesh Empire and troops from Osirion are marshalled to be sent off she thinks he is a genius. 

The wet season comes again. 

Rahadoum is having a civil war.

He tells Parmida that at some point it won't seem like an astounding amount of money at all, because the rest of the world is going to slowly piece itself back together (with or without the help of the god who tried to save it and whose murder left vast destruction in its wake instead), and they're both improving pretty quickly as wizards; he's definitely learning faster than the other wizards in town; and in normal times, a couple who are both wizards and levelling up can make quite a good income. 

Once in a while he still lets her borrow his spellbook, this time so she can try one of his first-level spells. 

He gauges how hard it is to prepare his first-level spells each morning; every once in a while he tries to prepare a third one, just to see if he can.

...He can guess, a little, at how much harder second-level spells will be, just by noticing that there's a big gap before the next circle of stable spell configurations. He doesn't think he's there yet, and it's about more than just reserves so he can't turn two first-level into one second-level spell, but he thinks he'll get there sooner than most wizards would. 

He finds out the price to copy the intelligence spell from a wizard who has it, and of the ink, which it'll need more of. Asks Parmida, who manages does all their household finances, how many weeks or months of their usual expenses it's equivalent to. 

They're making about fourteen silver a day doing laundry service and occasionally selling extra meat, and saving four silver from that, most of it's going towards food and a bit towards rent. The sixty gold he'd need (forty for the ink, twenty for the chance to copy it) will take them five months. "But Saba's going to need new clothes, before then."

"I understand." 

He considers if there are ways to earn extra money. Neither of them is spending all their time on laundry, and he can't really think about magic study from dawn to dusk, it tires his head out too much. Also they both have the somewhat-rare skills of reading and writing fluently. Are there any neighbours who would pay something to have their children educated? Or neighbourhood women who would like to learn to do the household books? He knows no one has a lot to spare, right now, but many of their neighbours have a little to invest in a better future. 

They can teach children some lessons for cheaper than the temples do it. Make a little bit more silver. Get there in four months, not five. 

He can get three first-level spells in a day, mostly by cleverly making the spells more efficient rather than because he's increased his reserves.

There's a civil war in Cheliax. 

He is not at all surprised. It still hurts. He cries more at night for the next while. It probably seems explicable to Parmida; it's his homeland. 

(He is blind and deaf and small and weak and clumsy and he can't do anything, the circle of the world he controls isn't much bigger than their tiny room, and - it's going to get better, he already has so much more than what he started with, and yet. Too little, too late, and he's never going to recover whatever is lost this year.)

He pushes his magic hard, every day; he knows that this is the best way for now to increase his reserves and his ability to channel power, so that he'll actually be able to cast his intelligence-boosting spell when he has it or not too long after. 

Saba is - four, probably going on five. He's still small for his age but at least he's growing at all and he can count and read a little, Aroden makes sure he has practice, and write his name and a few simple words. 

By the time he can afford the intelligence-boosting spell he can prepare it, though only barely; he's winded and has a headache and wants a nap once he gets it stabilized and into the spellbook for the day.

The cosmic blight ringed by jet-black flames in Sarkoris turns out to be a tear in the fabric of the world or something. It opens to the Abyss. There are a lot of demons coming through it. Sarkoris is not totally sure what to do and would like some help; Lastwall is trying. 

People are calling the place where Lirgen and Yamasa used to be the Sodden Lands.

(When he hears the news about the cosmic blight, he goes quiet and still and stares at the wall for the next half-hour, not speaking, and the frightening look is in his eyes again, starker than it's ever been before. And then he shakes himself out of it and goes on with his day, because there is currently nothing he can do. Either Lastwall and Sarkoris will handle it or they won't. He tells Parmida that it would be in everyone's interest for Osirion to send some help, even though Sarkoris is far away, because this isn't going to get better on its own. But, of course, he has no standing with the government of the Kelesh Empire at all.) 

He will prepare his precious, scrimped-for spell, and then take a nap and have some tea and ask Parmida to rub his neck to ease the headache. And then he reviews his notes and looks for a place where he's almost, almost seeing some underlying symmetry in the magic, almost linking up the understanding locked away in his mind because it's too much for a human brain to hold. There are a few options, actually, but he starts with his illusion spell, he thinks there have to be one or more nearby stable spell configurations, castable as a human, basically the same underlying magic but it has to be - folded up - differently. 

He writes down where he is and takes out a blank page, holds it ready. Tells Parmida he may want to talk out loud at her and have her remember it.

He casts the spell. 

- yes, he can see it once he's a little bit smarter, there are a couple variants that should also work and be stable, very very similar, just with slightly different scaffolding making different parts of the illusion persistent without ongoing attention -

- and a lot more comes rushing back, too, with his brain a little closer to big enough to hold it - 

- locking bits of himself into the configuration that was almost the same thing as an agreement, among gods, nailing down all of the mutual commitment-shapes of help or nonintervention that he'd need - he must've missed something but if he wasn't smart enough to notice it at the time he's definitely not going to notice now -

- he didn't intend to break prophecy, himself, it hadn't been a plausible outcome of his plans, but it would've changed some of those commitment-shapes, built as they were around the ways the gods could see each others' future actions -

- the spell wears off. 

He lets himself consider the god-agreements for ten seconds and then shoves it away, it's not relevant right now, not yet when he's still struggling to get by on the scale of weeks and months and one neighbourhood. He scribbles down the scaffolding differences in shorthand, talking out loud to Parmida, probably not especially comprehensibly.

He's tired and triumphant and also part of him, the least human part, is quietly despairing. 

He'll have to draw out the spell-notation carefully, later, and maybe he can sell just the notes to other wizards, since he can't yet afford to actually put it in his spellbook, they spent nearly all of their savings on his intelligence-boosting spell. 

They're kind of suspicious that it won't work, if he can't cast it himself, and don't want to waste the ink on it in the meantime. Most of the time when wizards try inventing their own spells they blow up in their face, sometimes very literally. 

That's pretty reasonable of them, honestly.

This one won't take as much ink; he can go back to scrimping and saving for it. Kind of an absurd level of their expenses are magic ink and copying spells, but he tells Parmida this is an investment, and if they dare to invest in the future now when so many people are scraping by one day at a time, they're going to be ahead when things start to improve. He's willing to bet that the worst is over at this point, although it's still possible that a civil war will land here as well, and he's keeping an eye out for the signs. 

He sits down with Parmida to look at his first-level spells and see if she can think up any sellable uses of them. If the riding horse can be ridden by other people, they could sell that to people who want to travel further than they can walk, or transport something heavier than they can carry. Will anyone pay for a floating disk to carry furniture or something? He also has the telekinesis spell, which he now knows is called Unseen Servant, and he'd like to practice it more anyway. 

She could take up house-cleaning, made more efficient by the Unseen Servant, if he doesn't mind her cleaning peoples' houses, it's less respectable than taking in laundry since she'll be in their house and conceivably could end up alone with someone though obviously she would leave. They could go to the stables of a noble house and ask if they'd want to use Mount, maybe for any riding they don't want to risk their real horses on. They'd need better clothes if they want to offer that; she's worn all her dresses rather thin, and magic can mend them but not make them look good as new.

He doesn't at all mind her cleaning people's houses, unless she's worried that it could be harder to transition to other business models later if she's seen as less respectable, but he trusts her sense for that. He would need to cast Unseen Servant for her, though. 

How much would it cost to get materials for new clothes? If it's much less than the cost of ink to test out his invented spell - which he is very sure isn't going to explode, he just needs other wizards' trust of that - then it makes sense to do that first as an investment. 

Nice clothes will be a couple of gold, so cheaper than the ink for his invented spell. She thinks not being very respectable might affect his plans eventually but he could take another, more respectable wife at that point, and it's not going to affect her except insofar as it affects him.

His sense would be that they should save for nicer clothes first, then; if cleaning houses will let them get there much faster, he's fine with that. He doesn't think it's actually all that likely that ten years from now when he's starting to get anywhere, anyone will remember or care that his wife cleaned for a few months during the worst couple of years after the storms, and the fact that he used necromancy to feed his neighbourhood would surely be a much bigger deal. Though if he's wrong and misreading Osirion norms here, she should tell him.

She can ask around if people are wanting books copied again now, too, he has that cantrip and he can teach it to her too, it's not a lot of ink. 

She can clean houses and copy books, then, and they can get a nice outfit each and go ask around if anyone'll pay for Mount (some people might on occasion, and ask how to reach them when those occasions arise), and they can get together enough money for more ink, more spells -

- she does not complain but she hasn't really regained any of the weight she lost, and she sleeps soundly enough it never wakes her anymore when he cries.

He is perhaps a little preoccupied, and he doesn't notice right away that anything is wrong. Saba is putting on weight and growing, which is his main concern, and - by default he doesn't pay attention to the same things that humans do. 

After he's inked out the new variant on Silent Image, though, and put it aside to test the next day, he blinks and orients and looks at her. Hugs her. "I love you. I think we are going to be all right. ...Are you taking good care of yourself? You look..." He isn't sure what. "You look tired." 

"Is it going to be - years, of this, do you think -"

"Of everyone being very poor and everything being very hard? ...It might be. I think we are lucky to have come through as well as we did - and much of that thanks to your cleverness." He touches her shoulder, strokes her hair. "But, yes, our life needs to be a pace we can hold, though I think in five years we ought be much better off. Should we slow down a little? I - I need you, Parmida, if I am going to build anything out of these ruins. And I need you healthy and - and happy." 

Sigh. He hadn't really thought of it, because his burning, desperate motivation isn't going to run out for a long time even at this kind of frustratingly slow pace, but - of course it's hard for someone whose entire life before now was better.

He looks into her eyes. "Should we take some days off sometimes, just to - be together? You should definitely eat more. We have enough capital to hold us, now, I am not in a desperate hurry to have more spells." 

She looks - awfully uncertain, at the idea that they take some days off to be together. "Maybe we could try that and see if it helps. I've been trying to eat more - it's just that we're also doing a lot more walking -"

"I know." He's thinner than he was, too, although he walks less than her since so much of his time is spent on mage-research. "I think we should take - a month, say, and not try so hard to save up for new spells, you can work a little less and rest a little more, and hopefully at the end of it both of us will be less tired - and we will know if the world is better too."

Another sigh. "I really hope that the crops are better this year. Though...I am a little worried, too, about what will happen when people are no longer desperately malnourished but things are still quite bad. I think they were too tired to riot before, but that could change before everything there is to riot about is mended." 

She nods, uncertainly. "We can try that if you would like."

They should take the next day off, then, because they've just finished a very long marathon of investing in the future, and Aroden is pretty confused about how people who aren't him work, but probably investing in the present sometimes is important too.  

They wake up, and he tells Parmida that he doesn't want her to do any work at all today. He wants her to do only the things that she most wants to do, and he is hers for the rest of the day - his magic, his mind, whatever she wants most right now, he will try his best to do it for her. He apologizes for not really having any idea how to pamper a woman properly, but - can he make her breakfast? (He can cook, even if she does all of it normally and his cooking is probably not as good.)