:Maybe tomorrow I can figure out a way of doing it where Adamant can feel what the mage wants to do but get to decide whether or not to obey it: Sigh. She starts unpicking the set-command. It's actually easier to undo because she did it so carefully. 

:I don't think there's - time to intercept the control, like you're thinking, but if we have elementals willing to experiment we can try stuff:

:All right. - Adamant, I've undone it now: She sort of wants to apologize about having to but that also seems awkward so she just fidgets. 

:I'll go return her, if we don't need her for anything else, and I can show you where I live and figure out our plans for the next couple days: "Adamant, you ready to go back?"

Adamant sighs, and hands Maurabel her book of poetry, and follows her out.

Jisa waits, feeling obscurely guilty. 

Maurabel doesn't look happy about it either when she comes back. :C'mon:

Jisa nods and follows her, silently. 

Maurabel lives in a little pocket of a room, with wood arranged into convenient shapes by magic to hold lots of books on the walls and loft her bed high enough that Jisa can sleep under it. There's a cylindrical rock stuck in the ceiling that Maurabel reaches up to touch when they walk in, and it starts circulating warm air against the evening chill and glows a little. There's a glass window. "I'm going to try talking out loud and trying to make it clear what I mean mentally, might help you pick up the language. They're thinking of building a whole new dormitory with bigger rooms," she remarks, "but for now there's enough demand for student remodeling services in town that nobody's put together plans for it, so we trick out our little nooks nicely. I don't know what you're used to, since your magic is different."

:This is nice!: She peers around. :Our rooms are bigger but less - magical, once they exist, we use magic to build sometimes in Haven but it doesn't stick around this way. We don't have very many mages: 

:Haven't figured out what to eat during pregnancy, or is it some other less cooperative thing?:

:Pretty sure it's not that, it's been studied a bunch. I think mostly it runs in families, like eye colour or whatever? They're trying to get Gifted people to have more children now. And then there's a different problem where babies are just born with potential and it stopped awakening for mages, but - I figured out how to awaken my mage-potential recently. So hopefully we can do that more: 

:Congratulations!:

:Thank you! Everyone was mad at me because it was sort of dangerous but I'm pleased with myself about it: 

:I like being a mage. I mean, apart from the whole enslaved elementals thing, which isn't something that me in particular being a mage caused:

:Also you being a mage might help free a lot of elementals someday, since you want to and this way you have more power: 

:That's the idea, though your thing will work way faster than waiting to get so old that I can't hang on with Stone magic and whatever techniques have been invented in that time:

:Mmm: Jisa yawns. :Er, is there a privy around?: 

:Outhouse, back out the way we came and hang a left and it's the clay building with the triangles daubed on:

:Thank you: Jisa ducks out and tries to follow these instructions while looking unobtrusive. 

The outhouse turns out to have a bunch of seats all in the same place, as though relieving oneself is meant to be a social activity, but the other person in there has brought a book and doesn't bother her.

She...supposes it's not really that different from the Heralds' communal bathhouse or something, it's still kind of weird but eh. 

She hauls herself back to Maurabel's room after, yawning even more, and it's not until she's slipping under the bed that she remembers there are totally still some people somewhere in the city with set-commands on them not to chase the escaping elemental. Bother. She'll remember to go find them and fix it tomorrow. 

In the morning Maurabel produces dates and lentils out of a cupboard and cooks them together with magic. "I need to go shopping," she muses. "You sleep okay?"

"Better," Jisa says cheerfully; she's trying to speak out loud whenever she remembers the words. :I need to go - handle some other things: she adds in Mindspeech. :And then look for the Adamant or the Glass I rescued before, and if I can't find them I guess I should find one and try to rescue them while the owner is asleep: 

:Make sure they're not just in custody of a student and actually belong to the school, we're out and about taking odd jobs a lot of the time for practice and to pay the teachers and for pocket money:

:How do I tell? ...I guess the elemental would know, right, I can ask them: