:I mean the kind of 'I'm sorry' where I think it's not fair and wish it were different, not where I think it's my fault: Sigh. :I don't actually have a better idea to make money, right now. Maybe if the Gate home works I can ask for money from home. My papa's the King so he can probably get us some gold for this project, although for an actual war or anything he'd have to authorize it with the Council and it'd be so much horrible politics: 

:If Maurabel's right metal will stop being money any day now:

:I guess that'd be more inconvenient, but we have salt mines too, there's an old dried-up salt lake or something in the southeast: 

:That'd work then. Or seashells:

:Does it have to be seashells from a saltwater sea? We're not on the coast, we'd have to trade all the way from Acabarrin for real ocean seashells, but we're next to a big inland lake and they've got freshwater mussels and all sorts of things there: 

:I don't know what kinds of shells people take:

:Mmm. I guess we'll find out at some point: 

:Yeah. I think legally you have to accept metal money for your work, in this city right now, but my last owner bought as much salt with it as he was allowed and didn't eat most of it:

:Mmm. I think probably at first we won't be saving much money, if we need to spend most of it on food and on getting you new clothes and all, but I'll keep that in mind for later: She frowns thoughtfully. :Oh, by the way - are you feeling up for making us a woods cabin or something soon? I don't want to overstay our welcome in Maurable's dorm room: 

:I won't be able to do much furniture on the same days I'm working on a cabin but I can make a cabin:

:Mmm. We can figure out a schedule that makes sense for it, I guess: 

:It won't be near a well, if it's out in the woods. I don't know if there's a free spot near a stream we can find:

:I could try to dig a well, maybe? Our kind of magic's decent at that. Also I can use magic to make water safe to drink, if it's from a stream that we don't know for sure is clean: 

:Okay, cool. You can say you have Water if anyone asks:

:What can mages with Water here normally do?: 

:You could purify the water, and maybe find a good place to dig a well? I don't know, I don't have Water:

Nod. :I just want to make sure I don't claim to do something a mage here shouldn't be able to do and make people suspicious: It would be easier to avoid that if she were reading people's minds, however, Ethics. 

:Maurabel seems to have a lot of elements, you can ask her:

:Mmm. I should get around to doing that properly. I haven't been very organized about it so far: 

:She might even know things about Wood I don't, since I never went to school:

:Ooh! That makes sense. ...I'm sorry you didn't get to go to school, that's not fair either: 

:I... never tried to?: he says, puzzled. :I lived in a forest till I was caught. There wasn't a school:

:I guess that makes sense, for elementals. Would you want to go to school if there were a school available? In Valdemar we think everyone deserves an education, my papa made an entire new law about it: 

:I'm not sure. I don't know what a school with elementals as students would be like:

:Hmm:

It turns out that trying to fix all the problems with magical slavery is HARD, Jisa thinks. There are all sorts of related side problems that she hadn't thought of at the start at all. 

She muses on possible elemental schools, not very productively, until Wood is low on magic again and they head back to Maurabel's dorm room.