"Excellent! Now here's something a little more challenging -" 

This time she blows a spherical vessel with an elongated neck.

She misjudges how the glass will react to her telekinesis midway through her first attempt and manages to get two bits stuck together that aren't meant to be. She takes a moment to examine the result before looking to her instructor to see what she has to say about it.

"At least it wasn't dangerous. Seems like you could do streamers through the middle though, hm? If you were precise enough. I don't know how your telekinesis functions."

With some practice, yeah. I need a sense of how the glass moves first.

She heats her ruined piece back up a bit and pulls a spike out of the side, telekintically, then smooths it back down and duplicates the effect inside it, and carefully grows a branching spike off of that one, each about a quarter-inch in diameter at the base. That's about my limit at the moment.

"Pretty," comments the glassmaker. "And unique. Might be worth practicing."

"Mmhmm." She focuses, and the branching spike thins out slightly and twines itself loosely around the main one. Lots of things I can do this way. Once I know what I'm doing, at least.

"I'd love to see what you come up with. But if I'm to trust you with my forge, I'd like to see a few more practice pieces first."

Of course.

She starts over with the vessel; she gets it right this time.

"Excellent!"

She watches assessingly and doesn't speak as Deskyl continues.

She does a couple more vases, still slowly but getting faster, and then sets her tools aside. So, another thing I can do is - I have a danger sense; it only works for me and I'm not going to do anything that relies on it with someone else in the room, but if there are techniques that have to be done perfectly or they - explode, or whatever - it'd be worth training me toward that. Is there anything like that?

"Nothing I've done, though there's always new and exciting ways to wreck pieces."

Maybe I'll ask around later.

She starts another vase, a thick-walled cylinder, and draws up spikes on the inside to gently curve and and press back halfway into the glass, forming a vinelike pattern; in a few cases she draws out a spike on the outside, too, as if the vine had grown through the glass, and these she adds rudimentary leaves to.

The forgemaster grins. "Looks great to me. I think... Let's give you the afternoon to make whatever you want, I'll reschedule one of my other students."

She'll continue, then; by the end of this piece she's halved the diameter of the spikes she can pull out, and she's getting reasonably good at drawing more glass through a spike without deforming it, to add extra parts like the leaves. For her next piece she draws a thin tendril up from the bottom of the vase, and then several more in from the sides to meet it, wrapping around each other in a central spire to flow out of the top of the vase and separate again into the petals of a blooming flower. After that, she starts a vessel with a very thick base, and draws the glass up from it into a branching treelike structure that presses against the piece's walls, this time bulging them out slightly rather than appearing to grow through. She spends a little while puttering, after that, looking for a way to do more with the walls of the vessel, and works out how to fold it, and how to unfold it while leaving a slight line, and spends a while experimenting with making a piece look cracked with this technique.

She's getting faster, but she's still not fast by any means, and eventually it starts to get late.

The forgemaster packs Deskyl off around when the sun begins to set, promising to look after her pieces and make sure they cool properly and she'll see her in the morning.

She's supposed to meet DZ - should have a few hours ago, really - but she doesn't want to miss the sunset, or even part of it. She dithers for a few seconds, but sets out for the plaza the droid should be waiting for her in.

The sun has not yet set when she reaches the plaza. Shadows are long. There's still a few people around, but not enough to constitute a crowd.

DZ is sitting on a bench people-watching; Deskyl catches her eye, and then leaps from ground to second-story windowsill to rooftop and settles in to watch the rest of the sunset.

She comes down again when it's done, the last of the color faded into twilight, and meets up with DZ properly to hear what the droid has found them in terms of housing.

There's an apartment with an attached studio on the twentieth floor of a large residential building. It has a west-facing balcony and is not too crowded by other apartment blocks, though it's rather small and a bit expensive. Then there's a bungalow without a studio that's close to the artistic district. Finally, there's an apartment which is has no views or convenient access, but is remarkably cheap - three quarters the price of the bungalow.

DZ expects Deskyl to want the first one, and after a few questions, she's proven right.

The lift is for you, you know, she signs on the way over. I'd like to see you make friends here.

    Ma'am?

You can stay at home or come with me to the studio if you want to, but you don't have to. I'm sure there are other things to do, maybe you'll find something you like.

    Oh. All right.

Good. Let me know if you see anything I'd like, too.

    I will.

There is a whole world available to explore, with jobs and markets and outdoor theatre and gardens and satuary and history. What shall DZ do?

She's not going to go far from home, at first, though she does need to visit the market and get some things for Deskyl's breakfasts. She watches for interesting things on the way there and back - anything pertaining to poetry will catch her eye, or maybe there'll be a library, or some sort of gallery; music will get her attention, too, just for the novelty of a new experience. She'll keep an eye out for classes, too, ideally in practical household things; Deskyl seems satisfied with her plan of eating fruit for breakfast and takeout for dinner, and the local appliances are easy enough for DZ to use for what cleaning she can't readily do by hand, but it doesn't sit well with her that she can't contribute more; she'd like to change that.

There's a number of boutiques at the market with books and glasswork and sculpture and paintings; the selection in the bookshops runs heavily towards novels and heavily towards fantasy. ("The current Power is a Fantasist," says the owner of one of the boutiques. "So writing and the fantastical are in vogue.") There are a few collections of classic poetry, and then a modern one by none other than December! ("Just came out," says the storekeeper. "I don't usually stock poetry.")

There is music in the public square; right now it's a medley of electronica and violin apparently inspired by one Lindsey Stirling, a mortal artist. Classes are harder to find; most of the teaching available is artistic. She could learn to sing, or to cook creatively, or apprentice in a theatre company ("We'd love to have you for the variety.") or learn how to be an author from a dozen different books on the subject. 

Food is easily enough acquired, either as raw ingredients or takeout. There is quite a variety of fresh fruit, ranging from apples and oranges to kiwis and mangoes to something called a vangua that looks a bit like a lime and a pear had a pink child.  

She buys the poetry book, and the requested fruit, and an abstract painted sunset to hang in a spot in the apartment that particularly needs sprucing up.

Music is very good, as it turns out, and she visits the square on each trip out once she finds it. She'll take the theatre apprenticeship, too, if it doesn't conflict with anything else she's doing.

December's poetry book is on the themes of loneliness, community and interconnection. A selection:

Edge-Walking

You learn to keep yourself small.
You live in heartbeats and cracks,
snatched moments and corners.

You say to the world:
It's okay, you can have my body.
It's okay, you can have my time.
It's okay, I'll be what you need.
It's okay.

(That's the bargain.)

You learn to be graceful,
to walk without treading,
to sit stiller than stone.

(Silent as stone.)

You learn to be polite,
to respect the world,
to care quietly for your love.

(Don't give offence.)

You learn to keep yourself small.

(A moment, no more.)

A quiet voice asks:
If this is right, why am I ashamed?

The next thing she hears in the square is an avant-garde work described as "program music" by the musicians' leaflets. It's quite long, she might only have time for a section. 

The theatre group meets at varying times as suit the whims of its participants. She is welcome whenever. She is likely to be typecast as the cool, logical one or put in plays interrogating the concept of personhood, however.