"...so it's sort of, professionally satisfying? Like making a well-made dagger, except with people?"

"- I guess? Except people are way more interesting than daggers and they have feelings." 

"That really doesn't seem like a feature! It'd be much better if they did not have feelings!"

Shavri is looking at her as though she thinks Carissa is very strange. "But then you wouldn't get people smiling when they feel better?" 

" - I mean, you could make it a condition of helping them, if it's that valuable to you..."

"I sort of feel like we're having two completely different conversations right now," Shavri says, dubiously. "I don't - that's not why, I don't know how to explain it if you don't know the feeling already..." 

" - yeah, that's fair. I think I just - don't."

"Huh," Shavri says noncommittally. She looks sort of sad about this. 

"It's - good you enjoy your job, though."

This is safer ground and Shavri is relieved. "It is! Do you enjoy the work you do for Leareth?" 

"Yeah! I'm just trying to reinvent all the spells that I remember from Golarion, which is usually dangerous, but he made me a powerful protective amulet that makes it safe."

"Ooh, neat! I heard your magic is really different. What sort of spells have you reinvented?" 

She can list them all! She has reinvented Eagle's Splendour and Fly and Fireball and Dispel Magic and Gaseous Form and Rope Trick and Magic Missile and Mage Armor and True Strike and Detect Enchantment and Locate Object and Determine Depth and Greater Detect Magic and she's working on Clairvoyance but she's kind of stuck.

As usual for Velgarth locals, Shavri is less impressed with some spells (Fireball, Magic Missile and Mage Armor can all be done just as well if not better by local mages), and is moderately amazed by spells like Fly and Locate Object, and then jaw-droppingly awed by Gaseous Form and Rope Trick. 

She's sort of bemused by Determine Depth. "Depth of what? Water? That - seems so specific." 

"It also does thickness of walls. I rederived a bunch of random divinations when I was trying to figure out Clairvoyance, hoping I could see a pattern. Haven't cracked it yet, but -" Shrug. "Does Healing involve researching things? Or just treating patients?"

"We do some research too! I've been working with Sandra, she's a mage-student, to study how breathing works..." 

And she's off. Shavri, it turns out, can and will eagerly talk SO MUCH about her Healing research. Which apparently involves some amount of killing mice, but is also pretty interesting. 

Carissa is fascinated and it would literally never occur to her to care about killing mice. "You know, my boyfriend does Healing research, I bet a lot of this would make more sense to him."

"Really! Ooh. Is he someone who works for Leareth too? I didn't realize he had people doing Healing research as well!" 

"I think they're mostly there for emergencies or to patch up the mages if they get hurt, but they do lots of research too, because it's not like being on hand for an emergency uses much of their time. I know a lot of their research is also into emergency medicine sorts of things, fast Healing, but there's some other projects too, studying cancers and studying how embryos develop and studying how to reduce the effects of aging..."

Shavri is vibrating with excitement! "That's so amazing! I wish I could meet him, now, I want to hear all about it -"

" - I mean, I'm sure he'd hire you, if you want, and you could work with everybody on whatever they're up to -"

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that!" 

"Why not?"

"They need me here?" 

"....what does that mean? Presumably if you - decided to go work in some other city or something - they'd - hire someone?"