"It's a perfectly ordinary day of the week. Anyway! I should get to work instead of just talking about it. First of all, do you have any garbage, preferably organic based, that you do not want and would like to get rid of? Things from animals you didn't use, food that's rotted, that sort of thing?"

"We have a compost heap out back that we use to fertilise the ground around to grow some aloe but you can feel free to make use of it for whatever."

"Ooo you already have a compost heap! Then if you don't mind I will commandeer it and use it as a starting point, it will be very helpful. Uh, do you have a particular opinion about where I put my house, and also if you're fine living in the obnoxiously alive oasis I am going to make?"

"You probably want to steer clear of the rocknoses and imps? But that's for yourself, I'm not the master of the river or anything."

"Okay! Where are the rocknoses and imps? And what are some other plants you'd like me to focus on, aloe should be pretty straightforward, especially if you've already got some growing around here."

"Rocknoses are up the cliffs to the east, near the iron mines; imps are across the river from us, in the cave mostly but sometimes they venture out."

"All right, I'll keep an eye out for them. And keep my bow handy. Where do I go to clean this?" She motions to her now-empty bowl.

Taharqi hands out a hand to take it from her.

".... Fiiiiine. Thank you. But I will earn my keep even if I don't do dishes," she sniffs, and hands it over. Now to get the rest of her clothes on! Like boots, boots are important.

Taharqi and Sendhei do not seem to agree with this assessment; Sendhei gives Taharqi his bowl and gets back on his feet to start stretching, and Taharqi goes to the door that leads outside. "I'll show you the compost heap," he tells Saevetei.

"Sure, thanks! But give me time to get my clothes on, yeah? Or I will be bright red by the time this day is through."

"Sure, meet you outside."

Her clothes all go on, and then out she goes.

"Are you still willing to help, by the way? Because I could use cuttings of, uh. Every unique plant I can get my hands on."

He has washed the bowls with river water by then.

"Every plant? Sure, I can do that."

"If possible! It's not a big deal if something is missed, but having a variety of starting materials will give me more to work from and I won't have to bully plants quite so much! Aim for large differences in plants over getting six different varieties of cacti, I can still use six different varieties of cacti, but there's less overall gained from it."

"Got it. I don't think there is a lot of variety here but what little exists I can get you. How much of each kind?"

"I don't actually need a very large part of them, I can work from very small pieces. Instead the constraint is that I do still need it to be mostly alive. So, not too dried out and within a couple of hours of taking the cutting. I can go around and gather a couple of different variety of plant and show you how to give them the best chances? General rules of thumb are that water almost always helps, and larger cuttings take longer to die."

"Well, I was thinking that," and he gestures around expansively, "I'd start with the kinds around this place. That's at least ten within a minute's walk. Within two hours by horse I could get more."

"Sounds good! And then I let you loose to go adventuring to find new and slightly more exotic plants."

"Perfect. Anyway, the compost heap is just outside here, next to the furnace." He walks around the house to the opposite side of it from the one they arrived from. There is indeed a stone furnace there, cold and quiet, and then a bit farther away from the house so as to not get the smell close is indeed a compost heap.

Compost heap! She's excited. Look at it, it's so gross and smelly, that makes it absolutely perfect.

"I am going to take a minute to bully the compost heap to make it better at composting, and then we can go running off to pick pretty plants together," she announces, retrieving her athame. "Mostly it will just involve me bleeding on the compost heap and then sitting around looking very serious, so you're free to uh. Go do less boring things for a bit, if you'd rather."

The cut on her thumb's already healed over, leaving unscarred skin. The benefits of being in a body that can remake itself from scratch; she gets to skip all of the annoying scab phases. Like having a painful cut on her thumb. A bleeding injury there is good for archery, since it lets her modify arrows just before she looses them, but it is just not practical for day to day work. Mostly because she uses her thumbs for things. So this cut gets to be on her forearm! Just a little one. Ow. And then the compost heap can be bled upon! Not very much, just a little.

"When I get bored I shall leave but for now I want to watch."

"Okay, suit yourself. I guess I can explain as I go, this isn't actually very interesting to do. I've done it a lot."

She sits down next to the pile of rotting garbage, and closes her eyes. As she works, she explains. "So, the bleeding is for a connection. It's possible to connect to things without bleeding on them, but it would involve directly sticking my hands in the garbage, and I'd really rather just not. Not to mention the connection that way is weaker and more tenuous, and it's easier for me to lose hold of. So, I skipped that. And now that I'm connected to it, what I am aiming to do is magically shove it to work faster and better, and sort of. Mm. Streamline the process. But right now I'm setting up a decent environment to work in before I properly get going. Which mostly involves me rudely telling everything living in here to stay out of my way or I will squish it beneath my proverbial magical heel. Fear me, compost."

"I thought the things living there helped with the... composting."

"They are! I am not killing them, I am crushing them beneath my heel, there is a difference. Mostly they're fine with the iron fisted rule of Queen Saevetei of the Compost, and just go with it. A lot of what I'm doing is reducing the in-fighting of the living things present. Nudging things away from competing with each other and more into working together."