Nod.

Nod in return, and she's off.  She's got a lot to tell Nethys about. 

After prayers it takes her most of an hour of dozing and halfheartedly trying to meditate before she's clearheaded enough for her wizard spells, but she's back down to the mess hall before noon, looking slightly less rumpled.  (The stew smells so good, she's suddenly famished- oh, she forgot dinner last night, didn't she.)

It's actually porridge still at this hour but she can have one.

Porridge:  INTO FACE.  She doesn't even bother Prestidigitating it sweeter until she's halfway through. 

Then she's got nothing on the schedule until noon unless she wants to hide and/or gossip pitch in with the dishes, so it might as well be time to test out whether she's actually got the Knowledge power or not.  (She goes looking for her squad first- maybe some of them found part-orc friends who might be interested, it's going to be really awkward wandering the fortress asking random off-duty soldiers if they want to help with a magic experiment.)

There are plenty of half- and quarter-orcs around; regular humans outnumber them by about fifteen to one but that leaves loads and you can tell who they are because they are colorful.

Okay, she can do this.  She's a cleric of the god of knowledge and this is literally her job.  If none of her squad are around to pawn off the talking part on, she can wander over to a promising-looking card game once it's between hands.

"Excuse me, should anyone care to assist with an experiment?  It will definitely not explode."

This disclaimer is apparently raising a lot of questions that were answered by the disclaimer.

"Artigas suggested I may have an ability to tell things about someone by touch, I've tried it already on him and he remains not exploded.  But I don't know certainly that I have it, as I knew who I was touching, so I hope to learn if I may tell human from part-orc with my eyes closed?"

"You paying?" asks a half-orc.

"I haven't much coin with me, but I can do Mendings and such like?"

"Haven't anything needs it."

"Try Aleix, he's a moron."

"He is!"

"I thank you," and if they're indicating who Aleix is she'll head thataways and try the pitch again.

Aleix is listening to his squadmate tell an obviously fabricated story about a demon dragon that spat electrified acid and was brought down by a single swordthrust to the right weak point in its neck. He is half-orc and he and one of the other listeners are willing to be poked while she has her eyes closed.

Excellent.  She'll sit down to join them- since she knows which of them is on which side, it probably works best if she waves her hand around over the table and they put their hands in its path in whatever order?

It transpires that she can in fact tell them apart with her eyes closed!  This does not mean that science time is over.  It works:

-through gloves

-through armor

-through gloves and armor

-through the bottom of an empty bowl

-not through the tabletop

--not through a bowl someone else is holding (she reads the person holding it)

And then she has proooobably overtaxed their patience a little so she'll do Mending or flavor their stew or whatever and let them get back to dragon stories.

Somebody does eventually say that she must be real Wise if her cleric power works this many times a day.

Aleix likes his stew to taste like cheese.

She winces a bit, but laughs.  "I think it's rather as a cant- orison, I felt when the other ended."  Stew:  is cheesed!

Yay cheese stew!

And then Khalida will go see if whoever's on dish duty wants a hand, because dishes are soothing and at least there's fewer people in the kitchens.

Yup, the dish wizardess will take the help.

Dish dish dish dishity dish.  

(She's still glowing a little bit inside, thinking back to that morning as she settles into the rhythm.  Yeah, so she still can't actually cast a Cure, but- it feels like she's finally made it, somehow, the matter-of-fact way Artigas talked to her like a colleague and not a child or a runaway girl or an explosion risk.  A cleric of the goddess of triage had seen a cleric of the god of knowledge and said yes, that seems like a good tradeoff.)

The next morning while getting his (not very much) pre-dawn news to inform prep, he can bap her with an Owl's.

Sleepy wizard: is here to be bapped.  Her squad all got the rest of the way patched up in yesterday's channels and she hasn't found anyone injured on the way here, so she's just bitten her arm again.

She spends the first few moments of the spell silently going on a very expressive face journey.

(It's incredible- it feels so different and yet at the same time just much more herself, like waking up after her first good night's sleep in years, like the times when she's doing dishes or laundry or whatever and can take a breath and a moment to look at the whole picture but ten times more so-)

"Oh, wow I'm an idiot,"  she says in Osiriani with no particular heat, and switches back to Taldane, "I really ought write my parents, don't let unwise me wuss out of doing such-"

She tugs her sleeve up to study the bite mark, pulls Guidance to her fingertips- it had seemed like the luckiest choice for her first-circle spell- oh, it's so obvious now she can properly think about it, without getting in her own way full of stress and panic:  not quite a conduit, still a cup, but turn that cup outward, make of herself for one moment a fountain...

She wishes that she could keep Detect Magic up to watch as it works, but not desperately; it's not so long until she can get Arcane Sight and see her own magic.  The bite mark fades, not quite all the way, and she pokes at the edges with a small quiet smile.

"It worked, you were right- oh, I ought be writing some of this down-"  She scrambles in her bag for charcoal and scratch paper.

Blai doesn't interrupt her, just signs off on the day's schedule revision.

She scribbles hurriedly for a few moments, muttering occasionally in Osiriani ("oh seven hells that would've been a disaster"), then glances up and remarks, "we ought talk about my being paid," before adding a couple more notes.

They can talk about that when she's done with her face journey, sure.