She looks around. "I haven't really lived around opportunities to buy things that could be said to have a tech level, so..."

"Oh, boy. I'm not sure where to start. Uh... the biggest thing in my lifetime has been that we've started using electricity to do almost all our manual labor for us, but actually you might want to start with the concept of agriculture or private property..."

"I know about growing plants on purpose and owning things. Just lived in a very low-density area."

"Ah, yeah. It was still like that in the country around here not too long ago. Basically in modern society there are all these clever things that turn one kind of movement into another kind - back when they were big enough for me to take a look and understand what was happening it was stuff like building up steam pressure in a closed space to push something that turns a gear that moves something and from there you get, say, vehicles that don't need to be pulled, machines that do laundry, and, uh, somehow if you do this with individual electrons you can use it to transmit information for long distances and display it in refreshable pictures made of tiny lights but I don't understand how those work."

"Wow."

"Yeah! I have to say I'm a fan."

"What would be a good way to earn enough spending money that I could go visit some of the places you mentioned? Is there a chestnut tree for me to try healing conveniently about?"

"...You know, there probably is, I know someone who manages some private woods who I can call about you. Also people usually check ads in newspapers and shop windows and so on, but that's harder than asking friends of friends."

"Why is that harder?"

"Well, your friends are a little more likely to know what you need and recommend you the right person, and people usually like helping their friends. So people would rather hire friends of friends."

"Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd call your someone."

He can do that right now if she doesn't mind waiting; he's got a phone in the other room.

She waits. Tries a little more small sorcery to make sure it works normally.

It still works normally.

After a couple minutes her changeling friend is done with the call. "No chestnuts but he has some other trees with issues and the omens seem good so he says you can come by any day between nine and five. I'll draw you a map, it's not that far."

"Thank you very much. - omens?"

"You know, if you have good luck then divination helps a lot."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense. How much will I get if I can fix the trees?"

"You'll have to talk that over with him but, for context, it's pretty normal for people who are paid by the hour to make ten to fifteen crowns an hour if they're new at something, and more when they have a couple decades of practice at it."

"...an hour?"

"...Ah. Time passes at a constant rate and an hour is a twenty-fourth the time it takes the sun to go all the way around and back to where it started."

"Yes, but why is pay per hour and not per - tree, in this case?"

"It might be per tree - in general piecework is getting less popular relative to hourly wages and I'm not totally sure why, and the last time I did any was decades of inflation ago so I don't have a useful comparison for you."

"Okay. Is it safe enough to just fly straight there?"

"I expect it should be." And he can tell her how to recognize the place and which way to fly for how far.

She thanks him and gets in the air toward the sick trees and their owner.