"...Probably worth doing, yeah. You'll do better here if anything. Just feels a bit like... Paddling to nowhere."

"If it was going to be a rest day anyway, might as well make it productive, hey? But you're right, we should at least look for something better. Let's split this up - you take the purse and go shop for armour, and I'll go try and hunt down some leads. Meet up at our inn in a couple hours."

"Sounds like a plan. See you soon." Pause. "...Kiss before you go?"

"Definitely." Kiss.

Abyssia goes with a smile.

The town is open to her. She can make a rather good chunk of change repairing items in the market square, or search for something else.

There's magic here, right? She could use a magic teacher. And someone like that might know about all kinds of things. 

She goes looking.

There is a 'Witch Hut' with an uninformative sign, a bard singing in one of the nicer taverns, a D-rank adventurer she recognizes from the guild lobby showing off some kind of magic trick between drinks, and if she asks around, rumors that one of the locals is a petty Jade Sorcerer who decided advancing further was too risky.

She'll try the witch hut?

Inside the Witch Hut it's dim, and shelves line the walls with all sorts of oddities on them. Everything seems to be piled with junk. Not even magically-potent oddities - there are dolls and forks, eyeballs in jars and wigs, broken arrows and torn books and bundles of feathers. There's a huge iron cauldron in the middle of the room, under a firepit with embers not totally gone out.

"What'cha need, dear?" Says someone who her mind insists wasn't there a moment ago, wearing a huge floppy hat. She looks to be about forty, and is rather short. "Charms, curses, shaking off trouble? Ziggy will fix you proper."

"Looking for magic instruction, actually. Do you do that, or know anyone...?"

"I'm a witch. I could teach you to bargain with spirits and ghosts, to channel through minor spirits with the meaningful sympathies, or sympathetic meanings, of ordinary things, if you like, but your soul looks like you're in a hurry. It's not a thing one masters quickly, just to warn you."

"Yeah, I think I'm in a bit more of a hurry. Enjoy your business."

She ducks out, and starts asking after the petty sorceress.

Oh, she lives in a big courtyard on the roof of one of the downtown blocks and is usually happy to entertain visitors. It's a fairly lovely local landmark, she should visit!

At the courtyard: It's lush here. Not quite a park, more like a wild space inside the town, with a few community garden patches. A few people are walking the path. It's not any warmer here, and the species are still boreal ones, but the trees and bushes look extremely healthy and there's lots of diversity here. There's a greenhouse in the very center too, with a figure bustling around inside it.

She'll go into the greenhouse. 

"Excuse me," she asks. "Are you the Jade Sorcerer?"

"Sorceress, actually, and yes! Help with this trough would you-" She is wrist deep in soil.

"I haven't the first idea what you're doing but I'll try."

She watches and tries to imitate what the sorceress is doing.

"Just preparing the soil! It's not too hard."

She is mixing it up with her hands fairly thoroughly, and then shaping it into a long furrow.

When they're done, "Thank you, I'll be planting later. What do you happen to need a magic gardener for? I can barely manage a bit of healing, but you don't really look injured."

"I'm looking for magical education, actually, and thought you might know where to go. I'm Thorn, by the way."

"I go by Lissa. I'm nooot really a great teacher, I could see if you have the Sight, but anything more and I'd be worried about you... I apprenticed to a woman in Heronshemp but she's almost certainly retired now. I suppose I could refer you to some folks I write to?"

"That would be great, and I'd love to see if I have the Sight."

"Lovely. It'll be guided meditation, and if you sense anything at all you'll gain a level in it soon enough, and that's enough to confirm you have the potential, if not measure your talent. I'd appreciate a little donation for my time, if you don't mind terribly much, though."

"All my money's with the other member of my party at the moment - do you mind if I come back later?"

"That'd be convenient, I can have a glade all ready for you. It doesn't need to be much, a few coppers would do fine."

"Oh, in that case I have a little petty cash still." She offers up a trio of coppers. "And I'll come back when you have the glade set up, or...?"

"Well we could do it right here. There's enough life around. I just thought about finding somewhere more comfortable."