"Want to find out?"

"Find out yes!!"

Immediate shouldernap.

Caaaaarefully smoothly sitting down on a bench. Mental note to bring the box of blankets down next time.

And after a little less than twenty minutes she's up again and harvesting the second rock.

It produces a different-looking pebble. "Merge no," she concludes.

"Huh, okay." What's a good next thing to try out of all the things she wants to try? Putting a little dab of paint on a rock to see if its 'products' are mergeable from before and after should wait until they have at least three from that rock already so as not to waste effort. Checking two maple seeds from the same tree is a good idea but also a bit labor intensive . . .

Okay, the idea she's just had is going to bug her until she checks. Probably the answer is no and there isn't anything to worry about. 

"Could you make-from that bird, if you wanted to?"

"Make-from bird no!"

"Good." So she almost certainly can't make-from people either and that can of worms can just stay closed. "What do you want to do next? More words? Make more things?"

"More make-from rock," she decides. "Find out merge rock."

Pebble time!

Once they've accumulated three rocks, Ari offers them all to Petal and points out a flat bit of dirt she could merge them on, then watches eagerly.

Petal moves the rocks, one by one, to the flat bit of dirt. They make a neat little triangle.

She nudges one of the rocks into the other two.

The result:

...a slightly bigger, slightly prettier rock. Where the component pebbles were a very ordinary pebbly grey all over with only minor variations, this one has sparkly bits, arranged loosely into a pretty spiral pattern across its surface.

Petal drifts away from it with the air of an experimenter standing back triumphantly from their result.

It's floating about half an inch above the dirt, seemingly unsupported by any active intervention; Petal has never shown the ability to levitate objects besides what she's personally carrying, and she isn't carrying it, and it's already farther from her than anything else she's ever lifted.

"Ooooh." Ari waves a hand over and around and under the sparkly rock, and gently pokes it sideways to see if it resists motion or goes gliding off like an air hockey puck* or what.

*Translator's note: Ari's society has something very similar to air hockey tables, but the game played on them is a single-player rhythm game.

It, ahem, rocks slightly in place when she pokes it. It feels like it's settled in a small dip in the ground to which it is eager to return, except that there is no dip and no ground and slightly more resistance than mere gravity could account for. There isn't quite room under it for an entire hand, but a bit of string or paper passed underneath won't disturb it at all if she tries something like that.

Petal is wiggling delightedly. "Merge rock! Good!"

"Yes, very good!" Photograph photograph photograph. "Do you want to take this back inside or do more things out here?"

"Take inside." She picks it up. It floats half an inch higher than the customary carry position.

Goodness, it's like she's creating some sort of platform it's repelling itself from, or like it's got some sort of structure under itself and Petal is carrying that. 

Something like those!

When they get back upstairs, Petal puts the rock in the hexgrid with the rest of the miscellaneous items and then flops into her cozy nest to sleep.

And while she does that, Ari can investigate! What happens if she takes a whole stack of printer paper and slides one sheet at a time under the floating rock?

It's sort of hard to tell at first but that rock sure does seem to be staying about half an inch above the surface under it. It might be a few paperwidths lower compared to its relative position above bare floor?

What if she sprinkles a thin layer of flour on the next sheet of paper before sliding it in? Does it get disturbed at all?

Not a bit!

Huh. Reactionless forces? Definitely likelier than it seemed two days ago. She puts a finger on the rock and presses gently downward.

It wobbles a bit and seems to... roll out from under her finger, still half an inch above the undisturbed surface of the flour-dusted paper below. As though she squished it down into a slightly bouncy unstable surface and it wiggled away. It's still hovering half an inch above the floor as it rolls sideways a few pebblelengths and then stops.

What if she puts her whole palm down on top of it and and squashes it down?

The ??invisible cushion?? it's resting on compresses some, and then gets harder to compress but still has some give to it, and then stops compressing.

That is so cool. What if she tries to pick it up; does it resist that?