"And I'm flip-flopping between wanting to do nothing and wanting to get to work, heh. "

"Do nothing. Relax. You can take today off."

So, nothing done except wandering for the rest of that day.

(She's a little twitchy.)

Later, "Think Vasil's fine on her own?"

"Probably. Did Vasil decide on a gender then?'

"Uh, I don't know. She looks like a she to me."

"That's just the aesthetic sensibilities of her builders, probably."

"...Didn't she say she didn't have a gender? But I don't want to call her 'it'."

"'They' is gender-neutral."

She gives an odd look, then shrugs.

"Hmm?"

"I always found English's gender-neutral they weird. This one is, a bit, too."

"Weird how?"

"...Okay so Ostkav genders all its everything. Different stress points in most words for it. Rope is feminine. Rope. If I said it masculine, it'd sound like this and be wrong, rope. I don't have a philosophical objection or anything, it just doesn't register as easily."

Shrug. "It's normal and used for lots of stuff in Laokaban."

"Guess I'd better get used to it then."

"Mmhm."

"Hm. I'm about ready to head back into the room, I think... Will anybody look at me odd if I go jogging? PT is a good habit."

"Nah, you should be fine."

So she goes jogging and does push-ups and similar things in their room later and listens to music and tries to balance on that edge between freaking out and being excited about magic...

...And later, when it's about time to sleep, she tells Kaede, "I would be going slightly insane if you weren't helping me. So, thanks."

She smiles. "I'm glad I can help. I can't imagine how this must feel."

"It's... A lot like the first evacuation, actually? When we were fleeing from Greece. Except I didn't have to spend three weeks on a boat this time."

"...fleeing? Because of the war?"

"Yeah. If you don't kill them quick enough, Neuroi spread this... Miasma. Not to mention all the fire and exploding."

"What's it do? The miasma?"

"Poison... It doesn't harm anything but humans. As if it's attacking the soul or something. Not magic, the Neuroi never registered as magic to me... It's barely visible and doesn't have any kind of scent and if you bottle some and try to bring it to a lab it disappears or decays."