"If it's going to lean very far in that way, I might leave, make and sell artifacts until I can afford to outright commission this thing from someone else."

"It won't if you don't want to," he shrugs. "But there's more pay if you do and then you get to be part of the Craftspeople Guild."

"What kinds of things does that guild do for you?"

"It... helps, in general? Like, find places, and if you're in it you can announce that and people will know you got good training and know what you're talking about and contacts and stuff."

"Anything stopping me from being in more than one guild?"

He furrows his brows. "Uh, depends on the guild? Did you never—I don't know, talk to anyone?"

Seems like his nervousness is limited to when his teacher is around.

"Guilds weren't really a thing I paid much attention to until recently."

"Well, ah, it depends on the guild, some let you join others and some don't, craftspeople are mostly fine but they kinda think if you're in multiple guilds you're probably not very serious about it."

"Well... I'm not going to not study enchanting, since I can do it. But it seems like enchanting and crafting are maybe more compatible than, I don't know, fishing and poetry or something."

"...well there isn't a guild of poets but I suppose."

"Yeah, just said the first two things that popped into my head."

"You gonna be in the Enchanters' Guild?"

"Almost definitely, yeah."

"Good luck, then, I guess."

"Thanks! But - helping with stuff for a couple hours a day might fill the definition of apprentice for - er, what's her name, anyway?"

"—Cara. She doesn't like it when people user her name though."

"Well, what should I call her?"

"...don't? Uh, excuse me works."

"...Maybe I should just go earn money and commission this from somewhere else, this is sounding like it's going to be a pain."

"Guess you could do that, yeah. Um, she's gonna be annoyed."

"No kidding. But less annoyed than we'd both end up if we tried to work together and clashed a lot, maybe."

"She's actually pretty nice to apprentice under, if you. Um. Actually care about what you're doing. She's—scary and meticulous about details but she's fair and a good teacher."

She mutters, "Sounds like my old training instructor..." 

And then louder, "Well, I'm not entirely sure that's what I want, is the thing. The printing press and the other stuff my scholar friends came up with is pretty cool and I think it'd be profitable, but... I don't breathe math like they did. I don't know."

Shrug. "Yeah, she won't steal your stuff if you don't want her to work on it but she'll have an itch and she'll probably try to redesign it from scratch."

"Let's hope we can work something out that's not taking up my whole day. Like I said, I'm willing to work on it, or for her, just fine. I just don't want to commit for years and years."