Snuggle. "You've got plenty of time to figure it out."

"Yeah, I do." Snuggle. "Speaking of, when did you decide to recreate the fountains?"

He shrugs. "Not sure. It occurred to me at some point that it's going to get really annoying to keep going back to the old capital for more healing water, so I might as well duplicate the fountains, and if I'm going to do it sooner is better than later."

"Aha. That makes sense." Snuggle. "I don't think either of us are sorry about the rate at which I'm using healing water, though."

He laughs and hugs her. "You're amazing."

"I think we might be in some kind of feedback loop. Making me happy makes you happy makes me happy etcetera."

"I think you're right."

"It is, appropriately enough, a delightful feedback loop."

"It is." Kiss.

—oh, huh.

Siva is completely oblivious to any personal revelations he may be undergoing. She is snuggling him and eating conjured food and bleeding fetchingly.

She bleeds very fetchingly!

Snuggle.

And she finishes her food and gives a little contented sigh and goes back to poking at magic.

Serik cuddles her. She is very huggable.

She is! Back to light, at least for a little while, and then if she pokes at the magic does it give her any more obvious hints? Ooh, she did cold, can she do dark?

Dark is another surprisingly complicated one! Cold feels related to heat, but dark barely feels related to light at all.

That's bizarre.

"That's bizarre," she observes aloud.

"Mm?"

"Darkness doesn't feel connected to light the way cold feels connected to heat."

"Huh. That is bizarre."

"You hadn't noticed?"

"I've never tried to work with darkness as its own thing before. Just didn't occur to me to think of it that way. And trying it now, it almost looks like... the magic doesn't think of it that way either? I've seen this kind of thing before a few times, where you think something's going to be simple and it turns out otherwise. Making sound is weirdly complicated and has almost nothing to do with hearing it."

"That's bizarre. Why would cold be its own thing but not darkness...? Well, maybe I can figure it out at some point. What kind of tricky is sound?"

"Surprisingly similar to conjuration, for some reason."

"That doesn't make sense either. I cannot wait to know enough Ansati to read the magic books."

He laughs.