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Lucien can mostly make a living off of doing divining for certain niche medical studies, but he can't do specific enough conditionals to get his grander ideas off the ground yet. Still, when portals start showing up he's well positioned to suggest to a few people that diviners like him could be useful for quickly figuring out what conditions on the other worlds are actually like.
Still, they're taking a chance on Lucien by approving his application to join the expedition, so he definitely really shouldn't be late for his first day of work. He also probably shouldn't be running along a poorly maintained trail in Bolivia, but between that and the possibility of being late he knows which he prefers.
Well, which he prefers right up until he's tripped on a branch and sent tumbling towards the portal.
"I'm pulling the shape of the spell from the magic ink and shaping it from there into a configuration that'll sit nicely on my spell scaffold and then it waits there till I cast it."
"Yeah." She flips hers open to a page and holds it up so he can see. It's a weird blobby thing with a lot of notes pointing at various bits of it.
"It's possible to transcribe a scroll into a spellbook - that's what I did yesterday - but the scroll contains more magic, you can cast the spell from the scroll directly without having it on your scaffold if you want."
"You just have to be smart enough and have hands and a voice. There are hands-and-a-voice workarounds but they're bad. - oh, also you can't be an insomniac, your scaffold degrades without really solid sleep."
"...if you want to learn my notation, you can maybe prep cantrips out of my book, when I'm not otherwise occupied. It'll take dozens if not hundreds of tries to get anywhere, though."
"Oh I don't want to inconvenience you. I am just uh, lacking for things to do right now."
"I do not have a lot you can do when I'm not around because when I'm not around your light will wear off. We haven't had a Continual Flame torch around since Sovi needed a nursemaid, the halflings just have the layout memorized and see by the cookfire in the kitchen. Messing with my spellbook is not a thing you can do when I'm not around. Do you sew?"
"I think I can sell what you're wearing for more than replacing it will cost, though you'll probably get pretty cold if I do it in that order, and then you can sit in the kitchen with the halflings and hem it or embroider it, that's cheap enough and won't look weird."
"If you don't like this idea I don't actually expect anyone to look that closely at your outfit, it could happen but you're not planning to be here long."
"No it's an okay idea and makes sense. Though I uh, assume I won't actually be helping you by doing it. Which is okay."
"Well, if you do a great job I guess I could flip the outfit again before you leave, but I do not especially need embroidery done, no."
"Well, I can attempt it if you don't have a better idea. You could probably read in the kitchen too."
"I'd be happy to do anything that would be helpful but can't think of anything that seems like an obvious option. I'd prefer reading to sewing if they are both options."