Merrin already has half of the crates moved by the time Estha is ready with Stone Shape. She can do a lot of hauling, when she's in the best shape of her life and not even tired, thanks to her spectacularly active lifestyle on this planet, as much Created food as she can manage to eat, and on average getting a Heal every 48 hours. 

Stairs? Stairs! 

It's not exactly inviting, but Merrin's standards have been considerably lowered. They will probably be able to get in and out of their cave at low tide with minimal risk of slipping on something and breaking a bone. 

Time to finish moving the stuff. She's making good time; at this rate she'll have everything except the strapwrack-woven shelter wall itself relocated by the end of the planetary day. Honestly, Merrin is inclined to just leave the current shelter as-is and harvest entirely new strapwrack for any new structures she wants to make. There's nothing super urgent, this cave already comes covered, and also her current shelter has been sitting around long enough exposed to the huge temperature swings and some incidental UV that it's probably started to degrade. And local materials are not inherently limited the way her gear is. 

If Estha gets a Stone Shape again on his next [day], Merrin has plans for the spot that's going to be their new "living room." 

The planet has picked tonight to rain a bit, which is perfect timing for Merrin designing her Stone Shape project, actually! 

There! Free rainwater collection! It's not going to be safe to drink, it's runoff from the plateau above, but they needed a solution anyway for the giant crack in the ceiling letting in rainwater, and this way it's also a free swimming pool! Freshwater, albeit not perfectly fresh, but a lot nicer to bathe in than seawater! 

Merrin had Estha seal up most of the underlying cracks in the cave-floor where their rainwater could seep away, but slightly enlarge one, which she'll mostly keep plugged up with some other rocks. Letting the runoff-water drain out through a crack in their floor won't eat away the stone and affect its structural integrity on a timescale that matters to them, and it will mean that if the water is getting too disgusting for bathing, she can unblock the drainage-crack and let the trough dry out until the next rainfall. (Also if they have a really rainy period, she can let it drain continuously rather than overflow). 

Merrin just needs a bit longer. A few more [days] of Endure Elements and not having to worry about food or water.

Time to properly set up the solar panels in the new location and run cable down to the cave (this requires doing some splicing, no individual cable is long enough, so it's a six hour project by itself).

Time to set up a new still, in case Estha doesn't keep the cheaper water-making spell. 

Time to make some really basic furniture? Maybe? 

(Also: time to set up her radioactivity detection alarms, definitely, that's a priority.) 

One of the branch-off caves has a crevice at the back leading deeper underground, and is consistently quite a bit cooler than the others. They can use it for food storage. Merrin can free up the emptied storage crates that once held her dath ilan rations, and it's still cold enough just before dawn to freeze water, so when the tidal window allows, she can freeze slabs of ice outside and bring them in to keep their iceboxes cold longer. Merrin is kind of confused about how the shelf life on Created food...works...because she does not think baked grain products made the normal way abruptly start becoming inedible after exactly 24 hours? But this setup would preserve normal food, like snail meat, for substantially longer. 

The snail farm tidepoolroom is definitely a work in progress but Merrin confirms that the snails she stashed in it stay put after a full tidal cycle. 

(Merrin decides against having Estha use a Stone Shape on widening an exit shaft directly to the surface. Ultimately, she feels like it would mostly just reduce the shelter's effectiveness at sheltering them from the summer Doom Sun, and their current entrance-exit route via the tidal caves and river channel is workable given that she now has a very accurate tidal model. Further Stone Shapes, if it's still getting renewed, can go toward enlarging and reshaping some of the side-branches of the main cave into proper rooms.) 

Anyway! They have workable shelter! Merrin now has lots of free time again! 

Can Estha think of any way she can effectively help with the Bag search? Have they tried literally everything as a strategy? 

(They haven’t, obviously, and Laeirthe has been nagging her more and more emphatically, but Merrin is tired of flailing against a wall in her head trying to think of alternate plans when she’s missing so much context on Estha’s alternate-universe because he - maybe for excellent reasons! but nonetheless! - is not telling her. She’s not obviously the one who can solve this by thinking harder, even with a Laeirthe in her head, he still only knows what Merrin does and cannot pull information out of nowhere.)

What a strange question.  Of course they've already tried everything; Esta can't think of anything they haven't tried--

If you say that out loud, Merrin will IMMEDIATELY spot you for a non-dath-ilani and also she will think you are stupid and possibly insane.

The question was rhetorical and the required answer is 'No'.  Obviously you haven't tried everything.  To be unable to consider every possible hypothesis and possible strategy is the very definition of a bounded agent -- 'bounded agent' being the superclass of 'mortal' which also applies to gods and Pharasma.

...what does Cultural Adaptation suggest that he say -- verbally behave -- in response to this question?  Somehow, his experience of Merrin and of Cultural Adaptation (dath ilan), does not lead him to expect that Merrin is fishing for Estha to say:  'Of course as a mere worthless mortal I cannot try literally everything, that is what makes us wretched things deserving of punishment.'

Merrin is expecting Estha to say, "Yes, fair point, I'll try to brainstorm a wider range of crazier ideas, and think through what we haven't tried already that might be worth trying."

What lovely, pretty words.  Altered-Estha will go ahead and say those words, certainly.

Does dath ilan actually know how Esta is supposed to do such a thing?

...if he were giving a lecture to a dath ilani subordinate on how to think of things, maybe, with examples to show them how it was done.

Trying to read off the intended solution to Yog-Sothoth's puzzle from inside the dreamworld culture that Yog-Sothoth invented is definitely a good start.  Dath ilan is pleased to see that Esta has been paying attention to all the thoughts he's been made to think, and maybe even absorbed some of the rhythm there!  Good to see that fancy headband isn't completely for show, if Esta tries to use it for something other than extra spells and channels!

Lecturing a dath ilani subordinate doesn't quite feel to dath ilan like the right frame, here, especially for a mind of Esta's capabilities considered realistically.

But you could be trying to learn-through-teaching of a fellow student!  One who was, say, twelve.

And what sort of thing would Esta teach to this hypothetical twelve-year-old about how to 'brainstorm' additional strategies for finding the Bag of Holding.

Going back to complete and utter basics, you might declare to the twelve-year-old that you were going to make a list of every single cleric spell up to 6th circle that you can remember, then ask how every single one of those spells might be useful for --

Summon Monster I-VI.  Calling fails, that doesn't mean summoning will fail.  And the summons will just obey, and not need to be paid.

Though, what could any summons do, that would be useful, in just 12 rounds...?

This is where dath ilan says to think through every kind of monster he could possibly be able to summon, and think about all of their possible special abilities, isn't it.

Dath ilan would actually tell you to get a computer from Merrin and start typing.  Well, failing that, pen and paper, maybe.  Or smooth out a wall to use as a whiteboard with some improvised chalk.  The idea here is to be somewhat more systematic about listing every piece of knowledge you have about any sort of physical or informational capability, to see if they can be compounded into a solution to your --

...calling from Hell failed.  Even if Esta can't Summon Monster an imitation devil -- and he should try that, or something else Lawful -- this planet could still be closer than that to, say, the Elemental Planes.  In fact this planet can't possibly be that distant from the Elemental planes; it is made of fire, water, earth, and air.

Is there something a water elemental could do with this situation, in 12 rounds?  Esta isn't seeing how it could possibly move fast enough to outrange the sort of search they've already done, even if it's a water elemental, in just 12 rounds.

Well.  For one thing.  A summons might be able to tell Esta if, on quickly describing how Esta thinks the universe works, very briefly, any of that seems like an altered wrong memory.  If the summons is Lawful, at least -- or maybe just obedient...

Well, dath ilan has it right enough that Esta has not, in some sense, been trying very hard to think, here.

There's a reason for that, you know.