"It's not complicated." She takes the rock inside and gets a little bowl. She mixes one part each vinegar and orange juice with a drop of rosewater and sprinkles oregano on it, drops the rock into the result, and then dumps the whole thing out in the sink, catching the still-glowing rock before it rolls down the drain and rinsing it before handing it over.

"You're welcome! If I'd expected you to keep one I might have sought a prettier rock..."

"I think it's pretty all by itself," he declares loftily, loyal to his rock.

"A chunk of quartz would've turned out nicer. Oh well. It's three lines of verse, I can do another rock for you if you encounter another rock you think would look nice doing an impression of the full moon."

"Aw, thank you. At this rate... We're going to become magic rock collectors, you realize."

"I don't suppose you can make a bag hold an arbitrary amount of stuff without weighing more."

"I'm afraid not. I could put a portal in a bag and have it connect to a storage space, though. Not quite the same thing, but it could work. Why?"

"...I want a portal bag. I want a portal bag very much."

He laughs. "I will add it to the ever-growing list of magical things to do when I can safely. Do you want it sooner but only able to work within this plane, or a little later and able to work wherever?"

"Later. I'm not accumulating objects that fast."

"Alright. Do you have a spot in mind for the portal bag to connect to, or is this just a general desire?"

"I'll scope out what the alethiometer can give me when I ask it for claimable random landspace. Maybe I'll have a house in it."

"Works for me. Do you have a specific kind of location in mind, or do you just want something no one else has claim to?"

"If I got to design the place instead of scavenging I'd want nice weather, no close geographical proximity to any witch clan's lands, and - how big do portals get? Could you drive a truck through one? That'll affect if I want to be near a city."

"Yes, you can - I can make a portal however big the surface I'm making it on is, so if a wall is big enough to fit a truck, the portal can be big enough if I make it with a truck's size in mind."

"Oh, I didn't realize it had to be on a surface - you can't just make it standing up in the air?"

"Technically, I could, but - destroy whatever the portal's on or move it extremely significantly and it breaks. Air is extremely mobile and a portal would be unstable and not last very long. I was going to be sneaky and put your portal up in the air against, say, a sheer cliff, or something similar. It doesn't have to look like a portal, we just usually make it do that because it's more convenient."

"Oh, I see. Huh. That makes it more complicated, especially if I want people to be able to drive in and out... I'll think on it."

Adarin nods. "It's still a smart idea, though. Bwuahaha, capitalism."

"I have no special architectural magic, so if they don't just freestand it's more complicated."

"I can reshape stone, but I don't have a particular talent for it. I could maybe make something, but... Eeeeh," he says. "Probably not structurally sound."

"So I guess I find contractors and do something they want done. Adds steps, doesn't make anything impossible."

"Sorry. I can help with detailing work, if that saves you time. Changing colors of things is easy and there's nothing stopping me from making patterns with it."