SHE IS SO CONFUSED AND SHE HATES IT.

Madeline simmers in petulant irritation rather than continue to complain aloud about how the world has stopped making any sense. Because they're going in front of other people and she feels like she's going to be isolated enough already, what with the language barrier and being from another world or something, so. Probably their introduction to her shouldn't be 'wailing about things not making sense.' Even though they don't. (And she hates it.)

She is pouting a little, though.

There are more people coming out of shelter, now, and helping each other. The living have been tallied, and thus so have the dead. There are pockets and groups of survivors here and there, chatting or just existing in silence with each other.

As the boy walks back, many of those people lift their heads to look at him as if they've been expecting him.

One man in particular steps forward to greet him with the same bow Zei used to thank Madeline. If Zei's outfit is weird, this man's is just bizarre. His long blue hair is split into three strange long spikes that defy gravity in how they stay up. His robes are thick and heavy, but they are open in front to expose his shoulders, chest, and stomach, and the extensive tattoos covering the latter two. His fingers are longer than most people's, ending in pointed claws, and his abs look like they follow different musculature than usual. Combined with the fact that he seems to be entirely missing his nipples, he is... probably not entirely human.

"Lord Zei," Madeline can understand him say, but the next words are reduced to mere gists and impressions. She is a stranger, and Zei does not know where she came from, but he has positive emotions towards her. That seems to be enough to pacify the man, who bows to her as well.

.... what the hell is up with his hair? What the hell is up with his clothes! The claws and weird musculature are like, fine? But his fashion choices are just bizarre!

No, no, bad Madeline. Try to at least have literally any kind of poker face. Literally any kind.

She bows back to the blatant (bad) anime protagonist, because that's just good manners. And fortunately she wasn't having any 'expressions' anyway so it's... probably fine? It's probably fine.

"Stay here and rest," Zei tells her, echoing himself. "We have time. You..." Man this magic could be more helpful. He says something in his own language and the gist of it seems to involve... her working hard and him thinking well of her for it? Or something?

Okay. Something something thanks for helping save lives, probably, which is fair enough. Lives saved: totally worth the trauma she now definitely has over this whole experience. She nods.

Uh. Well. They seem to be about to be in the middle of something, soooooo. ... Man. All of their buildings got destroyed by the kaiju. Probably people need a place to sleep? Oh man doing architecture sketches and then useful conjuration sounds like the best plan, she's absolutely doing it. It wouldn't work long term without, like, weirdly dedicating her entire life and existence to making sure this one building and its contents stay in place, but hey. Temporary stuff is absolutely in her job description! And then she doesn't have to engage with her trauma! Yay!

'I'm making beds and a place for people to be inside. Number estimate? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 200 300 400 500,' she writes and then sends to helpful healer person. And then says the first part out loud, because she thinks it gets confusing when she's sending the understanding of words on top of understanding that's already there. The numbers are fine, though.

—oh wow that's useful uh let's say "One hundred?"

"Can do!" she says cheerfully, looking downright chipper. Yay!! Something that's actually in her area of expertise!! She's absolutely going to go wander off to look for a spot to put a building! Bye everyone, screw this social stuff!

There's actually a ton of space everywhere she'll be fine.

After a couple of minutes, though, she'll start to hear the sound of drums.

She'll keep half an eye on whatever's going on over there? But mostly she'll be designing a building and its contents. She's ever made conjurations of hotel rooms, this won't even be all that difficult. Foundation first, then she'll work her way up to get a basic floorplan down.

What's going on over there is... peculiar. Although that word may be losing its meaning for Madeline by now. But regardless, Zei and anime hairdo dude have started walking towards the water and... on the water. They are very visibly not sinking. And they have started dancing.

The sounds of drums from before aren't actually coming from anyone playing them, and the song that can now be heard is also not being sung by anyone. And as Zei and the other man dance with each other, twirling around on the water with their staves and coordinating their movements, the song grows. Most of it comes from their direction, but some comes from elsewhere, all around.

Or rather... from the wisps of magic that are starting to appear. Many of them, bits of ethereal flame in white and blue, emerging from the ground or the water or the bodies of the dead. They spiral around the two men in a widening circle, going up and out, until they eventually fly away, towards everywhere else. Some of them disappear into the heavens immediately, but some of them wander before doing so, weaving their way between the growing mass of onlookers or the tents or the machines or the dead. Around Madeline, the wisps of magic pass by and through her work, whispers coming from them and adding to the rising chorus.

This is all over the span of only a couple of minutes. After that, the quantity and volume of those wisps seems to reach a steady level. The air shimmers with their light and their movement, and the whole area is illuminated by them as if inundated by a million ghostly fireflies.

Okay, that's distracting enough to cause her to stop working to stare at them in incomprehension. Uh. Tiny... dancing light wisps. With related music. What... is going on. The wisps are very cute and the music is nice but. No, seriously, what's going on.

(Tempest has come out, and after a pause of staring in confusion at the wisps, gets to trying to catch one. Because of course she does.)

The wisps are incorporeal, and cannot be caught, not that cats really mind that as a rule.

If Madeline pays enough attention to them, she'll notice that the wisps that aren't coming out of actual corpses seem to be coming out of the... blackened dust left by the people who were disintegrated. All of them seem to initially appear where someone died or is dead. And beyond that first couple of minutes the average number of them around stays the same, and the music just repeats itself, growing and shrinking in waves with the moving lights.

... 'Kay.

On reflection, she doesn't have the energy to engage with literally any of that. She's just going to go back to architecture, okay? Okay. What's going on out there no longer matters, because she is required for her unique powers that are coincidentally also holding her together psychologically right now by giving her something useful to do.

So: sort of a hotel! Foundation up! The floorplan is uninspired but functional, if not perhaps up to modern standards. She has no idea how to pull off the plumbing or the kitchen or anything with just conjuration, that's not really the type of stuff she does? The outgoing plumbing is easy enough, she can just steal a bunch of sea water, put it in a little tank on top, and have it rinse out the toilets into the designated poop pit with little levers, but showers are in fact beyond her. Also: there is no elevator, only stairs. But beds are straightforward enough to just directly make without spending several hours fussing over them, which is what would happen if she tried to make functional plumbing. Two queen sized ones in private rooms with lovely windows with closable curtains! One designated sort-of-a-bathroom-but-only-with-a-toilet, in a little room offshoot. With a separate drain in case she gets around to figuring out showers at some point. It's good form to give space for later edits. She'll have the doors lockable from the inside of the suite. It wouldn't keep her out, obviously, but some people might want privacy. If it makes them feel a bit better, why not. It's not like deadbolts are complicated.

Eventually all of the structure complete, she traipses about the place bestowing personality like some kind of demented fairy that is not traumatized even a little. Everything gets color, the floor gets a wood texture and pattern, the walls get tasteful wallpaper, and so on. It'll be a little more sparse than her usual work, and the beds won't all be perfectly at the exact standard queen size, but eh. She doubts there will be any complaints. She mostly just wants to make this nice for people that have kind of had a shit day! They can have less of a shit day. And she can continue not engaging with how much she may or may not be freaking out the minute she runs out of things to do.

The drums and wisps of light are still going steady by the time she's done, and if she steps outside to look she'll still see the two doing their elaborate dance on the surface of the water.

Most of the living have stopped watching them by now, and while no one bothered her during her construction efforts it sure looks like they are very curious about it all. They're keeping a respectful if somewhat wary distance, and the scene is rather surreal, with two entirely different large feats of magic happening at the same time and the uninvolved bystanders just standing around awkwardly waiting for them to end.

Wow, yeah, that is awkward. She... gives a little awkward wave and a small smile?

... She should probably get some food and water or something. She doesn't know how to make that happen and braving the horrible tedium of translation in the interests of caring for her mortal form sounds awful. Instead she's just going to, uh. Make a chair and sit down. Tempest joins her, on her lap.

A couple of minutes later Zei seems to notice her in the middle of his dance, and with a couple of word exchanged with the blue-haired dude he bows away from it (while still looking like it's all part of the same "choreography", so to speak).

He walks towards her, his steps slowly sinking into the water as he does (from their previous "dancing on water" state), and when he does he conspicuously looks up at the building she made and whistles and says something that she is pretty sure means "holy shit" except less religious.

Oh look!! Person she knows! And he can maybe understand a lot of what she says! She can request sustenance for her mortal form without having to brave the horrors of Strangers! Excellent. She had been working up to maybe asking something of one of the others, but it probably would have taken several more minutes of metaphorical hand-wringing.

"Done!" she says, brightly with a smile. "Remember to feed and water your conjurer at least twice a day for best results. ... By which I mean, uh. May I have some water or something?"

Multiple words is good for understanding! He says something that probably means "come with me", especially when paired with the gesture and with how he starts walking away.

Excellent! Except for how she has a cat on her lap and needs to get up and follow someone. Uh.

"Pretty kitty, we've really got to go. Not all of us are familiars, and unlike you, I need to eat. Hup we go."

She makes the attempt to pick up and carry the cat! Predictably, Tempest makes an offended sound and instead opts to disappear. Madeline sighs, because cats, and then follows after Zei.

Some of the people they pass by bow to the boy as they do.

He leads her to a large military tent up a small ramp that was far enough away from the water that it didn't get hit by either the kaiju nor its symbiotes. Close to the entrance flap is a pile of bags, and he goes for the pile from which he fetches one bag in particular, and from within it he gets her a canteen and a small bag filled with dry fruit and nuts.

Madeline trails after the apparent important leadery person, like a duckling. She smiles awkwardly at anyone who bows at him, and anyone that looks at her. Actually, she is probably just stuck on ‘awkward smile showing how incredibly out of her depth she is’ as her default.

Food! Granted, food whose origin she doesn’t recognize, but still. She knows what fruit is, she knows what nuts are, this is all theoretically edible if she ignores the part where she has literally never seen these fruits or nuts in her life. She can just… industriously and systematically nibble on them to form preferences. Conveniently, her preferences are ‘I’m hungry’ and being too tired and overworked to have much in the way of a sense of taste right now. … She does decide that she hates a certain dried fruit that is annoyingly sour, though, and begins avoiding it.

Munch, munch, munch, she should probably attempt social things or something, but. That sounds hard. It’s much easier to just feed and water herself instead, and not do any kind of social tango.

No social tango is fine. There's a place to sit (on a mat on the floor). Zei sits back on his heels and takes some food, himself. He's been working for a while now.