"Do you already know about how, if you sow grain in a field, the grain will grow less well if you sow grain in it again too soon, and if you sow -" she needs the word 'beans' "- in the field after the grain that partially fixes the effect?"

She pauses. "Also, I can show you how to build buildings-for-taking-water-from-rivers-on-hills-to-fields-on-the-ground and machines-for-making-water-seem-to-run-uphill-if-you-turn-a-handle." "Machine" is a loan-word.

"I am prepared to consider dropping out of school for this if the mill works out."

"Oh, you're still in school? I assumed you were teaching! What kind of magic do you do?"

Jinye has SO MANY IDEAS to fix the economy. Unfortunately she will then destroy the economy, insofar as she will organize a revolution or coup and seize power to end slavery, and this will have predictably bad consequences for all the slaveholders who don't duck fast enough as well as, short-term, everyone else. This kind of sucks for Maurabel, assuming Maurabel does not want to assist with a revolution against her own government, but Jinye is not actually a nice person so that's fine.

"I'm teaching younger kids to cover some of my tuition but I'm still in lessons for people at my level. I have most of the elements, everything except ice and lightning."

"... I suddenly think that a complete description of how magic works, what the elements are, and what they can do is very important for my making-everyone-much-much-richer project."

"Adamant, Shine, Stone, Earth, Fire, Water, Lightning, Ice, Glass, Shadow."

One of the kids volunteers a mnemonic little song.

"Thank you." She pauses. "What do these... mean? Or do?"

Maurabel convinces a kid to demonstrate a little ice and a different one to produce a spark of lightning. Then she does small demos of the other ones herself.

... "So, is it, generally speaking, just the ability to make, shape, and control a substance? Or are there other uses?"

"Most elements also have a healing application, though as far as I know Shadow doesn't and a few of them are very specific. And most of them also have a sensory application, like I'm teaching these kids to see things around corners or very far away or both with Glass."

She nods along. This is fascinating.

"I should learn how to read your language as well as speak it," she says. "If you can put me somewhere there are books I can read, I will be much more effective. Also if there is anywhere I should go to do labor that would help pay for my keep, I am very strong and have good vision and sight and strength, but few trained skills you would recognize."

"I'm not sure if you'll be allowed to use the library as a non-student but I can check some books out after this class and teach you to read there this evening. Day labor gets hired at the village square, line up on the shady side and people'll come by and see if you look likely for whatever they want done."

"Thank you. Can women get day labor jobs, or is it normally entirely men? And is there someone else you should introduce me to to make good use of my skillset?" This woman is considering quitting her job to become Jinye's manager and support staff, which is a very good sign of intelligence, but might not be perfect for aligning their goals, since she might very reasonably be trying to monopolize and exploit her. (Not quite the way that Jinye is intending to exploit Maurabel, but in many respects similar.)

"If you're not a mage you'll have a harder time but you might be able to find something. I'm not actually sure who else you should talk to, usually people with ideas are farmers just because most people are farmers and then they put their ideas into practice on their farm."

"Is there a - people-who-run-things section of building-things-to-benefit-the-populace-they-rule - to handle walls and cisterns and roads things, or is that all private-people-with-clever-ideas-for-risky-things-to-make-money?"

(Do they not have either a strong government or strong aristocracy? Really? This place is bizarre.)

"...I feel like there's some kind of wrong assumption in how you're putting that but I'm not sure what -" She helps a child who has accidentally looked at the sun. She scolds a child for dancing around while looking at random angles, as this has made the child very queasy, and obliges them to sit down. "I could imagine the magistrate collecting a tax to have a new well dug or repair the wall, but that doesn't mean it's their job to fund inventors."

"... I mean, I'm not an inventor, I'm a traveler-from-a-distant-land. But you don't have rich-people who lend money to or hire inventors and travelers-who-have-learned-from-inventors so they can be repaid from the profits of their works?"

"Not really. All the inventions lately have to do with magic, so they don't need much outside funding. If I invented something I could support myself easily while saving up for whatever I needed to do it."

"... Huh. What do rich people do with their money, then?"

"Buy... things...? They have nicer clothes and stuff. And land."

Wow, those poor, poor rich people. They aren't going to know what hit them.

"I recognize the [untranslatable loan-word #16] - uh, situation - we are in," says Jinye. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Maurabel wraps up the lesson and dismisses her students. "Speaking of land, I don't presently own any," she says. "So I'm not sure where we'd put your mill."

"We'll need to either strike a deal with a local land-owner, or I'll need to come up with something else first that will make us money that we can use to buy land." She pauses. "... What's the level of precision involved in making and shaping metal, what do you make books out of, and how do you make and copy them?" Can wood-elementals make paper? Because if so...

"Uh, I can get down to pretty fine details if I want to spend the magic on it. Book's made of paper, wood magic can make it, and people write on it with quills."

Can they make ink? Yes, absolutely.

"Just to clarify, can wood magic automatically grow books complete with writing, or does it only grow paper on which people then write books by hand?"