"You know," Levrolurment says to no one in particular, "this is why in competently run projects people aren't allowed to fuck each other."

... This is true, but language. ...in front of the street kid.

He's just going to ignore Levrolurment. "It might hurt a little, but not much."

"I'm going to be brave," she announces.

The nice thing about impetigo scabs is they're not that attached to anything, so they're easy to get samples from. "And we're done. Just make sure not to scratch the area."

"I won't!" 

She goes up to Tanidio. "How are you stirring it?"

"Magic."

"But how does magic work?"

"Topology."

"What's topology?"

"A kind of math you can't understand because you can't even do figuring."

"I can too! I can add and subtract all the numbers less than twenty without even using my fingers."

"Can you multiply."

"What's multiplying?"

"Multiplying is when you add the same thing multiple times. So if you do two plus two plus two, that's two times three. It's a shorter way of writing it."

"Oh." She considers her newfound knowledge for a moment, then says, "you could do double multiplication. If you multiply two times two times two, you could do the same thing."

"Those are called powers of two."

"Two twos is four, and two fours is eight, and two eights is sixteen, and two sixteens is... um. Something."

"Thirty-two."

"Subtraction is addition backwards, what is backwards multiplication?"

"Division." He stands up, walks to the other room, gets some paper and a pen, and drops it in front of Imelda. "Scratch paper is easier. Do you want to try to work out how division works yourself, and ask me if you get stuck?"

The adorable street kid is good at maths! And bonding with Tanidio! Excellent.

The adorable street kid sets to work on reinventing division. 

Tanidio has successfully managed to keep the small child from being annoying anymore. 

Unfortunately, now he has thoughts. 

Do you know one way easy way to not have thoughts? Be trying to reinvent microbiology with alchemical equipment! Specifically "how do I get this probably-staph onto all these plates in useful and consistent amounts?"

A few hours later--

"If I have to spend one more minute around this unresolved tension I will go insane. Insaner. Imelda, come with me, we're going to the library to teach you to read. I'm coming back in an hour and you two had better have resolved whatever this is."