Oh, but you need to store magic in the metal (or occasionally crystal) tracks to keep the spellwagons moving.  You could store it in each wagon itself, but that's much less efficient because crystals and metals are heavy...

Aeslin usually doesn't mind turning back a page, though it sometimes takes her a moment to notice Ira's request when she's deep in thought.

Judging by how Aeslin is still avidly studying, and how she's ordered several more cups of tea, it might take a while for her to get to sleep unless Ira asks first...

Ira's energy is definitely flagging. "Aeslin, are you feeling tired at all? I think I might be just about ready to sleep. Learning about this fascinating but my eyes are tired enough that it's starting to be tricky to follow."

Aeslin starts, blinks, and looks up.  "Oh, uh -" She wipes her eyes, and glances back at her notebook.  "Yes, I've got a decent grasp of the theory now, or at least Tirmorgan's version of it.  And several ideas for me to test when I'm back home with the lab...

"But yes.  I can take a break and dream now.  Would you like me to come into your dreams?"

She takes another silver coin out of her pocket.  "Bar, two rooms for us, please?"

Two keys appear on the bar, with tags with (adjacent) room numbers and the message "Enjoy your stay!"

Ira smiles and nods, though with distinct sluggishness. "I'd certainly to give it a try. Can I ask...what it's like, if that's not too vague a question? And, do you need to know anything about what my dreams are usually like?"

Aeslin, not noticing Ira's sluggishness, smiles.  "It's fun!  I don't need to know anything about what your dreams are until I'm there - I'll see them when we're both asleep and I'm coming in.  I'll 'wake you up' in the dream to realize you're dreaming - people feel it's like waking up with a good memory of their dreams.  Except you're still in the dream, and you can change it around however you want, even easier than I can with my magic because it's your dream."

Ira nods. "Alright. I guess I'll...see you there?" She gets a contemplative look. "Where do dreams...We can talk about it in the dream, I guess. Good night Aeslin."

With that, Ira will grab her key (or, well, one of the two keys, whichever is closer), stand up, head to the room on the tag, complete the best approximation of her nightly routine possible with the available amenities, and then collapse into bed, falling asleep night-instantly.

There's a window in her room... or, well, it looks like a window... looking out on a moonlit winter forest with falling snow.  In the room itself, the walls are painted dark red and green.    There's a bathtub/shower with lots of hot water available and several types of soap if she wants, and a slider on the end of the bed to make her mattress exactly as firm or soft as she wants.

Aeslin spends a little while staring at the slider in her own room and trying to figure out exactly what it's changing, before deciding it's not going to be any good.  As she does half the time these days, after the spells to trigger her dreamwalking, she casts another spell on herself to actually put herself to sleep.  Otherwise, her mind would just keep racing far too long and she'd be tempted to turn back on the light and get a book out.

The fields of the dreamlands are weirder around here, away from Aeslin's home universe in the middle of a Bar she isn't even starting to understand.  If she looks too closely at any of the shrubbery or trees, they start to twist in front of her eyes, sort of vaguely reminiscent of the forest from Queen Elethy's dream of the Last War that one time.

Aeslin is excited, but also a bit disturbed.

She doesn't see anyone obviously next to her... but there's a trail, so she starts walking down it.

And then the trail bends around, and the tree in front of her is looking familiar and not shifting - not quite like her own dreams or her friends', but sort of like a cross between theirs and Queen Elethy's.  A moment later, she waves her own dream-wand...

The transition is smooth, perhaps even strangely so. Aeslin is standing at the edge between an area of sparse sylvan woodland and long rows of manicured trees, perhaps an orchard of some kind. On the horizon, tall mountains rise into the sky. The sun is high and unclouded, its heat balanced by a cool breeze. Across the maybe-orchard from her there's what looks like barn and farmhouse, with someone sitting out on the house's porch, though at this distance it's hard to distinguish anything visually.

It's beautiful.  It's almost like a dream of Aeslin's childhood; if she cared to change it she could probably stick in Svarendar's Academy in the distance...

... but she's not going to.  At least not yet.  She bounds toward the farmhouse, her dream-self starting to look younger as she goes.  "Hello, Ira!" she calls out.  "It's me, Aeslin!"

Ira, meanwhile, looks a bit older and gruffer, for a moment at least. She stands hurriedly and grabs a whistle hanging from a lanyard around her neck. "Stop where you are!" She shouts back, seemingly on the defensive, but as Aeslin resolves through the distance, her stance becomes relaxed and her appearance begins to shift back towards her waking form. "Oh, huh! Uh. Sorry about that Aeslin. So, this is a dream?"

"Yes!  This's beautiful!  Is this what your home looks like?"

Aeslin looks down at her own green plaid schoolgirl's dress, and the ribbons in her hair, and shrugs.

"Oh, this?" She briefly spins around, looking at the farmhouse, then back around towards Aeslin and the orchard behind her. "No, this looks almost totally different. This is...hm. I know that, uh, a moment ago, I knew that this was my-- the orchard this character of mine owns. I made her up for a doll-- we make dolls, for the hearth, I and uncle do, since the hearth like gifts that have personal meaning to us, and for me it's easiest to get invested in characters and stories and worlds that I make up. This place is one of those worlds, or, part of one anyway. I was thinking about it a lot when I stumbled into Milliways yesterday."

"It's beautiful!  And since it's a dream, you can change it around if you want!  Sometimes without even meaning to!  You don't even need any magic; just want to, since it's your dream.  Or I can too since I'm now in the dream too, say, if I think that barn windowsill should be another color..."

She snaps her fingers, and it's suddenly sky-blue.  She snaps them again, and it's back to white again.

"Wow! Hm..." Ira looks contemplative for a moment, then starts to lift off the ground, laughing delightfully as she does so. She drifts for a moment, then floats with more coherent intent towards Aeslin. "I've always wanted to fly. I know they had machines to do it, back in my mother's world, and in grandma's, but wishing for something like that's never been practical."

Aeslin concentrates for a moment, sprouts dragon-like wings from her shoulders, and joins Ira in the air.  After a moment, she chuckles.  "I haven't been flying in dreams since I was really this young.  Wow - I'd forgotten how fun it is."

Ira will happily fly around with Aeslin for a bit, shifting the environment with surprising ease and proficiency for someone who hasn't ever lucid-dreamed before, creating obstacle courses to fly through and grand vistas to gaze upon, conjuring fascinating sky-creatures of all sorts to fly alongside.

Aeslin adds in her own landscapes and eagles and griffons and - in the distance - one dragon, Svarendar.

After a while, she conjures a flying carpet of palm fronds for them to stretch out on in the air, and morphs her hair back to her waking hairstyle and gives her dress the Royal Research Mages' arms again.  "Maybe I'll do this more," she muses.  "I haven't ever gone dream-romping with Gwen; she'd probably like it...  I used to all the time with my sister and Branhal and Triganna; I even started teaching my sister how to dreamwalk, and I might've gotten her all the way there if I hadn't gone off to the Research Mages..."

"If it's anything like as fun for them as for me I'm sure they'll love it." Ira replies as she settles on the carpet next to Aeslin. "That reminds me. How does this," she gestures vaguely at the dreamscape as a whole, "work? Dreamwalking, and I guess dreams in general? There are some books back home about how brains work, including a little bit about how dreams work, but people didn't know much in either my mother's or grandma's worlds, and certainly they didn't know anything about magic."

"We don't know all that much about brains either..." Aeslin says dreamily.  "I was trying to learn about them in the context of golems; I know the Crystal Mountains know a lot more somehow --"

She suddenly realizes it still might not be best to talk about the Crystal Mountains, and stops herself.

"-- Somehow.  The magic of dreamwalking interacts with your mind and your magical life-web, and lets you project that beyond even your body to interact with other people's minds.  So most all the detail-work is done by your mind; we don't know how that interacts with the brain.  Queen Elethy developed the spells herself, from bits she'd learned before the Last War, but the brain's mostly a mystery to her too.  She wrote a book on it, and then turned her attention to more important matters... and then I guess Svarendar took one of the few copies of that book with him when he left to start his Academy, and I found it in the library there."

Aeslin pauses and then whispers, "So even if I somehow live forever like her... I still won't have the time to learn everything."

Ira immediately gets a thoughtful look, various thought-shapes half-forming and dissolving in her field of view as she considers something, before refocusing back on Aeslin. "You stopped talking about it pretty suddenly, and only mentioned a few times before, so it's alright if you can't say anything, but what can you tell me about the Crystal Mountains? I know you've said crystals are used to store magic, sometimes. Are the Crystal Mountains, like, mountain-sized magically saturated crystals?"

"Not fully... but there're a whole lot of crystals in the mountains.  After the Last War some of them had a lot of dangerous wild magic left, and who knows what other artifacts might've been there.  Maybe some of them still do - not many people have gone there recently, for fear of the wild magic.  Or, well, not that I know of..."

Aeslin shakes her head, eliding just about everything about the mysterious golemcrafters who said they were from the Crystal Mountains.  She and one of her friends had gotten involved with those golemcrafters, totally not realizing their real nefarious goals.  And then they'd vanished just as quickly as they'd come.  She - and the Queen - are still sure that the golemcrafters had found some lost arts from before the Last War somewhere.

"One of my friends went there a few years ago, around the same time I joined the Research Mages.  I haven't seen her since.  I hope she found the secrets she was looking for, without getting into any bad trouble."

Ira nods solemnly. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope she turns up again, or that you're able to find her eventually."

Ira will sulk, just a moment, before cheering herself up a bit with more aerial play. Eventually she'll ask Aeslin another question. "So, could I practice magic in a dream? Or, would it not really be worth anything?"

Aeslin shakes her head, saying, "I'm too glum tonight," and joins Ira in the air again.

(Maybe she should spend more time thinking about things like this?  No, she's spending a whole lot of time thinking about a lot of other interesting things, like improving the spellwagons.)

"No," she answers, "practicing in dreams wouldn't be worth anything.  It's all dreams anyway, inside people's heads.  But it's fun!"

Aeslin conjures a wand for show, and sends a fountain of water at Ira.