Nah, that'd probably break something, she was just hoping she could tell what color they are.

She should work up an actual budget but for now she will go back to her place and put her robe in a drawer and queue up eight tabs on her computer and take a hot bath while they load.

Loril very dependably shows up in the training area precisely on time every day and teaches her steadily more advanced motemancy. She proceeds along a curriculum that includes "basic civil engineering and construction" in between all the magic. Loril expects her to spend a lot of time outside of 'class' practicing. Nicholas mostly either avoids her or works in companionable silence.

One day Loril asks her if she wants to learn any biomancy beyond the absolute minimum of 'make this person stop bleeding to death please' that she's going to force Bella to learn either way.

"Yes please!"

"Well, I suppose you can decide how much time to devote to it after the introductory lecture. Also, I never gave you that book on mana dynamics. So, here. Don't damage it."

A book is handed over. 

"Have you learned anything incidentally about biomancy, or should I start from zero?"

"I saw an arena guy use it for living armor? Otherwise not much."

"Biomancy, for many, never escalates beyond the simple pattern of healing gross physical trauma and relieving symptoms. They can soothe colds, mend cuts and scrapes, perhaps set a broken bone or see to a slash wound. But often not beyond that, for things get very tricky very quickly when live bodies are involved. As much as mana tends to smooth things over, it is far too easy to set an expression marker a bit too high and give a patient fainting spells instead of relieving their allergies. It is also a discipline that diverges into specialties far more quickly than motemancy. I would call the general divisions of the art- Doctoring, Animal Magic, Plant Magic, Arborism - different from Plant Magic by focusing almost purely on shaping wood - Animation, and Necromancy."

Bella writes these all down. "Does mana smooth things over because of the - corollary or something - of the thing where living things generate mana? How does biomancy interact with us?"

"It doesn't, for which we should be very grateful. Biomancers kill themselves by working on themselves with alarming regularity. Mana broadly makes everything better. More real. The soul is a highly adaptable thing. It ramps up the body's ability to force equilibrium despite whatever nonsense is going on... Barring unusual circumstances. It will kill bacteria and filter out bad proteins and warm chilly extremeties... To an extent. Doctoring is a long specialist path."

"How long?"

"Six to eight years for basic competency on simple issues. Beyond the equivalent of acting like a painkiller or analgesic, I mean. Decades or even a century and more to become an actually good one, the kind who are summoned to heal rich merchants and nobles. It's a good path, if you have the patience for that."

"I'll need to be able to support myself in the meantime but it does sound worth knowing how to do eventually!"

"I'm qualified to introduce the subject at least, if that's what you want to spend part of your remaining training time on."

"Yes please - though I'd also like a general idea of what summoning purposes are in the most demand, do you know?"

"I would have to look it up. I don't know anyone to actually go hungry; There's always a need for earthworks if nothing else. But beyond that, no."

Nod nod. Biomancy intro time!

Biomancy has two fundamental actions: Meanings, and shapings.

Meanings are roughly analogous to genetic or epigenetic modification, one can do things like make a tree fruit constantly (draining the soil if one is not careful), or produce excessive resin or sap, or be poisonous to insects, or grow branches in a particular way, or change someone's eye color. These are usually not inherited and can get very detailed- To the point of city trees that use the phloem and xylem for plumbing. Importantly, they are not the same thing as genetics. They're magic. Genetic alteration is a decades-deep specialty skill.

Shapings are taking some biological material and telling it to be something else. For example, one could shape dead bones together into tools, or shape a dead animal into a preserved automaton that can then be programmed to do simple things like "walk in a circle forever to power this grindstone" or "guard this door and make a lot of noise if you see anyone". Or more popularly, elaborate wood sculpture. You can also shape living things but this tends to go wrong for anything but skin if not expertly paired with meanings.

Okay, so it's "do this thing you do but more/less/harder/like so" versus "be formed like this and move like this according to this program regardless of what you were doing before". What goes wrong if you try to bonsai a live tree with meaningless shapings?

Trees specifically are actually fairly resilient to shaping as long as you have any idea what you're doing? But if you don't it's pretty easy to kill the tree by mistake.

But skin is easier? What do people do with skin?

"Get rid of moles and skin tags and make it shiny and smooth, mostly. Cosmetics. I would be more sarcastic but it can make a vast difference to one's personal sense of self and overall quality of life. Occasionally, they will get tattoos, or receive minor cuts and bruises, or have an allergic reaction to some plant, or do more foolish things like put magical devices under their skin as an emergency measure or some such."

"Receive minor cuts and bruises or do you mean healing them?"

Loril makes her habitual dismissive gesture. "Yes, yes, your job would be healing said damage, removing allergic reactions. There's a specific method for relatively surface level things like this."

"What happens if you use that method on a major cut or bruise?"

"Naively? Clots, infections, internal bleeding. Bad business."

"Oh dear. And - you said usually not inherited, are meanings sometimes passed on?"