"Oh, oh, I see.  Okay, hmm.  Yeah I think I can give your soul goat a real-enough goat body.  Might even be easier, actually; the goat knows what it's like.  And - I should have clothes that will at least be decent, if not well-fit; I'm just not wanting to risk shapeshifting accidents with limited supplies.  I can do illusions if a trip to the mainland's necessary."

It really seems like it might not be, given how much stuff she's pulling out of just belt pouches.

"Always keep the tools of your trade on your person, as best you can.  Never know when you'll need them."

And, shortly, after a bit of hunting around for some rocks - "Probably worth getting this redone in metal, for durability's sake, because I don't think there's going to be - any resilience to the resulting structure - but I'm holding onto my coins for now -" that are promptly reshaped into passably jewelry-like objects and etched with runes - "...from soul select goat..." - and then gone over to stylize with a further series of specialized tools - "I think it might actually - oh, hm, no, I want the inverse of how draconic usually connotes animals, so let's flip the stylizer backwards -" - there is jewelry.  It's even somewhat red!

"You put this," a torc of sorts, "on, and it - should pull your goat through this collar?"

Nod.

"Yeah, I can stand just covering up with a blanket until I'm sure that I'm not going to ruin anything else. If we're still here for very long, I can toga it up."

She peers with great interest at what Hali's doing! It's kind of tricky to follow along, naturally, since she doesn't have any background in runecrafting, but it's fun to look at the cool tools and the bags of holding. (She wonders how it works, since she's pretty sure local magic can't do anything like that. It could probably do… a portal bag, maybe? She's pretty sure it'd be tricky, though, and would take some fancy fiddling with gemstones.)

She balances the stone necklace thing in her hands for a moment.

"Redoing it in metal sounds good - once I get home, I can probably look at how much money we've got socked away, see if I can get something similar for you to play with."

And then, not without trepidation, she puts it on.

At first, nothing happens - at least, nothing outwardly visible. But to magic sight, both neck accessories light up red. The extra magic pools towards them - it's still being produced at the same rate, but the magical channels are no longer being overtaxed. (Some of the damage is clearer, now.) The goat agreeably ducks its head through the collar, then curls up sleepily. Su-Yeong's horns and the tinting on her hands disappear, and the glow of her eyes fades considerably. They're still giving off noticeable red light, particularly when her face is shaded, but they're no longer inverted - she has red irises now, not white.

A few moments later, the visible image of a goat fades into place in the same spot.

Su-Yeong lights up, reaching out to pet it, then pulls her hand away with a frown.

"He's - he feels like an illusion?"

"...Hmm.  Ah, damn, I missed a connector; I can fix the lack of any solidity - there, done - but - I do want to point out that this isn't intended to be a permanent solution?  That now that you're not - constantly at risk of loss of self from magical overpressure blowing your soul up - we can see if it's possible to fix this.  In a way that won't stop working if the devices maintaining it get damaged."

"Oh, so it's more of a patch, got it."

She pets him again, still cautious.

"Well… thank you. Really. I mean, we haven't even really introduced ourselves, and you still-"

She sniffles, biting her lip.

"You needed help, I was there, I could help, therefore I helped.  And - it cost me nothing but time, which I have in abundance."

"...Oh, right, introductions are a thing.  Hali Northwind, crafter of items and, despite myself, adventurer, at your service."

A grin.

"I'm Su-Yeong. I… don't actually remember what my last name was; I grew up with a couple other kids my age."

She looks at the goat thoughtfully.

"… I think I'll call you Morgan."

And then she yawns.

"Wow, I'm - more tired than I thought. I guess maybe I was… running on extra magic, a little, without realizing?"

"Definitely possible; you're also definitely a bit soulworn.  I should have a proper bedroll somewhere in here if you feel like you can nap - I also have a spell to sleepify someone, if you feel like you need to but can't.  And then, once we're sure this is medium-term stable, we can probably head to the mainland?  I'm - not sure how it would be best to play this, honestly; there's - there will be people who want to have the ability to hold someone's ability to continue exercising volition over their head.  I'm insufficiently equipped for that."

She's going to keep a watchful and somewhat worried eye on Su-Yeong and Morgan, no matter what; she's in uncharted territory right now and doesn't want to miss something.

She laughs.

"Soulworn, that makes sense. I feel like I'm sore in places that don't exist. I'll take the bedroll, yeah, I've mostly been sleeping on grass."

Another yawn.

"I mean, I was thinking that we just don't tell anyone? I'll probably tell Tobi, I mean, once we're alone, but… I'm pretty sure all anyone knows is that I vanished. But - besides Tobi and the kids, there isn't anyone who would really miss me. My-"

Her breath hitches, and her eyes widen.

(To magic sight, there's a bit of a magic flare-up, but it's easily contained. Morgan looks up irritably but doesn't look like he's on the warpath.)

"Okay, I think - I still feel really shitty when I think about it, but I don't feel like I'm going to explode about it."

She shakes her head.

"Anyway, I don't actually have a job anymore - my old boss fired me for hurting his pwecious wittle baby's ~feelings~, so any new job would basically be a fresh start, and they don't have to know that I was gone for a week and a half, or why. I'm definitely not gonna flaunt that I'm relying on a hard-to-replace magical doodad to not rage out, that'd be stupid."

"Yeah.  's why I have the tattoos.  Can't take those off me.  Not without destroying the very thing anyone wanting my services would want me for.  And - yeah, we don't tell anyone about you in the short term, I think.  Just - you're not the only person - and familiar - with this happening to them.  And I want to help them, too."

She pulls a small pad of paper from her pocket, and jots down 'emotions increase m. produced; strain channels, stress familiar, increase emotions; feedback loop' with a cutely scrunched-up expression on her face.

Then, she turns her attention back to Su-Jeong.

"That is really shitty.  ...Would you like a hug?  I'm not the best at - emotional support - but, damn.  You've - been through a lot, lately.  And don't think I didn't catch you thinking about how you 'wouldn't be missed'; you're not vanishing on me, okay?"

She passes Su-Yeong the bedroll.  "Rest and recover, doctor's orders."

Thoughtful nod.

"Tattoos, huh? That sounds like a good idea, once we've really nailed down a solution."

She looks at Morgan while Hali takes notes.

"I guess that makes sense, yeah… I don't know how many people this happens to, really. There's… reports, a few times a year, but I never really kept track. You'd just have to figure out how to find them before the guard does, 'n then make sure they" (yawn) "trust you."

She thinks for a moment about the hug offer.

"Maybe after I sleep? And - man, you know what I just realized, once we get back to the city I can take a real bath. It's been way too long since I touched a bar of soap."

And with that, she wriggles into the bedroll.

Hali can busy herself with analysis and brainstorming while Su-Yeong naps.

Su-Yeong's magic behaves pretty consistently in her sleep! The magic production slows down a little, and it continues to pool in Morgan's body, where it slowly dissipates into the general magical environment. By the time she wakes up, her channels look a lot better - they're still too big, but the magic flows through them comfortably now.

Eventually she sits up, pulling the blanket around herself for modesty again. (Stretch goal: get into some regular clothes before the day is out.)

"Do you have any food on you? I'd really like a snack, I think. Alternatively, if you know how to reliably distinguish poison berries from good ones, we can shake down a bush or two."

"I've got rations, which - are only debatably food, but will certainly fill your stomach fine.  I do have a poison tester, though."  She has a set of utensils with runes on them, she means.  "They'll - hmm, let me just..." A single group of runes shifts.  "There, now they'll vibrate and light up.  Used to just vibrate."

She laughs.

“Let’s try the poison tester, then.”

She wraps the blanket around her chest under her arms like a towel, then leads the way to a cluster of tempting berry-laden bushes.

"It's keyed to whoever's holding the utensil, so we should probably both check.  But yes, I could go for some berries as well."

It is time, for testing!

Testing!!!

The first berries they find are small and red and don’t ping as being poisonous, but when Su-Yeong pops one into her mouth, she spits it out.

“Bleah – too sour and hard. Maybe you could salvage it by making jam or a pie, though…”

The next red berries they find look similar, but are larger and more luscious looking. Unfortunately, they aren’t safe.

The third kind is the winner – shiny dark purple berries similar to currants.

"Mmm.  These are good.  ...So, what do you want to do now? I - think you're stable enough that we could go to town, possibly, though that depends on whether running into your boss would cause lots of anger; your magic production increases when you're feeling like that, some sort of runaway defense mechanism I'd bet."

She laughs.

"It probably would, but I don't think we'd run into him - he's basically the richest person in town, or second richest. His family has lived in this big fancy house on the hill for generations."

Pause.

"We might run into his daughter, though, and that… could be worse, depending. She's a couple years younger than me, short," (she gestures) "round, green magic, and really long blonde hair. I… don't actually know what day of the week it is right now. I'd guess Monday or Tuesday? If I'm right, she's probably gonna be up at her house, but if it's Saturday or Sunday, we'd wanna keep an eye out for her."

"Any way we could check, without going inside ourselves?"

"Well, most of the markets are open-air, so we'd probably be able to spot her from a good distance away. I - can probably make up my mind to just turn around and walk the other way, if I see her or she tries to rope me into a conversation, but that's probably something we don't really want to gamble with."

She pops one of the dark berries into her mouth thoughtfully.

"Do you know if your magic can show me things that are far away? Because maybe we could do a quick check of her place, or try to see where she is directly."

"Yeah, I can do that."

She has a spyglass, with a few gears on it that would look solely decorative if it weren't for the sense that nothing this woman makes wastes functionality like that.  "I meant more about checking the date, but we can find the rich kid too."

"Oh, haha. Well, we could probably pick up a newspaper? Which does still require us to go to the market…"

She thinks for a moment.

"Actually, there's a cheese shop that has different daily specials. If your telescope can focus on something like their chalkboard, we can check that."

She can absolutely get the cheese shop in her sights with enough twiddling of the dials.  It's a funny little enchantment - when it's active, the light that enters the barrel of the spyglass is consumed to power the effect that copies light passing through a small volume of space relative to the direction the spyglass is pointed.  The various mechanisms increment or decrement offsets, angles, and field of view.