"I'm not sure, but - I imagine Tobi would want to know the things we've found out."

"Yeah, definitely. He'll get off work at around six, so… I'm all right hanging out at our place until then, especially since it's nearby. Or we could do something else for the next couple hours, but - option's open."

"I think that might be a good idea."

Then Su-Yeong can (after confirming to Lucy that yes, they're welcome to tag along) show them the short path to her place!

(Thierry and Ivy go back home, but Piper comes with the group heading to Su-Yeong's house on Lucy's shoulder.)

Good, Lucy gets to stay out for a while.

She's been in some holed-up-somewhere-for-security-reasons situations before, and even she gets stir-crazy, no matter how fond she is of having space to herself.  And that doesn't even begin to consider the personality clashes.

Lucy shuffles, and then…

"Do you think it'd be a good idea to try and… I dunno, fix my magic generation, or at least bring my swan out? I…"

They trail off, looking at the ground. Suddenly their thought process seems stupid, now that they're trying to voice it.

"I think that - it would be reasonable to try some simple, easily-reversible things, under the supervision of as many watchful eyes as we can get.  Because, as much as I look it, I don't know what I'm working with here, and I don't think anyone else does either, but - the more information available, the more chance that some's useful.  I really do want to fix or otherwise improve your situation, dearly.  You - remind me of me, when I was younger."

Cautious smile.

"… Yeah, I don't wanna accidentally break my brain or anything."

Deep breath. They're going to be okay.

"Thanks for - giving me a real answer, by the way. And not just saying yes because I want it, or - yeah."

"Yeah.  I'd want nothing less, were I in your shoes."

✨

Su-Yeong comes back in from the kitchen with some iced tea. (She's definitely got a newfound appreciation for real food that she didn't have to pick off a bush or hunt herself in the woods. Yum.)

"All right, what should we do while we wait for Tobi to get home? I know that you've got some magic stuff in mind, like refining the husk stabilizer thing and… trying to find a safe way to give yourself our type of magic, I think? But we could also, I dunno, play a board game."

"I think I do want to poke at that, yeah.  But I wouldn't mind hanging around while you two play."

Su-Yeong grins and gets out a board game that can be played by two players or three, as well as a deck of cards in case they want to switch. As they play, they chat - not about anything as earth-shattering as the revelations from earlier, just about life in general. Su-Yeong, remembering Hali's advice from earlier, uses the game(s) as an opportunity to practice her telekinesis more. She's getting a lot better at it, more accustomed to the mental motion, which means that soon she's moving the pieces almost as steadily as she could with her hands.

Hali nestles herself in a chair and gets to working on magic.

The magical environment consents almost cheerfully to being examined!

Examination of eyes - Su-Yeong's, Lucy's, those of normal magicians and mundanes on the street - reveals that the underlying structure is pretty much identical all around. There's the bit here that actually produces the magic, the bit here that collects it into a small reservoir, and the bit there that lets the magician manipulate it. The first bit operates continuously for magicians and husks, with husks producing much more magic than magicians, as Hali's already seen. For Lucy, it seems like it's intact but nonfunctional - it seems possible, but tricky, to potentially start it up again.

Familiars, like Piper, are slightly different. They don't produce or manipulate magic on their own, but they can store it more efficiently than their human counterparts. Magicians can't exactly draw from their familiars, though - it seems that most of the magic storage goes into letting familiars maintain their forms, which are possibly the only true example of a persistent magical construct that Hali's seen here. They don't really have biology per se - they can eat food, for instance, but it doesn't seem to do anything for them. They can sleep, preferentially but not exclusively while their magician is also asleep.

A closer look at various nonmagicians shows that some of them actually do produce magic - it's just not at a high enough rate to do anything before it dissipates, much less fill up the reservoir. Nobody in the city happens to be on the cusp of filling their reservoir for the first time right now, but there are some people - a twelve-year-old in a rich part of town, a twenty-something in a more middle class area - who seem to be actively trying with gemstones. Without being able to read their minds or ask what they're doing, it's impossible to tell for sure, but it seems like they're making the mental motions of spellwork in such a way that causes their magic production to kick into a higher gear - presumably enough of this sort of training will cause the reservoir to reach sufficient capacity to spark a familiar into being.

Huh.

"I think it ought to be readily possible to - restart the process of coloring your magic, Lucy - it's similar to a catalyst I've already worked out.  The thing is, I'm not sure what that'll do."

Lucy glances over.

"Huh, really? How would you do it, and what kinds of things do you think might happen?"

"You're just...You need something to poke the engine and start it, because it's still there.  Just not - spinning, metaphorically.  As for what I think will happen - it's, you're somewhere between the examples of husks I've seen, and the examples of 'normal' mages, in terms of soul structure, and I have no idea what that means."

The frog pipes up.

"From what Thierry told Ivy and me about what happened, that sounds about right. They were in the process of husking out, and… his guess is that the…"

(She takes a deep breath, apparently squeamish about what she's about to say.)

"Eye removal, uh… shocked their system into stopping. So… yeah, I agree that you'd probably wanna tread lightly, just in case what happens when you restart it is 'your magic remembers it was turning you into a husk,' or something like that."

Lucy nods.

"What d'you mean about soul structure?"

"I mean -" here, she can show them.

"This is a 'normal' person's soul."

"This is Su-Yeong's soul."

"And this is your soul," she finishes.

They examine the images.

"I think I see what you mean. It's funny, 'cause - you'd think I was the opposite of a husk, instead of halfway there."

They think for a moment, about the magic lesson from earlier.

"What do you think you'll want to try first? Both stuff to get the magic going again, and… precautions. Not that I'm trying to rush you into it! I'm just curious."

"Well, some of it's kind of a trade secret - but the idea is to sort of...see if we can get the conversion going by doing a similar process as with how I approach active effects, and hoping that'll do...sympathetic resonance, sort of?  The structure is all there.  It's just not active right now.  And - as for precautions, well, if you do husk out I think I have better tools for dealing with that than with this, right now!"

They let themselves snicker at "trade secret."

"That makes sense. If it's all the same, I think I'd rather wait until we're pretty sure I won't husk out - no offense, Su."

Smirk.

"None taken."