"I think in my language that implies more softness? Rigid things can be distorted by tilting."

"Oh, I see! Yes, tilted things squish very straightly, they don't wiggle about at all."

And then May's diagram is finished and she starts double- and triple-checking it.

Whiteout watches in fascination, careful to stay well clear of the workspace. "It's like a puzzle," she muses, "to fit all together. But it's much harder to do a puzzle by drawing, when you don't have the pieces all ready to play with."

"Sometimes I do, actually, when I'm working on spells I sometimes use pre-made tiles to lay them out and make sure it all works, but there are some limits to that approach and since I have antimagic I don't need it for a one-off spell only I am going to cast."

"Oh!" she says, delighted. "Really? I think I would like that puzzle very much."

"Then maybe you would enjoy learning magic, though I think you'd have a hard time making small diagrams, and the bigger they are the more power output they have."

"Hmm. I've always thought the tips of my claws could draw pretty finely, but I've never had a drawing contest with a scavenger about it. I could try to draw the smallest I can, if you have ink and paper, and you could tell me if it's small enough? —after you finish the thing you are in the middle of doing which is also important?" (This last comes out with the embarrassed air of someone who has only just remembered about it.)

"I have ink but it's in pens, not in like, inkwells you could dip a claw in." Checking checking.

'Pens' is another awkward construction in this language; Whiteout has to think for a few seconds to decipher it. "Oh. Humans don't have claws. That makes sense. Maybe I could... carve very small lines into a tree? I'm worse at carving than drawing but it would still say something about how small I can make a line."

"You could do that. Or some fallen wood, maybe."

Whiteout investigates the vicinity for signs of fallen wood. (She's still being very careful not to get close enough to May's diagram to disturb it.)

While she is doing that May goes through her final check, literally checking things off a list, and declares her diagram done.

By this time Whiteout has found a fallen branch that's hefty enough to hold steady, and stripped some bark from one end, and carved a little square into it that's impressively tiny for a dragon of her size and not really all that small from a human perspective—an inch or two across. She looks up from trying to carve a smaller one next to the first.

"I think I see a little bit of sending in the future, but it's not coming clear enough to tell how it turns out. I made a small square! I tried to do it from the perspective of the branch." (It is indeed pretty square and straight.)

"Well done. I could... compose a more involved incantation if that might make the future clearer?"

"It might do that!" she agrees, peering at her square-and-a-half. "Is it small enough, do you think?"

"Well, small enough for what?"

"To do the puzzle magic safely?"

"I think so. Though you'd go through lots of wood, you can't reuse a spell once you've scribed it."

"I think I could draw this small in ink too. Maybe even smaller. You can be a lot gentler with liquids."

"Do you want to try a pen?"

"I am doubtful of pens. But I can try one anyway."

May's got spares, here's one. She'll uncap it for Whiteout.

Whiteout makes a very determined attempt to wield the pen. It's comically small in her taloned hands and she has to experiment quite a bit to figure out how to grip it securely; she entirely forgets, amid all the pen-dropping shenanigans, to remember that she'll need to ask for paper in order to move on to the next step.

May remembers paper! There is some waiting for her whenever she's ready.