"I get more efficient with practice... I don't have a sense for how much light I'm making, just how much white I'm using, but white magic is pretty good at, um, looking at stuff and doing that? Like with the circles. Maybe I could tell it 'make this light exactly as bright as the light that's shining on that square' and it would at least be something. You have to take ore rocks and melt them, right? Catfolk magic must be really great for casting and doing things with hot metal. Do you make stuff, or just blocks of metal?"

"Mm. We make sheets and wires and bars, and cast things, usually chain. Not blocks; they're not very useful and too heavy for an equartier. If you invent an efficient steel flame, yes, that would be fantastic, we could work it like glass, but all we really do now is melt the steel and slow the cooling enough to pour it."

The mill looks as it did when Nico first arrived. Turbines, a huge block under a crucible, a table with rollers.

"The air is heated in the block there. It's like the tube or book in a glassforge, and we call it a 'tube', but it's a lot longer and divided into three stages, where each stage heats its own air before burning it. The air won't rise through it by itself, so we push it with that turbine: through the first coil, in to the first stage of books, out through the first coil again" - he lays one hand on top of the other to show that the inward and outward tubes of the first coil run parallel to each other, in close contact but not joined - "then the same in the second and third stages. That turbine blows cold air through the walls of the crucible so it doesn't melt. That turbine only runs when we clean the melted steel by blowing air through it, or to feed a separate channel in the tube that leads to the rollers. That turbine runs air through a filter and blows on the slab to keep dirt away. Without it, there would be a draft towards the table.

Let's see, what else... the steel flame is inside the crucible, in a hole in the ore or a bubble in the molten metal, but it is very bright if you catch a glimpse! The stone tentacle is for a wolf to pull out the slag."

"What makes a glass flame a glass flame and not an air flame? Starting with hotter air? Maybe we can make something with a really tiny hole and a bright light on the other side, and do experiments with light that way..."

"That's the practical difference, yeah, but there must be something more, since a normal flame feels hotter than the air coming out of a jeweler's book, but doesn't make a glass flame." He demonstrates with two loose fists with fire inside his curled fingers; when he presses one on top of the other, the top flame gets longer and thinner, but stays the same color. "If I kept this going for a while, it think it would get a little hotter, if you could measure it precisely, but for a glass flame you need a solid tube or book, something that can store heat, and then heat the air - and whatever else it does that's different from the raw heat of the flame."

"You could focus the light even tighter then... oh, or use the hole as light source the color and brightness of a steel flame, but smaller and steadier than directly making a tiny steel flame."

"Welcome, brother! What brings you to my shrine? I hope my crews are serving you diligently and knowledgeably."

Abilanedi smirks. "Indeed they are! Judging by their speed, the first mine in Embal must have already half complete before I arrived!"

How observant of him.

"Of course, my cheese-pie*."

* A reference to part two of The Ableton Ballad, in which the hero's mother sacrifices everything she has, piece by piece, to smooth his way, responding with this phrase whenever he discovers a plot of hers.

"I am humbled by your affection."

"I keep my promises."

"Mm." He shrugs.

"So what's going on? I've heard you're keeping a new species in Kef. Or two. You won't let me visit, you're exceeding your own standards to keep me complacent in Embal, your werewolves freeze up when I ask. What happened to your 'Kef spirit' of 'free trade'?"

"Are you here to attend my shrine or complain about the mess?"

"Does your project benefit Sota?"

"Yes!"

"Mm. You're not going to be able to keep the secret long. My people will be coming through Kef, and staying put just as much as yours. If you're really benefiting Sota, can you possibly object to lifting the barriers between Kef and Embal?"

The tengu approaches Nico. "Two questions. First, from the Magistrate: Given the current state of rumors in Kef, are you comfortable with allowing travelers to Embal to enter Kef? Second, from me: could you ensure that your alertness magic would only affect a single one of my bodies?"

(The first few experiments they do don't seem especially promising. He wants to think of ways to do things without kaleid magic as much as possible- So he doesn't end up being the only link in any new inventions, and because information gained from his magic might not be reliable. While Nico thinks the concept of camera obscura is incredibly cool, it's not actually new to Ansaf, they have a decent understanding of optics and even some telescopes. Since prisms split light into its constituent colors, and do it in a particular order. they can get a big prism and split a bright light into all its colors on a long wall. When they do, it turns out that catfire emits bright and mostly even light, and Nico's lights (done naively) emit an extremely even mixture of all the visible colors. He can make them do all sorts of things, too, waves of bright and dim along the wall or a very precise band of a specific single color, but the default is a very even band.

However, when they don't shine catfire directly into the prism but instead put hot steel next to it, it has an odd sort of pattern, with what seem like spots that are distinctly brighter and darker than either side, and so do certain materials when you shine bright light on or through them. It's really hard to make out the pattern, but it does seem to be there! It's fun to shine bright lights through or onto things and look at the results. Leaves, thin yarn or cloth, hands, samples of metal, even thin stone... It's fun, and they can even write down the results if they mark down spots on the big wall! So does that mean that specific color is absorbed by leaves, and the colors right next to it aren't? Leaves don't absorb green, which doesn't make sense at all at first until you realize that something being green means green light is coming from it, and if green light is coming from the leaves it can't be absorbing it. Anyway, this sure seems like color is a thing-that-comes-in-amounts, like temperature!)

"It will only affect a single body. Awakening is the body only, I remember learning about it in lessons. It is almost exactly like a drug. I don't know about Embal or what is safe. I mean, they're probably suspicious they can't come in right? So do you think it's more dangerous if they're suspicious or if they can come into Kef? I think there might be another Tomas somewhere, though..."

"Very well, I would be willing to test the 'awakening' magic if you want, although I'm not interested enough to pay you for it.

I am confidant that I can protect you. In any case, I think isolation is necessary to have any hope of keeping yourself secret. Or was that a question for the Magistrate? ...She says isolation is expensive and ultimately damaging to Kef and her goals... people are already suspicious... Embal is more traditional and its Magistrate less reliable but you might prefer not being stuck in only one town."

"I should be paying you for making sure it's safe in people not just mice, even though it very probably is, and telling me what you feel. Is this body tired right now? I don't want to be stuck in one town forever, and I don't know just how expensive it is to close Kef, especially because it's hard to measure. But it's probably pretty expensive."

And he still feels weird about other people doing complicated expensive things for him, or at least, about him. The Magistrate and Kef are buying Nico feeling safe with a guard and at least 10 money a day and so on.  It's not like he has to pay back everything Meikalani spends about him without him asking, but if he asks for extra stuff that's different. Keeping the whole town closed, longer than just the initial snap panic? Demanding big, complicated stuff happen just for him? ...No, not a great feeling. Being the focus of so much attention is so weird...

"...I want to see the sun again some time. But that is ir-rellevant right now. I can-not reasonably ask that Kef stay closed just because I am uncomfortable. I don't know a good way to say what a good reason to talk to me is. I don't want to be isolated but I also don't want everyone to run at me? I don't even know if they would or not, people in Kef are mostly used to me already and they mostly didn't go crazy when I was pretending I could just do sparkles..."

"She says... It's hard to measure, because it doesn't actually cost much money now, but it deprives the people of Kef of the chance to establish habits of business with the travelers. It also costs goodwill. ...The people of Kef still mostly think you can only do sparkles. If they have suspicions about your and Lin's recovery, or Merta's recovery, they think it's another new species, hiding with the frogolds. I confirm that myself.

This body is not tired but" poof sleepy giant raven "that one is."

Oh is that why he's fixated on making light.

Hug.

"Dealing with people who want to talk to you is a perfect task for an employee! I'd be best at screening ideas for projects and scheduling work for you, but you might also want someone to handle requests for charity and political shenanigans and that fluff... I wonder if the clerk who substituted for Merta is available or if Meika is keeping them? Overkill for ordinary scheduling, but if you need someone you can trust..."

He reaches for the tired bird body and pokes it! It feels sort of like waking up in the morning, complete with a vague unpleasantness. A bit disconcerting in the moment, but leaving a lasting difference as it passes. And then a feeling of being wide awake and ready to go, sharp and alert.

"There. You are not supposed to actually skip sleep, just use it when you are about to work hard. I am still kind of scared but I don't think that's enough reason to keep people from visiting Kef."

"I don't think I trust many people... And I don't think I want to deal with charity and political things. That sounds so annoying. Mostly I want to learn things and practice things. I'm going to want to make more things much later, once I figure out my magic more. Heavy clothes and maybe a wagon and stuff like that. Oh, does anybody have ideas about how I could find some Lume? I don't know how it's made, but it's definitely a special metal, more common than silver but less common than iron. It's grey and dull before you charge it up with magic, and shiny and blue after that. I don't know why, but it's important for making complicated kaleid-magic items. More complicated ones than the fireplates."