"Thank you for meeting with me, Nico. I didn't want to talk about it in public, but I have an idea that might help humans. So, you can make your sparkles follow rules, right? I assume you could make them, say, go to locations a hundred feet above the water in the rock you're standing on. Could you make them show the shape that something had in the past or will have in the future? ...in particular, could you show the shape that a baby will have while it's still tiny and inside my body and doesn't have any magic yet that could hurt me?"

Aaaaah?

?????

Aaah?

"That sounds really complicated and difficult."

Green/white can probably do it. Well, maybe. Seeing how random things are going to grow up? That sounds hard! And complicated! Less like detecting water and more like predicting the weather, which is notoriously white-resistant.

"I think it probably would not work at all."

If it doesn't work, he doesn't have to think about babies and babies killing people.

Uh oh, what was that hesitation? Did one of the other girls get him already, but he isn't sure and is upset about not being able to tell?

"Ah, well, better try and burn than nought e'er learn.

Anyway, wow, you're moving up in the world, kid! You have a clerk with a heavy brow and everything. Any shows coming up?"

"No, I've been doing experiments about light."

Isn't Neffie scared?

"I heard that new kinds of babies kill people. I don't want to get it wrong and kill anyone. I'm sorry. I'd be so sad to be scared of my only magic."

"You mean, you don't want to say that a baby is safe and then it isn't? Or, like, you don't want to encourage experimentation by promising safety and then more women will die overall? That's their choice, not yours.

That saying - better try and burn than nought e'er learn - has the literal meaning too. We revere the catmother as much as they do. Without her, Kef wouldn't exist, Embal wouldn't, Calsa and your clerk... It would be a smaller sadder world without catfolk, and this world is itself a smaller sadder version of what might be when the next species is added.

I want there to be people of all types living with freedom and joy everywhere they can possibly be. With all sorts of useful magic to bring new things like the Kef experiment and the steel it depends on, and shatter the old ways of dons and personal favors from Magistrates. That's what human women are for. That's how we beat the elv- the shrinking chartreuse and the drydark and drybright and the other planets!

Oh, you're a polythaumist? You divide magic into multiple pieces per species? Like that catfolk make fire and tolerate fire, but those pieces could have been separate? And, I don't know, wolfbeasts, and mind-reading without understanding, and equartier strength being the same as boark strength. What does that even mean, 'could' have been separate; that's just what catfolk do, that's how the world works."

"Uh, sorry. I've bothered you enough, you don't want to hear my rambling.

I'd be happy to hear from you if you need me to sing again, or anything else I can do."

Neffie leaves.

She decides to keep the wroth she's pregnant with, in case Nico wants to look at it later. There's a risk of wasting a chance to touch him for a minute, if she visits him still pregnant. But, patience, patience.

Huh, he's a funny sort of polythaumist if he considers human women to have only one kind of magic. Usually they say that there are at least three: breeding the target, making new species, and making the baby grow like a regular baby with traits from the mother and able to breathe from the placenta. And sometimes they also separate out targeting by touch and triggering off the mother's physiological state.

It sounded like he thought of himself as having multiple kinds of magic? What can he do with his sparkles that's so much more flexible that what a human woman can do? Well actually that's obvious: he can make sparkles with conscious attention and he can also give them rules to follow by themselves. Can he also have the rules without the sparkles? Does he have a mental space like a drider, filled with rules? What can he sense, and without any sparkles to show that he's looking? Can his rules interact with his memories? He's like a wroth and a drider and a solitary elph all put together!

"Sorry, some ideas don't work. I will keep you in mind and think about everything you said," Is the last thing he says, looking serious and thoughtful.

Every kitten has tried putting a flame in water. It doesn't look like a flame, just flashes of light and heaving bubbles, but it does do something. Unlike, say, with rock or glass, which can be an anchor for a flame but can't contain a flame.

In an enclosed glass ball filled with water, the light flashes in a spot flat against the anchor - and the ball explodes. The light is still almost exactly the same color as in all the other experiments, and it looks like about the same total amount of light...

If, in the search for a sturdier enclosure, Nico tries one much smaller, the size of an eyeball, and allots a little black to hold it firm, then the light swells to a brilliant white, far brighter than one catfolk's usual output. With less total heat, although the glass is hot enough to melt if not for the black.

Yay! It's so bright! It's absolutely not viable for anything more than experiments, because the cost to his magic is pretty steep, but it is VERY EXCITING. Are the colors different? Just HOW much brighter is it? All of these things are things they can attempt to measure later.

The real question is, why is it so bright? What's different? Is it because it's in a sealed liquid? Maybe LAVA will glow just as brightly if they do it right.

And he gets a new point around this time too. Science! Magic! Learning!

Tanno's weekly reports on Nico have been largely unremarkable, and slowly declining in detail. He's studying light still. And algebra. Reading more complicated books, and the basics of writing and literature analysis. The water cycle, and how to estimate things. Mouse and insect biology, and more genetics. Accounting. They've tried filling a room with concentrated exhalation, and as long as it's also very bright, it does make plants grow faster. Slightly. But it's kind of hazardous and impractical, since only kappas can safely go down unless they rig up some complicated tube bringing in fresh air... Anyway.

Not so many new kinds of magic, just practice and development with the kinds he already knows. He's built some kind of clock out of white magic, and has been talked out of various inadvisable flying and wagon related magic experiments.

Also, they've had a breakthrough with one of the plants! A new strain of Golden Sweetgrass Wheat, which has long been bred in the Chartreuse, now grows in the freezing cold of the drydark acceptably well. Slowly, but that's expected. And about half of the seeds are sterile, but that's also expected for complicated genetics reasons. They're confident it can be worked around in time. Five or ten generations, which under drakebreath will be about two, maybe three deci-years. The end result should be a staple wheat crop that grows better than the current ones and is remarkably sweet.

Distinctly not mentioned to the Magistrate: Nico asked several times about just how dangerous pregnancy is. And could obviously tell that Tanno and Larian were being a bit cagy about the subject.

The unevenness of color is the same as in the flashes of light from a catflame in open water, but overall there's a greater proportion of blue and green. It's such a concentrated intense light that it's hard to look at, but when spilling it across the floor of the rainbow room though a small hole, it dwindles into invisibility at two or three times the distance, with the exact ratio depending on the species of observer.

The biggest increase is in blue, which wasn't present in regular catfire at all. The brightest point now, to Nico's vision, is a green that's about twice as bright. The brightest color from before, red, is slightly brighter now.

Letting a little air into the ball has no discernable effect on the color or brightness, for any of the available kinds of air. Calsa's color powders work fine.

Tanno's reports are always a joy.

Could they bury the chambers of concentrated exhalation just under the surface so a frogold could reach up for fresh air? (The frogold she asks says sure, but being in a chamber of concentrated exhalation is very unpleasant, like suffocating over their entire body.)

Complicated genetics reasons? She doesn't have memories to explain that part, but whatever, she's not a scientist. Her job as owner of the enterprises of Kef is to choose scientists and prepare for them to get lucky. And her job as Magistrate, as she has set for herself, is to provide a stable environment for other people to own enterprises, other people who may individually lack the flexibility and depth of knowledge of an elph, but who as a group have diverse expertise, and, as a group, can replace a number of elves that would be suspicious to gather in a town the size of Kef. (Not illegal, if they're not in government and her superiors could be convinced that owning a large private enterprise is not a government position, but then the law might change to count that towards the quota anyway, so it's better to avoid that whole path.)

The tengu reports that the alertness worked fine. Extended storage delayed it wearing off, "so I could keep a body with it in storage if I needed to be sure of having one that's perfectly alert, but I already have plenty of alert bodies. Maybe there's a more useful temporary effect that I could save for the right moment?

It occurred to me to ask: does your magic allow you to recognize me or my individual bodies? Would you like me to dedicate a set of them as your guards, possibly marked by you on some way? Then you could be absolutely sure that it's me and not some other invading tengu. My apologies for not thinking of this sooner; legbeasts can hardly ever recognize tengu."

He will harmlessly mark the Tengu guard since they're offering- A change to some of their already-grown feathers that he'll be able to feel, not anything more innate.

Nico is getting more and more used to the place. His paranoia gradually dials down, but nowhere near to zero. They keep working on the cat-light- They need a transparent material that can survive heat and pressure without bursting, and doesn't rely on his black charges. Diamond, maybe? Or some other gemstone? He tries various things with red and black, attempting to make gems. It doesn't go anywhere for the first while.

Time passes. He spars with and talks to and eats with and hugs and learns from his newfound community.

Lenora has done as much preparation as she dares. Every day she gets more worried that Nico... Won't be there to find, when she burns her magic. She's getting more frazzled and distracted, not better prepared. People are noticing. Her ma, and her brothers...

They're gonna miss her. But she has to do this. She has to go help poor Nico, who she couldn't shield from the bullies before.

And she wants an adventure away from Gale Rocks. No joining a wagon caravan. No going on a ship. Just stay with the healers, or the temples, or the forest play camp. You're a kid, and so you don't get to make decisions.

They can't stop her from burning her magic. It's still a terrible idea... But she's going to do it anyway.

They try to stop her from drawing out her animal self. It's too early, they say, too soon. She just does it herself- Working on her eyes, on her muscles, on her skin, on her lungs. All the clever little things that natural selection did for animals, borrowed for herself. It makes her a little sick where she gets it wrong, and things interfere with each other, but she feels what's wrong and fixes it. The effort gives her more green magic, even!

There's a huge screaming fit when they notice, and her parents look really worried and try to get her to tell them what she's thinking. They say they love her a lot. It's going to make it harder to leave. Maybe she'll come back one day.

She has a big backpack full of Stuff. Medicine and seeds in little cloudy glass jars, and food and blankets and spare clothes, and Lume and books and three knives and a bow and some arrows, and a lantern and rope and canteens with water, and a head and body full of Green magic. Eyes of a hawk, gecko sticking pads on her hands and feet, a heat-sense and a deep understanding of her own muscles and bones and organs.

She writes a note. It's... Messy. And contains a lot of apologies. She tries to explain, how she'd feel terrible forever if she didn't do this.

And then-

In the middle of the night, all dressed up and wearing her backpack and holding her biggest knife, which is almost like a sword on her small frame-

White magic: Find Nico. Here are all the traces of him, his home and his parents and his toys and his hair and his friend. Wherever he is, find him, know that place.

Blue magic: A much simpler request. Make me be there.

Deep breath.

Burn.

There's a girl in his experiment room! He shouts in shock and shoves her with telekinesis!

"Nico! I am here to rescue- Oof!"

She doesn't drop her sword knife but only because of the gecko pads.

"....Lenora???? You-"

It takes a moment to switch languages.

"What are you DOING here?"

She shakes her head to recover.

"Like I said, I'm here to rescue you!"

"I don't want or need rescuing!"

Three tengu bodies slam between the two of them. "Who is this?"

She jumps into a fighting pose!

"Stop stop STOP! Lenora, don't hurt them!"

*Italics = Nico's native language.

...Sword knife goes back in sheath?

"You're really okay, Nico?"

"I don't need rescuing! I didn't say I was okay. And now you're stuck here too!" Huff.

"She is Lenora. She is a Kaleid, except she followed me for some reason!" Glare!