Fidget fidget fidget.

Should he lie? Should he just not say anything? If he lies maybe they're mad about that. It sounded like they wanted to find his home though and he DOES NOT WANT that. But Calsa likes the Important Person, and Calsa seems nice.

(So far!) He reminds himself.

"It's red, blue, green, white, black. Not black white. White black. Ummmmmm. Magistrate lying is very very bad. Um. I don't want to see [dad] again. I won't go home. I did- What do I say to say a thing was food and then fire and now it is black? I did that to my magic to run away. Boom! I can't do it again. I can't go home and I don't want to!"

"It's okay, it's okay. You're here now." hug?

"Red, blue, green, white, black." The order matters? What does that mean? "You ...toasted your magic? Used a lot of it and now you hurt? And you don't know how to go back, and nobody there knows how to get here?"

He goes completely stiff at the hug. Definitely doesn't hug back.

"Yes. I tell magic, run away away away! I know how but I can't I don't want to."

He changes cadence as if reciting something. "Red, for fire and not cold is [life]. Blue, for umm new things places is [life]. Green, for food and [health] is [life]. White, for know things is [life]. Black, for make things is [life]."

Oookay, no more hug then.

"You're here now. You ran away, you're very far away now.

You have white. You have red and blue, yeah? Do you have green or black?"

"No blue. I toasted the blue. Yes, I have green and black. I get more red blue green white black when I am big maybe."

He destroyed part of his magic?!

"Hm, 'toast' might be the wrong word. Toasting is when you put food in a fire to make it black, and then it's black food. You burnt your magic. Burning is when it's not food anymore."

"That's enough for now. I will pay you to take care of him until he is grown... twenty per cycle, plus the services of a guard on a different shift, who I want you to pass off as another child."

That's twice as much as she makes at the mill, although now she'll really be working two shifts per cycle, so it works out to the same rate, which is the same as her stipend for Siki... that's probably deliberate, so it looks like she's getting a normal stipend for 'both children'.

"Merta, send a runner to tell the mill that Calsa Tabby won't be working for a while.

Calsa, stay here with Nico while I fetch your guard."

The Magistrate steps down and leaves.

Nico probably has a lot of questions and is feeling stressed. But no hugging. Hm. Calsa turns to the nearest sand table and 'idly' draws some squiggles.

Red is catfolk. Green is drake? White does translation. Blue is whisshopper? That's the wrong order. Red, blue, green, white, black. Catfolk, whisshopper(?), drake(?), undine(??)... "What do you make with black?"

No, he's not very happy right now! But nothing terrible has happened yet. They're not even yelling at him.

He follows over and carefully gently sets his rock in the sand. "Don't touch that." He draws the same circle with two triangles inside it from before, very deliberately and neatly. Outer circle first, then one triangle, then the other triangle, very deliberately. He makes a dot in the middle. "Put fire here."

Boop.

Sluuuurp. No fire here! She can feel that she's pushing out fire, if she gets that kind of feedback, but the little circle slurps it all up. If she maintains it for more than a couple of seconds, the fire will appear normally, though. And then a little wavering candlelight-flicker will appear over the dot when she stops.

"Amazing." Not something he could fake with his own 'red' magic, not that it's likely he would try a complicated deception - even if he put a tiny flame on the dot and then grew it afterward, she would have felt him pushing back on her fire, a sensation she hasn't had since she was a kitten playing with her siblings. "Does the magic drawing make you have less black? Does holding my fire make you have less black?" If only the drawing costs him, every non-catfolk household in Kef will want one under their huddlebed.

"Drawing it makes me have less black." He touches the outside edge of the circle carefully. "The magic is burning a little little bit. But it is not burning the black in me. Only the black in the sand. I won't burn magic again. It will break if the sand moves. I think changing the sand to rock is magic, and it eats magic, so I don't know. I only saw the black magic book once. I need to do it a lot and see. I won't go home. I like doing things I want with magic."

She stopped her fire on the dot... If she pushes at it again, can she make more fire there? In other words, is the fire still her fire? If not, if she touches the dot (slowly, watching to see if Nico objects) can she snuff it out as if it was another cat's fire? Is it still catfire, or regular fire that she can't control at all?

"You're not going home. You're here. You're far away from there.

If you draw a magic drawing in sand, and then Merta makes the sand into one piece of rock without moving it, will the drawing still be magic?

You can do lots of things that you like doing with magic here! All the magic you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.

How big a drawing like this can you make? How much fire can it hold? Now, and when you're big?"

The fire is still her fire. She can make more, without actually touching it again. For the first instant she tries to bloom it, it gets sucked in a bit, like a cup with a slow leak being filled to the top again. She can also snuff out the small visible flame, though it takes continuous effort. She can't seem to touch whatever's in the 'cup', and it keeps slowly leaking out.

"Merta making rock is magic! This holds magic! I don't know! I like seeing how! But um. The Magistrate- Not talk loud, but I still don't like? Lying? Not saying things? I like you. I don't like Kef maybe. I don't know don't know."

If the drawing is consumed, it might be more expensive to fill a drawing then to just hire a catfolk to keep a fire for you, oh well. Maybe there are contraptions where a pilot light would be useful? Even the huge turbines for the pumps have the flames stuck on the end of rods that you pull out to light... You could leave a beacon in the dark? Could she refill one while being carried past by an equartier?

"The Magistrate doesn't lie... but yeah, she's not saying things. If she does things you don't like, we can leave Kef.

You're... you can do a lot of things. New things that we can't do. The Magistrate wants you to be in Kef. If we go to another town, the Magistrate there will want you too. Meikalani might be the best Magistrate for what you want. Doing a lot of magic that you like."

And all of them will want to breed him, which is happening over her cold dead body.

"I wanted to say I can not do things. But that um. Magistrate very very loud when I can do things later."

He doodles in the sand. "Not doing magic," he mutters. It looks like some sort of unfamiliar script.

"[Mom] said I'm so little I don't know what is good and what I want sometimes."

"Mm. If the Magistrate wants you to do magic, you will do magic or we will leave Kef. Meikalani will give you money for magic, if you want to do the magic and if you don't want to do it the same amount of money. Other Magistrates might not give you money.

I think you know what you want. The thing you want might not be a thing you can have, or it might hurt you, but you know what it is.

Do you want the people in Kef to speak your language? That's work for a lot of people, and if we leave Kef there will be more people who don't know your language. So you have to speak our language, even if you don't want to. Or if you're sad and want to not talk to anyone, want to not have anyone near, and you want to go away into the fields. The fires there are small, for light, and you will be cold and hurt. So if you want that, I'll say, make a black magic drawing and I will put fire in it so you are not hurt. And then you can go, but you have to make the drawing first."

"I learn how to talk and write in Kef. I talk so much and get more white. I want to go away sometimes. I want to be ooh shiny sometimes. I want to do magic magic magic. I want - not tell me do this do that do this do that!"

He slumps and knocks his head against the edge of the sand table. "Why does Calsa like me?"

"Maybe when you are big you can go out very deep into the drydark. You will need magic for fire and food, but when you are big you will have a lot of magic, right? Then no one will tell you do this do that."

She flinches forwards when he hits his head but pulls back before touching him when he seems okay.

"I want to like everyone. I want to make sure no one hurts you. Or anyone, but you need my help more? I, uh, like being with you more than working at the mill?"

"If I do color things I will have a lot of magic. I want to- Do food and [life] things, so I get more green magic. Green magic does foods when they are on the ground and not food yet."

...It doesn't count as on purpose if he flops and happens to end up leaning against Calsa as part of the flop. Definitely not.

Flop.

"[life] things have to do with plants, like in the fields around Kef? So, you want to put little bits of plant in the ground and watch them and when they're food, you have done a [life] thing? Does it give you more green magic to use green magic, or more green magic when you do food and [life] things and don't use green magic?"

She carefully doesn't respond to his flop.