There is lots to learn! Starting with the language, since that will make everything else easier.

She gets him a fur coat; quilted scraps of fur with no recognizable body parts or distinctive patterning.

She takes him to walk through the fields.

She brings home a vase with four mice. Merta makes sand for them to dig in and sprinkles in crumbs.

Lin plays with Nico with unchildlike diligence. Maybe she's lonely.

Siki comes home to sleep but stays aloof.

Meikalani sends an invitation for human women to come to Kef, at any age from current peak fertility, down to Nico's age so he might fall in love as they grow up together. To obscure her intent, she also invites a drake and a tengu and orders a jar of gold wire, which she genuinely wants, and invites a kappa and a drider as randomly-selected distractions.

Nico is uncommonly focused for an actual eight year old. There are still moments of genuine distraction, dejection, or playfulness, and playfulness sneaking into the rest of what he does, but a somewhat uncanny amount of his time is spent doing something purposefully. He says the same things over and over, only occasionally skipping into his old language. He practices writing in the sand table for an hour or more at a time, as long as anyone will teach him, and re-doing old work if they're fed up. In the fields he carefully inspects the soil and the plants for what kind of crop they are, what kind of soil it is, does it look wormy, does it look weevily, any insects or other pests? He - risks magnifying his sense of smell out there after bracing for it, the one Green trick he knows, to learn the way the field smells and compare it to a forest at home - he should have paid more attention to Mom's gardening lectures.

...He practices using his magic to exhaustion of it every day, inside the house (mostly), pushing for getting better at the tricks he already knows, extending them. A candle-sized flame or showers of sparks for Red, nothing quite yet for Blue though he can almost feel a third point coming in, the scent-boosting for Green and trying to interpret more than 'this person was here recently' with it, playing with sparkles of light for White (and always making illusions of complicated machines with lots of moving parts), and drawing slight variations on magic circles with his Black, in sand, scratched into rock slates. He gets Calsa to help test them as safely as possible, with him standing far away in case of explosion. And at least one does explode- With Calsa's fire, which she is immune to. But he manages bigger ones that hold more. He also manages a switch after a week's worth of attempts, a separate White-Black combined pebble that turns the 'leaking' on or off, and is excited and animated for the whole rest of the day.

...He is slightly obsessive about caring for the mice. They have to mostly stay in the vase because they would get into the food and the bed but these mice are here because he asked for them without really thinking about it, and now they're his responsibility and it's kind of terrifying. Are they too warm? Are they too cold? Are they bored or scared? Are they hungry or thirsty? Does their sand need to be cleaned? Do they like scratches? ...He tells Calsa he doesn't want any more pets what if he hurts them but isn't going to get rid of the ones she already found.

He thinks Lin is kind of weird. Something about her just doesn't seem quite right but he has a lot to think about and aside from vague disquiet he ignores it. And she's patient and good at talking, which is helpful. He doesn't find Siki strange at all, keeping to yourself is an extremely understandable thing to do, this house is getting crowded, though it's disappointing once he learns about Siki's work. It sounds fascinating.

Calsa will spend all her waking hours teaching him if he wants, with breaks for errands.

The soil is sandy and dry. It has worms and mites and the occasional tiny spider. The crops are mostly squash and beans, and some hay. It smells less than the forest, and faintly putrid.

With practice boosting his sense of smell, he can tell the  age and sex of random catfolk and werewolves, and whether Calsa and Merta are tired or stressed or happy.

Once, the giant moth walks down their street, waving antennae through all the people and buildings.

The mice are cold when not actively warmed. They are hungry and thirsty and scared, but not bored. They like their sand to be changed whenever it's at all dirty. They love scratches once they get used to him.

When Nico's Sotalese improves, Siki is more interested.

"Hey kid, you like machines, right? Here's a watch I'm cleaning." He opens the case on a clear spot on the floor.

He takes a hand-sized humanoid figure made from tightly woven reeds out of his pocket and puts it next to the watch, where it lifts out each tiny gear. Many of the parts are smooth black stone like Nico's pet rock.

"This watch is for a mining foreman, so it doesn't show anything fancy like the moons of Lacrimos, just minutes, hours, and cycles in a deci-year. Here's the mainspring, which I won't take out right now, it's a pain. Made right here in Kef. The spring doesn't pull with perfectly equal force at every point, so there's a cam here to adjust for that, but I'm trying to figure out a mechanism to adjust to whatever the force of the spring is without having to know it in advance..."

Complete immersion, extreme dedication, and having the kind of child's brain that absorbs language like a sponge absorbs water combine to get him rapid progress in Sotalese.

Pretty dry... But whoever is planting these probably knows more about these particular crops than he does, and running the water turbine to them all the time would probably cause some sort of other problem. All the eternal night already means they're pretty different than what he expects. He wishes he'd paid more attention to gardening... Making them fruit right away would be pointless... They're probably fertilizing it with manure... Maybe Green can tell him what a plant needs, or just make plants healthier? If he's going to wander eventually he needs to be able to make food on his own. But he decided not to try all sorts of new kinds of magic right now, just subtle things, because that would make everyone go crazy even more.

He asks Calsa what magic various species have after the moth incident! Every species has exactly one except him? That's still so weird. He makes a heat plate for the mice and puts their vase on top of it so the sand at the bottom will always be nice and warm. And then worries that it'll get too warm and carefully tests it to make sure it's okay. He gets a second Green point soon, he was probably close anyway, and starts using it on what the book called diagnose- Just a simple probing query: What's wrong with this creature? Is it a little hungry? Too cold? Is there a teeny scratch on its tail that is bothering it? If he has mice that are depending on him he is going to keep taking paranoidly exquisite care of them.

"So tiny... So the spring pushes less when it's mostly loose? And it has to push the same speed no matter what?"

The mice:

- have sore paws from the sand

- feel exposed without stuff to make nests with

- don't like the smell in the vase

- don't like the smell of predators everywhere else

- love the crumbs of nuts

"The mainspring pushes less as it unwinds, yeah, which means it pushes the wigwag less each wig, so it wiggles slower. The way this watch works, the correct amount to push is the smallest amount, and when the mainspring is pushing harder, this other spring here pushes against the cam to drag it slower. As the cam rotates, it gets lower and the other spring relaxes and drags less on the movement of the mainspring.

Fancier watches have a different mechanism that doesn't drag the watch slower, but you still need to know in advance exactly how the mainspring gets weaker. In practice, it's not that hard, it's almost linear - er, how well do you know your numbers?

But I think it would be neat to be able to swap out the mainspring with a completely different one and have the watch still keep time without any manual adjustment.

How about this: if you come up with an idea for that, I'll pester my boss to let you see the shop, okay?"

(He thinks the mice need a slightly bigger place to live, and some actual dirt instead of just sand 'cause it's softer, and maybe a couple of teeny caves or overhangs to make them less scared and bored, and he will offer to do Merta's chores or do magic or something in exchange for helping with that. ...And then wash it with water because now it smells like Merta and they don't like that. And maybe buy or borrow some rags or thread and dead straw and fallen bits from the field for nesting! If these mice are here because of him he has to be good to them. He will be So intent and So careful with them. And they are kind of cute.)

"I can add and subtract and mul-tip-ly. I don't know if I'll have any ideas but I will try. This is interesting. Do you know about my magic? A watch that touches a magic pebble to something once a minute might be useful. Maybe if the mainspring spins something and then has to un-spin it? It would spin faster but also slow down more when the spring is strong?"

Merta is happy to expand the mouse enclosure and does not demand anything in return. What magic does he think she would like, though? Does he happen to have a method of making someone happy in a way that temporarily impairs them? She's heard of lieflings able to do that.

"This is already dirt like we use here... in wetter or windier places I suppose they have dirt just lying around, is that what you mean? I could make the grains have smoother shapes? Or you could grind them with a mortar and pestle."

He'll have to buy any organic matter he wants, but it's cheap.

Siki gives him a simplified talk on functions and the kind of shapes they make when you graph them.

"Like a beacon that only lights once a minute, and lasts for days before a catfolk needs to come by to refill it? What else can your magic switch on and off?"

"You're thinking of storing energy in a spinning wheel, taking energy from the mainspring when it has excess, and giving it back later when it runs down?"

(Lin is watching this exchange, visibly bored.)

He will - ask to do some sort of chores or make a magic plate or something, before just assuming he gets an allowance - and then walk around with Calsa for a bit to shop for bedding for his mice, looking for cheap stuff nobody wants. Maybe woodchips or straw will suffice instead of grinding down the sand finer?

To Merta: "I heard of that but I don't think I can do that yet. It seems silly to me. But Green magic can help with being tired and hurt, Mom did that for me sometimes, so I could try that. Maybe on the mice first. I could make you a warm plate like the one for the mice. But Calsa would have to refill it sometimes."

To Siki: "I will have to try lots of things. You can put magic in drinks so it happens when you drink it. You can move things with magic. We had magic lights and magic tools... There was a beacon I was supposed to break if I was in trouble and it would call Mom. There were talking mirrors you talked through. There was a water cleaner, and the um guard rocks, that keep strangers out... That's not what I was thinking with the watch. The mainspring has the energy... Big watches use a swinging thing going back and forward, right?"

Too bad Lin is bored. But she could always go do something else.

"Each species has one thing, although it might have several parts? Like I can make fire and put out any catfire and I'm invulnerable to all fire, both catfire and the hungry kind.

The wroth was paid by the Magistrate to look for disease. They go intangible to smell people's insides. They can make their whole body intangible, not just their antennae.

You’ve seen elves, which stick memories places where any elph can read them later, and boarks at the mill, who can’t be hurt by anything, pretty much. I think they can get sick. Gnomunks are kind of like elves but for physical objects, which is useful for storing things so a frogold can’t grab them. Equartiers can run really fast in straight lines, and smash things up if they charge into them.

Drakes make things grow and change, but that's not always a good thing, and they can’t stop doing it, so there aren’t any here even though they’d be useful for the fields. Whisshoppers make illusions. Kappas make air and water. Scoblins make you hate things. Undines read thoughts. Lieflings make medicines and stuff. Tengu have like a bunch of bodies? They're good for sending messages. Driders are good at thinking. And humans made all the other species.”

"Is that a normal thing, to pay kids for doing chores?"

"Sure, and I think Meika would want us to."

"Hm."

"We're in her town, and it seems to be going pretty well. Why should he be counted as a unit with us?"

"Look, he's not my kid, and I want to pay him to make me a fire plate for when I need to sleep at work, okay?"

Straw is available, and ragged clothes, claw trimmings, and teeth. No wood chips.

Fur (shorn, from werewolves) is cheap, since it's not very good for weaving, only compost.

Fur (shorn, from catfolk) is almost as cheap.

Fur (on skin) can be had, although the tanner gives him a surly look and will only sell finely-shredded scraps of pelt.

Merta does not press on wanting a pleasantly impairing drug, and expresses curiosity about things to make people less tired instead.

Talking mirrors sound useful! How long does Nico think it would take before he's grown enough to make mirrors or emergency signals?

"This watch has a thing like that too, see here?" His reed figure flips it back and forth, a stick with paddles that stick into a gear. "You're thinking it could be heavier? Then it will move slower overall, and still move slower when the mainspring pushing on it is weaker.

Spinning... like it's connected to gears that spin another wheel really fast back and forth? That makes it act like it's heavy when the wigwag pushes on it, but doesn't weigh the watch down as much. I wonder if you could make the effective weight change?"

Lin mopes and taps her fingers in rhythm. She must really like being around other people though.

(He did some chores at his old home, and then could do extra chores for a few copper pennies. It feels better to earn the things the mice need instead of just asking for them. If Calsa and Merta don't have any chores he can help with, he'll work on a warm plate for Siki but it will take a day or two.)

"I think that needs some blue and then a bunch of experiments. Like, a whole bunch. And I only have a little bit of magic to experiment with right now. And yeah, that's what I was thinking of... It spins back and forward... But since the mainspring is pushing it every time it's the same problem. I was thinking maybe a spring that pushes back more the more it gets pushed? So a little push and a big push take the same time? But I don't think that works. I guess I will think about it."

"Are you bored, Lin?"

"Oh, you want to put a spring on the wigwag? Huh. I don't know if that will keep steady time the way you're imagining, but I'll make a tiny spring and try it and see... And I'll pester my boss about letting you observe, or I'll do the experiments at home.

Is there something I can do to get you more blue? ...Is these something I can do to get you more blue that Calsa can't do? Does going to lots of places help? If you were a mouseling I could take you on a epic journey across the floor... I don't know if that would count if it only feels like a huge distance, but is there a way you could see what I'm seeing?"