"Oh, those. You could put sculptures of those in your room. Maybe hang them from the ceiling with wire, get someone to put witchflame in them?"

"That sounds like a great idea! I have witchflame."

He will move his hands, and parts of the polyhedra will disintegrate, leaving only their edges. He will place a small witchflame in each one, black, but with red tips. He is Very Proud.

The invisible servants start moving appetizer dishes to a side table, clear away any empty plates, and start serving bowls of an opaque light yellowish liquid with bits of leaves and whitish flesh in it, and a thin wedge of some kind of yellowish fruit on top.

This catches Cumin's attention. She finishes the contents of her plate so as to promptly get a bowl of soup, and also sends to Conrad «I think you're doing great. But you should dismiss those flames soon, you can decorate your room but leaving things in other rooms that the servants can't easily move is rude.»

Oh. He didn't know that was bad. The polyhedra and the flames within will be dispelled, with the particles being recouped.

He will wait to see which utensil the other people are using before beginning to eat. Mm. It's sour. He thinks it's sour? But sour in a nice way. The fruit is Very Sour and he almost spits it out.

The leaves and white chunks are great! He likes the texture.

People are using the larger of the two spoons. Most people are not actually eating the very sour fruit. Some of them are squeezing it into their soup. One person is eating it, but she seems to like it.

Ohhhhh. It makes sense that you don't have to eat all the food. Also, one side of the wedge is really tough and he doesn't like that. He will stop eating it.

Some people seem to be putting the wedges after squeezing on the side of the bowl, does he want to do that with the wedge after biting?

Yes. It seems like The Thing To Do is to copy what everyone else is doing. And he's very good at copying!

Josephine eventually pauses in her consumption of soup. "Well, I suppose you can be your own someone with witchflame!"

"Indeed! I cannot be my own someone with Waterworking, though. I think I would like to have something watery in my room, and my Waterworking is very weak compared to my other elementalisms. I got to work with water very rarely. When I arrived at Chasmapolis, I was shocked at how much water there was. The base at Mars, and Mars itself, is very dry. There is no water to be found anywhere."

"Huh. I thought they had a bunch of water ice over there, and you're a firecaller, you'd think they'd just get some and have you melt it. We get a lot of our water from the Plane of Water, Einodia can do rifts there, and then we recycle it once we've got it."

"I don't know whether Mars has water ice. But when we went out for field exercises, everything was dry. Oh! I didn't know you could do that. It's Portal magic, right? I know very little about it. They didn't teach me about it. The first time I saw a portal was when Madam Einodia made a portal for me to get to Lunabella.

How does water recycling work?"

"Well. You get the dirty stuff out of the water, basically. There's a lot of ways to do it. Some witches can do it directly with Dominion. Mortals will put it through special machinery. Undines can charge from purifying water but they also tend to not like raw sewage, so they might do some pre-filtering. Waterworkers can just telekinese the water away from the contaminants."

Conrad looks very eager. "I might practice more with Waterworking in my free time. Although a fun project might be to try to replicate the special machinery mortals use with my nanites and Metallurgy. I don't know what materials it would use, though."

It's very hard to get the last parts of the soup out with the spoon. Are other people using Waterworking to put the soup into their mouths?

Some people are lifting their bowls to their mouths and drinking. Someone is being served more soup. Josephine is using her waterworking, actually.

He wants to practice his Waterworking. He will lift the soup to his mouth by the force of his magic.

The blob of soup travels very slowly and wobbles precariously and anxiety-inducingly, but he does not spill! He is So Proud.

«That worked fine this time, but I wouldn't recommend using elementalism at the table going forwards if it might make a mess.»

He will take that advice! Not that him taking that advice has visible effects.

The meal continues. There's something that looks like a weird loaf of bread but turns out to mostly contain meat surrounded by some kind of paste, with the bready stuff as a thin layer around it.

After that, there's some leaves in a bit of sauce with little bits of toasted bread and cheese. The seating is reshuffled at this point, which apparently isn't standard, so that more of the household can get to know Conrad. Nobody seems to have an obvious negative reaction, at least. Some people are sympathetic.

Someone asks Conrad about miniaturized motors. Saffron raises an eyebrow at the asker, but does not actually seem to have any problem with any amount of explaining miniaturized motors Conrad wishes to do.

The bread with meat and paste is SO GOOD and he will request more. He is Very Happy.

The leaves are so-so. He prefers the leaves from earlier. The bread and cheese is good though! He is surprised when there is seat shuffling.

Conrad will answer about miniaturized motors! He knows quite a bit about mechanical engineering and physics, but if the asker presses him to elaborate more, some of his explanations will cap out at "It just works like that. I'm not sure why. But I know it has to be like that." and variations.

The asker is not going to ask followup questions, because she has had an eyebrow raised at her. Unless it seems like Conrad really wants to discuss his favorite grade of steel, or something, in which case she will ask about that.

Conrad doesn't emote very much. Most of the time his face is blankly neutral. Conrad does not particularly want to discuss grades of steel currently, but he will answer if she asks.

She doesn't. It's almost like there was somewhere particular she had been tempted to take that conversation which she is now not taking it to.

And soon, the invisible servants are making a production of bringing in some kind of brown cylinder with lots of decorations, including a lot of candles. It turns out to be someone's 36th birthday. Saffron asks everyone who knows 'the modern birthday song' to join her in singing it, and the musical instruments, which have mostly been playing quietly, pick up in volume to accompany her. The song is short.

After that, someone waves her hand and extinguishes the candles, the servants serve people slices of cake sans candle, and some people get out colorful boxes with ribbon on them and tell the servants to pass them to the witch who extinguished the candles. (Not everyone has boxes.)