Hazel bustles back out of the house with an open basket containing five glass vials and a small knife.

"I believe the ideal procedure—ah. Food." They put down the basket and take a seat. "Perhaps the ideal procedure can wait."

She nods and smiles at Hazel, and continues eating.

Fish! And soon enough, vegetables! Hazel is successfully distracted from questions of science by the meal.

It's pleasant and tasty. Anyone would be distracted. Om nom fish and vegetables.

"Lily's produce is, as always, surpassingly excellent," Hazel concludes over their last few bites of vegetable soup. "If you wish to strengthen your lifeforce, look no further. She grows what may be the very best vegetables in all Mareth."

"Oh my. It stood to reason that we'd be able to strengthen our lifeforce, but it remains a delight to have it confirmed. Another reason to build our home in this area, when we do."

"What would be the usual recommendations to achieve a stronger and healthier body in your world?"

"Eating nutritious food, not eating too much food, not eating too little food, but most importantly physical exercise. Exercise of the right sort and the right amount causes countless tiny microtears in your muscles. Over the next few days, your muscles heal stronger, presuming you're eating nutritious food."

Hazel blinks. "Too much food? Eating the wrong food could hurt you, if it's corrupt or poisoned or spoiled or someone's been cutting their flour with sawdust, but too much? —anyway, I don't believe I've heard anyone propose the theory that you get stronger by injuring your muscles, but you do get stronger by using them, which puts strain on them and teaches your body to focus its growth there. Similarly if you want to train endurance you should run or walk long distances, and if you want to train flexibility you should stretch and contort yourself, all in ways that push the limits of your current ability enough to cause tangible strain without pushing so far as to injure you. And all those forms of growth ultimately strengthen your lifeforce in general as well as in the specific area you're training."

"All of that matches what we're familiar with, save that the tangible strain you describe involves those microscopic muscle tears on our old world, and that our old world had problems from eating too much."

She finishes her meal and leans back, a satisfied smile on her lips. "Ready to bleed into vials, but no rush, dears."

"—right, yes." Hazel picks up the basket. "The procedure I meant to suggest before being distracted by lunch was that each of you should first establish yourself, remain present for a minute or so, then fill a vial with blood, stop, and let the next one take over to do the same. I have labels so you can record which of you is in which vial. For the clearest results we should repeat this procedure every week or so for a few iterations, in the hope of catching any changes over time and also of correcting any errors in my initial analysis. If you aren't confident in your ability to neatly fill a vial with blood I can accomplish the collection myself, I have considerable practice."

"I think we'll let you handle collection. That's not a skill we've ever had occasion to practice. Might as well start with me, since I've been fronting for several minutes already. Save Hailey for last, and hopefully she can either do it herself or bring herself to tolerate the contact."

"Reasonable," says Hazel. "If you would be so kind as to write the label, then?" Little paper tag on a string, little stubby pencil—not a factory-machined one; it looks like two rectangles of wood glued neatly together around a thick core of graphite by hand. "I would be very embarrassed to get any of your names wrong. And it would interfere with my results."

She nods and writes her name on the label, marveling a bit at the handmade pencil, then hands it back to Hazel.

...Wait. She just wrote that in English, didn't she? Can Hazel read the letters well enough?

Hazel checks the label, nods, ties the string around the neck of the vial, and gestures for Maya to put her arm over the vial so they can nick it with the knife.

She stretches out her left arm for Hazel.

The nick is very small, and trickles fairly slowly into the vial, but the vial isn't that large so it doesn't take long to fill. Hazel provides a small clean square of soft white cloth to hold over the cut, and screws a lid onto the vial and puts it back in the basket.

She flushes just a bit at the cut, smiles, and then holds the cloth to the cut. Is there some trick to using her life force to heal? She focuses on her desire to close the minor injury.

Hazel spends a few seconds fishing out the next label and then suggests, "It ought to have stopped bleeding by now."

She pulls the cloth away to check — huh. "Well. That certainly is quite convenient. On our old world, you'd need to hold that closed for at least half an hour to be sure."

She shakes her head, then smiles softly. "Sable's turn."

"Hello, y'all. Missed me?" She throws a brief wink at Torok.

Torok grins at her.

"I hope it isn't insensitive of me to observe that I have a lot of trouble telling who is who," Hazel comments with a slight shy duck of their head. "I seem to rely on physical cues for tracking identity much more than I might have thought."

"All your friends should prank you by turning into purple-haired human girls," Torok jokes, but then immediately makes a face. "Not me, though. I like girls just fine but I don't wanna be one."

"Oh, you don't think you could rock this look, Torok?" She giggles.