"My farm runs on an eight-day cycle from the start of spring to the end of fall, everything coming ripe on its own day every eight days, and then slows way down for winter. Most people can't make plants do that, and they'll grow things slower and harvest them less often."

"Okay, that's impressive. I'm used to most crops being once per growing season, which usually comes out to once a year, aside from a few crops that produce multiple yields in a growing season."

"That's what you get from most plants growing wild," she says, nodding. "A skilled gardener can do a little better, or increase the yield. I can do even better than that."

"Okay, so gardening here is magic, and Lily is extra-magic. Duly noted."

"I guess you could put it that way," she says, a little surprised. "It's not like I'm casting a spell or doing alchemy."

She shakes her head and grins. "No, but you're getting a result that isn't naturally possible. Crops on my old world can't get to your yield frequency under any circumstances, and the fact that plants here behave like that absent a gardener or farmer's intervention suggest roughly the same principles are in play without that intervention. So it may not be spells or alchemy, but it's clearly magic of some sort. You are not just a great farmer, you are a magically great farmer. Maybe it's a product of the love you put into the process, maybe it's just your skill, I don't know. Something you're doing is supernatural."

She shrugs and smiles at Lily.

"'Naturally possible'?" She shakes her head. "I don't know about that. It seems to me that if plants respond to love, that's just as natural as them responding to weather, and it's not their fault if the weather can't love them enough."

"'Mundanely possible', then? Huh. Now I'm getting ideas about having a machine mimic what you do, to try to isolate the magical element."

<No, Sable, don't nerd out on this right now,> Hailey teases with a snicker.

Sable rolls her eyes internally, and shakes her head externally. "Not remotely feasible right now. Still, what you do is very impressive."

She smiles. "Now that I can agree with."

Her apple's done; she lifts the lid of a wooden bucket to drop it in.

"Shall I show you to the barn?"

Apple core into bucket, dishes cleared away just like Lily's, and then she nods. "Okay!"

So Lily shows her to the barn. It's big and spacious and looks like it might once have had stalls for animals, but now what it has is a truly preposterous quantity of neatly labelled sacks of produce, somewhat overflowing the few former stalls whose walls are still up. There's space on the floor to lay out bedding, though, and the floor is clean and the bedding is cleaner, and all in all it seems to be a basically decent place to sleep.

"This looks great, thank you. Goodnight, Lily."

"Night, Sable. Sleep well."

She gives a little wave as she heads back to the house.

Wow. What a day.

<What should we do as we wind down, loves?>

Neo throws out a mental image of Lily.

What, no, she is not going to indulge lewd fantasies about the woman who is so graciously hosting them. Vetoed. Come up with a better suggestion, Neo.

How about a mental image of that mysterious gem?

Okay, that's worth poking at. She pulls the gem out of her bag and cups it in her hands. If she pokes at it mentally, does it do anything or feel like anything?

Wait, does she know how to poke at an external object mentally yet?

She sighs.

Okay. Meditation time. Sit comfy, and start with a mental exercise to step her awareness gradually down her arms to her fingertips.

Wait, she lost it. Start again.

Slower. Steadier. Again.

Agai—

She's out of practice, isn't she?

After probably half an hour of slipping out of meditation repeatedly, she can tolerably hold a meditative focus with her awareness in her fingertips. Now for the completely unknown part.

How does she cross that boundary between self and other? She focuses on the feeling of the gem against her fingertips. She focuses on the smoothness of the facets, the crisp edges. She tries to quiet those sensations as well, just like she quieted her awareness of the rest of her body. Touch doesn't matter, isn't present.

But something else is, isn't there?

Isn't there?

Yes, there's something ther—

And she's lost it again.

Back to meditating. Get her awareness down into her fingertips again.

Okay. Across the gap. She remembers feeling it last time, so she's prepared for it this time, and the sudden feeling of something where she's used to nothing doesn't quite throw her out of her focus.

Gently now. What does it feel like?

Sort of... packed? Compressed? Folded?

Maybe like origam—

Lost it.

Again.

Okay. Maybe someone else will have a better shot at it the first time?

How about someone... calmer?

As Sable often quotes, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

She gently eases back into the meditative state.

Slowly, smoothly, her awareness settles in her fingertips.

And there it is, just across the gap, a feeling of intricately folded origami.

She runs her mental fingertips along the metaphorical surface, feeling where the folds are. Aha.

And if she tugs here?