She smiles. "I'm good for now, I think. Although ... are you just trying to make the glasses directly into the alcove? You could make them out here so I could offer feedback, if you wanted to."

Ah. Right. No hiding things from her chaperone. Right, right. She doesn't super want to have a client fairy standing over her as she works every minute of every day, but she's absolutely used to keeping people updated on her work as she goes. Just think of it as freelancing, and being On The Job™. Framing it that way makes it much better than someone creepily standing over her while she works very hard to try to help them while holding the equivalent of a knife at the ready the other ways she could frame it.

"Oh? Okay. So I've got the frames so far," here are the platinum-titanium frames. Kose will note that they are pretty, delicate, and have hinges like the glasses Aestrix is used to. "They'll be a good basis for the type of magic I'm weaving, but before I do that properly I was working on getting the lenses set up. I'm a little worried about them breaking easily? So I've been trying to see if I can make glass that's stronger and less likely to shatter. From what I've been able to find, glass is not very good for holding enchantment, so I might as well go for strength."

"It definitely makes sense to make magic items durable," Kose agrees. "But usually any reasonable mundane material will outlast the magic, so there's not too much point in trying to build an object that will last the ages when it has a limited number of uses."

“That’s true. But the cost is in making the material, not what type of material I make? And glass breaking near someone’s eyes seems, uh. Bad. Plus I’m willing to just put the magic back on, especially for stuff that I’ve made, so. It seems worth the time investment now. Though I guess I might not have a good idea of what sorts of things Adventurers have to deal with. Do you want to help me stress test these before I even enchant them?”

Kose blinks. "... sure, I would love to help with that," she replies. "What kind of testing did you have in mind?"

She should not display creativity in ability to stress test things. Displaying knowledge of thermodynamics and chemistry is not innocent and fluffy.

"Mostly I've been dropping things? This is kind of what I need help with, because I kind of. Don't have things in mind. You could throw them, I guess?"

Kose relaxes.

"Maybe you could make a statue to wear them and then try hitting it in the face with various things," she suggests.

“Sure, okay.”

She obligingly forms a statue (out of tightly packed dirt) and then places the glasses on them. With, er, Pyrex for the lenses, why not.

“What is most common thing to hit Adventurers in the face?” she asks. “I could, er. Throw a rock??”

"Rocks and sling bullets, definitely," Kose agrees. "Also mallets and maces. And sometimes things like elbows from friendly fire."

Right. She throws a rock at the statue. At a normal speed that a human could manage, instead of bullshit dungeon railgun speeds. Various other tests follow in a similar sort of toothless vein.

Kose might nonetheless be surprised about how well they hold up. It’s not bad; platinum is a fairly strong metal, and alloyed with titanium it’s even better.

Kose picks up the glasses after one shot knocks them off, and inspects them.

"They seem pretty durable," she comments. "Did you work in an enchantment for that?" she asks.

“Nope! I went with a platinum alloy.” She should probably not mention titanium by name, it’s not clear if it’s been discovered yet. Platinum is safer. … probably. “I want it to be strong without any magic involved at all.”

"That's great!" Kose replies. "It seems like you've really already found your niche in magic item crafting."

She places the glasses back on the testing statue.

"I can't really think of any more tests for the glasses," she comments. "They seem pretty robust."

"That's the idea! Hm... let me test out some different ways to arrange glass on their own, then I'll call it done. I really want to avoid glass shards in anyone's eyes."

Now, at last! She can do that actual glass test that got interrupted by needing to host! And she can do them in front of Kose without it being alarming! Excellent. Pyrex versus the generic versus the arrangement of glass for the final layer of the bulletproof (resistant) sandwich. They will go onto little stands on the ground, like one would place a board that one is going to karate chop. At lens size. The tiniest little chops, for the tiniest martial artists.

Then she will start dropping tiny rocks onto them from high up. Wheeeee~!

They all hold up fairly well! Except for the generic glass, which breaks like, well, glass.

When they do break, the Pyrex breaks into jagged shards. The glass from the composite breaks into little hexagonal-ish nodules, with the occasional sharp corner, but overall perhaps a bit safer to have suddenly in your eye.

... Glass from the composite, then. She can work her way up to it being a proper composite with all of the layers that people who actually specialized in engineering came up with. This decided, she puts the glass back together, and then finishes constructing the glasses. Magic and all.

"Do you want one of these?" she asks, when she's got the magic on it properly. "Or a communication pendant too, now that I think about it. Or just a magical item you want, really."

Kose's eyes widen, and she thinks for a moment.

"I'm not sure what I would do with a communication pendant," she replies. "But I would love a pair of magic-sight glasses. And perhaps you'd be willing to repair one of my rings?"

She tugs a ring off of her middle finger, and holds it up.

"I try not to use it outside of a dungeon, so that it doesn't become too worn, but I don't know how much life it has left in it."

The ring is clearly well used, but nowhere near breaking. The concepts tied to it are things like "food" and "health". It seems as though it might supplement or replace food.

One pair of magic seeing glasses, with the frames given a loving leaf pattern, just for Kose!

And then she peers at the ring. "Oooo, this is neat. I didn't realize magical items could do this, I'll maybe see about making some. It's well used but wasn't near breaking." She then carefully smooths everything out and makes sure the concepts are properly anchored in place; with the glasses, Kose can even see what she's doing. "There you are! Want a spare, too, just in case?"

Kose smiles. "Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble."

She accepts the glasses, and settles them on her face.

"Rings like that aren't as good as real food, but they can be invaluable when you need to travel somewhere that food is scarce," she remarks.

"Makes sense. Good to have, just in case. I'll have that be the next magical item, if that sounds smart to you? Since I'm already figuring out how to make it."

Speaking of: this will need to involve some peering at the ring, to properly understand how to copy it. Smoothing it out and pinning everything back in place doesn't require the same understanding that actually making one does.

She taps her fingers thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure that a ring like this is necessarily a good idea," she replies. "While they are definitely useful, they're something of a niche item. I think probably the most valuable types of item that you don't have represented yet are weapons and shields -- the wilderness can be pretty dangerous, and Adventurers go through things like that quickly."

The communication amulet which Aestrix has secreted away chooses that moment to come to life.

"Well, can you hear me?" Rokat's voice asks.

"I can," Pona replies. She sounds slightly out of breath. "I don't see why you wanted the first test to be so far away, though."

"Oh, remind me to tell you about the time we got the set of communication pendants that only worked if you were getting closer. That took a long time to sort out, let me tell you. And not only because they only dropped after you killed one of those terrible bear things. Anyway -- does it sound clear?"

There's a bit of a pause as she does a little dance on the inside. It's working! It's working!! Her clever spycraft is totally working!! Wait wait no don't just fall randomly silent in front of Kose, pretend like nothing is happening at all. She will allow herself to be steered towards things that would be useful in violent situations, sure. To a point.

"Oh? Okay. Uhh... so, shield or healing, then? I mentioned that one as a possibility to Perkre, that seems like it'd be really useful if I can figure it out. I guess I can make weapons, but I don't really, er. Know how they go, I think dungeons that actually have monsters would make better ones."

... It is hard to hold a conversation while listening to another one. This is perhaps a flaw in her master plan. She'll need to figure out some clever way to have, uh, speech-to-text channels she can check later, probably, she's plenty good at juggling those.