"And best of luck to you, too. Hmm... Do we need to agree on a code of laws? Not literally right now, obviously."

"Thanks." And then she nods. "We probably should. General stuff to keep people from making trouble for us or each other."

"Ugh. I don't even know where to start. Except 'murder is bad' and 'stealing is bad'."

She shakes her head. "Yeah, that's a good start, but we'll need more. Why didn't I study comparative legal systems and governments more?"

"You could never have guessed that it'd be relevant... I think Riz Montague will still have a copy of the charter? Or Mr. Cooper. Unless it got blown up by the dragon like most everything else."

"I mean, it was an interest that I meant to get around to eventually. I just thought I'd have more time. Oh well. Yeah, should try to meet everyone at some point, get a copy of the charter for reference. It'll be easier to come up with something if we have something to refer to. Do we have paper and pencil? Can you turn a chunk of wall into a chalkboard and make a few pieces of chalk? We should make a way to keep track of our to-do list. And don't hesitate to put things for me on the list, I'm counting on you to tell me any Important Colony Things you need me to do."

He - fusses with a piece of stone pulled from the wall for a bit. A literal stone tablet. Hands it over along with a stick of rock for a stylus.

"It's ugly and a little heavy but it'll work for now. The front surface is liquid. I can solidify it again when it's done. With bones, I could make something lighter. So, to-dos... Read the Blue Sail Company colony charter. Get someone to tally up remaining supplies. Get someone to start planting crops- Deadspeaking can accelerate them. Get someone to explore and map the demesne. Figure out how many rooms or houses I need to make. Make a second sink, and maybe baths or something... Laundry area... See if any of the boats are fixable... Dig a nice deep tunnel to hold experiments on how monsters are supposed to work in? And find out who has good experience killing them."

She sets to writing things down as he lists them.

"I can probably help with nurturing any crops. Does your side of the magic handle water purification, or do I need to come up with a plant that does it? I think I can speed-compost if we've got some organic waste, to make better soil for farming? Do we need defenses around the demesne in case critters come in from outside, should I get on making some for that?"

"I set up a crude distillation chamber - thing. Super temporary, definitely need something more permanent later. Find someone to maintain it and remind me to teach them how to, which mostly just means occasionally scooping out gunk. It's actually a little dangerous- If someone manages to fall in while the binding is active it'll cook them, but I set it up so it turns off if the lid comes up. The farmers and craftsmen will know how to use magic for their disciplines- More than we do, in many cases. Oh, wastewater treatment. I dug some latrines, that's extremely temporary... Defenses are going to be militia with horns and spears. If they need more spears, you can do the hafts and I can do the heads. I bet a dozen types of craftsmen will be wanting tools but we can let them come to us about it."

She nods, adds a note about finding someone to maintain the distillation and introduce them to Nico for instruction. "I'll track someone down about that. Also should find someone who knows anything about the biology of wastewater treatment. We'll probably need an economy at some point, but for now we can just focus on finding people to do whatever's necessary. Spear hafts should be easy. Hmm. Tool and weapon hafts will generally be a narrow range of thicknesses, so I could maybe just plant and tweak some trees into growing very straight in standard widths?"

She adds a note about that too.

"Oh, yes, I operated a water jet cutter at an operation that had a whole orchard of straight-narrow-branch trees. That'd be helpful. I don't know about maintaining them, something with fertilizer probably. And... Mentalism. From what I hear it's very good at memory, at math, at reminders- Sort of like a computer, really? You can probably use that to your advantage. I use horotracting to mine all the time, even though I pretended to be just a whisperer until today. It's excellent at measuring exact distances and angles, horotracting, good for construction."

"Very cool. I'll have to experiment with that some. Maybe I can use my programming skills to tie some magic into a computer for us. At the very least a detailed note system in the magic for us."

"I feel like experiments can wait until we have the basics sorted out..."

"Reasonable. Just something to tinker with in spare time, really."

"Sure. Okay, to-do list... It's getting late but sooner started sooner finished. Uh... I think I'll go smooth out more of the cave floor, then call it a night, personally. It's warm and safe in here. The to-do list will still be there tomorrow."

"I'll talk to people about gathering stuff and about starting on crops, see about getting everyone to list off their skills sometime tomorrow so we know what we have to work with. Where are people sleeping? Where can I acquire a bedroll?"

"Anywhere inside the cave. Or if someone has an intact tent I have no objection to them going out. As for bedrolls- Ask for spares and I'm sure you'll get one, even if it's someone currying favor with the new co-binder? I have my own."

And little interest in someone transparently cooing at him in exchange for nice things.

She smiles. "People trying to curry favor are useful in limited ways, and also learning who the sycophants are tells me who can't be an actual friend. I'll do that then. Talk to you in the morning."

"Here's hoping we can tolerate each other. Two Earthlings... Decent chance."

Siiigh.

Staff: Picked up. He stands. "Let's get to it."

She nods and heads off. First order of business, find a quiet area to feel out what changes are trivial enough that she can't fuck them up. Removing all hair below her eyelashes? Changing her hair to her favorite shade of dark orchid violet and growing it out into a chin-length bob of lovely curls? Redistributing a bit of fat to give her some semblance of hips, a slightly feminized face? 

Probably hormone and gland work is out of reach for the moment, and probably breasts are too unless she wants to stick to just making them out of fat rather than the proper set of glands and breast tissue and such.

Yes. Not trivial but pretty easy.

Nnnn... Color feels tricky but safe to try, as grown hair is dead matter. Hyperspeed growth feels dubious, compared to "just" 10x or so, about an inch per week.

Yes, but she'd benefit from going slow- A couple of hours at it- And a mirror.

She doesn't know what magic patterns correspond to different sets of hormones and glands and so on. The body is pretty interconnected.

Then she'll get rid of all the excess hair and fiddle with recoloring what she's keeping a bit, at least as far as she can over the next few minutes.

This particular mind bendy flowchart will make her hair violet and a little iridescent- Structural coloration, not a dye.

Gorgeous. It's a start. Out she goes to talk to humans. Who looks reasonably organized and like they could get people to do stuff out there?

Mr. Cooper has apparently decided to count supplies himself. He has an abacus and is drawing tallies on a wall in ash. Some of the people he's demanding counts from aren't happy about it.

Someone has set up a washing area by passing around crude jugs held under Nico's crude sink. Clothes are being rinsed, scrubbed with what little soap there is, sent outside to dry. People are mostly rinsing off in a corner and muttering about the cold.

The doctor who helped her earlier has set up a curtained area with everyone who is still badly off even after a surge of healing, and people are spoon feeding them soup.

Someone is yelling, outside.