"I wonder if this place can do gemstones, or if it's just rearranging what's there and things for living comfortably." She looks at a bit of wall, frowning.

After a pause: "Hm, maybe it is just comfortable -" The bit of wall opens and deposits a small, expertly cut emerald. She blinks. "Or maybe not? But that took longer than breakfast."

"Breakfast is easy, emeralds are hard. So about like most places then."

Snort.

"I guess so. That... makes about as much sense as I can probably expect any spell half frayed apart to make, I suppose."

"Yeah."

She smiles at him, then replaces the blanket over the makeshift set of pillows. After a pause, she uncovers it to reveal a cloth with an expertly embroidered picture of the city, except all neat and pretty and not at all fucked up. Probably what it was like before the curse.

"It can do detail work pretty fast, though," she observes. "If we for some reason ever need money and the world outside isn't broken, I could sell tapestries. Not that I expect us to ever need money, considering."

"Yeah. We have a magic castle."

"We do! It's pretty great! ... Oooh, let's get a floor plan of this place and then see if we want to change it. Or if we can."

"Sure."

There's a pause, then a bit of wall opens and deposits a dollhouse sized copy of the castle. Ivethis giggles slightly.

"We should just be able to remove each floor," she explains, pulling it over. "This way we can see how it all fits together. Plus, this is way more cute than a flat floor plan."

...he hugs her. "You're so cute. You do cute things. It's good."

Giggle, hug. "Thank you, I try."

Snuggle. "Okay, let's have a look at your castle."

Snuggle. "Okay."

She reaches over to start dismantling the castle dollhouse. Near immediately:

"Wow that tower is impractically tall. And wasn't at all in the original floor plan. That's where I was sleeping, right? No wonder there were so many stairs."

"Yep."

"That is going to be the very first thing to go, if I can architect. ... Actually -" A bit of the wall opens to reveal a second castle at a dollhouse size, this one shorter and stumpier. "Original floor plan before any idiots with curses got involved."

"I bet that one has way fewer stairs."

"Oh, definitely. I'd probably be at least a little sad for a while, though, living in my childhood home after, well. So maybe we should try to figure something else out from it."

Hug.

"Well - how different do you want it to be? Start-from-scratch different or just move-some-stuff different?"

"... Might be too weird for me if it's the same layout but slightly different and moved around. I would recognize things but they're be obviously wrong. Think we can competently pull off start-from-scratch different?"

"Let's find out!"

They set in on analyzing both of the available castle designs.

"... You know," observes Ivethis, "even if we can't architect competently, I think we can architect more competently than this." She waves at the taller castle dollhouse. "It's such a mess. The layout doesn't even flow particularly well, it's just, it's just - a bunch of things tacked on awkwardly."

"...Yeah, I see what you mean. Like, I don't know, if - mm, I'm having an idea and I'm having trouble saying it because I don't know the words for any of it, but d'you see how the bottom of the castle is that shape, like a - path with a bend in it, and in the original version it's taller on this side of the bend and shorter on that side, which looks reasonable, and then the way it is now there's this tall tower all the way at one end and an incoherent pile of junk all along the rest of it - I think it'd look nice with a tall tower right at the bend, and then maybe the short side higher and the long side lower again like it was originally?"

Giggle.

"That would look much better," she agrees. "I don't think I'd want it to be as tall as, um. The tower I woke up in. Or quite as entirely devoted to stairs. If we're going to have a tower I'd like to do something with the parts in between the top and the bottom. Instead of entirely rock except for the many stairs."

He giggles. A lot.

"- yes. Yes. That."

"Granted I don't know what we'd put in the not-stair-space. Uh. A sitting room? A private library separate from the other library? ... That last one seems silly if there's just the two of us here."