"Forever if possible and tonight. It's for a dreamshaper that is not one year old yet."

She listens and nods. "I can immediately do something that will keep him awake for the next few days. And in the next couple of days I will have something that does months and is easily rechargeable, but I oppose to permanently remove the need to sleep from someone too young to give consent. Is this acceptable?"

"Sure, fine."

Tani nods and fetches a locket from a shelf.

She opens it and starts manifesting threads of green energy from her fingers, apparently weaving them together in a pattern that is hard to guess.

"Okay," she offers the closed locket, "get the kid to touch the green glow inside and he won't need to sleep for the next two to four days. I'm going to work on the longer lasting version. Is there anything else you'd like from me? I can make an artifact for at-will-sleeping for dreamshapers too."

"That would be wonderful!"

"I'm glad to help."

"Cool. And I suppose you could do sleep to wannabe dreamshapers too. And maybe security? I don't think we have much to fear from our Anitami candidates, but sounds like the sort of thing we should practice for the future just in case someone tries to steal the dreamshard."

Tani nods. "I can put selective anti-sleep in the dreamshard. Not permanently, but then we can rescue it before use."

"Will this beat out inducing a coma?"

"It should. I'm giving it a radius wide enough to force people awake in that case. Might cause complications, but nothing as irreversible as dreamshaping."

"Sounds good."

"I'm glad to serve." Tani smiles politely. "I'm well-rounded at mind magic but with a preference for defensive uses. In case you need anything or anyone warded."

"It, uh, does seem like it would be good for everyone with terrifying new powers to be immune to mind-affecting stuff, if that's doable. Not immune to Aitim's telepathy, though, he'd be so sad."

She nods. "I might not be able to do dozens of people at once, but I shall think of ways to scale things- with an Aitim backdoor if that is wanted. And I'm glad to work more or less for free for the next while, but I would like a fencing instructor that is okay with a student that can do minor illusory magic on them. If that isn't too much to ask?"

"I will totally go hire you a fencing instructor."

Tani smiles awkwardly. "Thank you. Do you have any questions? Anything I can do to be reassuring? I'm aware that the last while has been tense."

"This is the best thing that ever happened, it's okay that it also produced a couple object lessons in how-not-to-handle-unusual-circumstances which we'll teach our kids about. I'm going to try to get in touch with our red dreamshaper."

"I kiiiinda want to learn how to do this."

"Maybe when you're older," Tani says noncommittally.

"I'm older than you."

"By hours. And not what I meant. Anyway, I'm actually going to be pressed for time in the next few days. There are things about witchcraft that require setting up. And while I would love to socialize, I really should attend to those."

"Of course."

And she leaves, and she writes the Lina district asking about the whereabouts of Faisa, Lafa's son:

He has dangerous alien abilities. I talked the government down, they'll let him be as long as he's supervised and as long as we use this thing I've got to prevent him from using the magic. There'll still be problems if those measures somehow fail, so I want to do as much as we can right away. Someone should bring him to the corner of fourteenth and Imperial right now, I'll be there in thirty minutes. You don't need to bring anything and can tell him I just want him to touch a magic locket that'll help keep him safe. I'll be alone and I'll toss you the locket.

Okay.

And she goes and takes care of that and terrified little kid touches the glowing green thing under the supervision of a trembling grandfather and then she puts the locket through decontamination and returns to pick up the thing that lets her sleep at will.

Meanwhile, Tani is left alone in the apartment. She messages Felix

Felix, would you agree with being mind read so I can be sure you didn't edit me? And why did you create me?