"Welcome back. We were talking about altering and combining objects within the book and then Riale said 'I have an idea' and he's been sitting like that ever since."

"Huh. Well, I found some stuff."

"Ha, got it," says Riale, emerging from his reverie.

A somewhat embellished copy of that glass model of the world from the natural history museum in Dawnbrook appears in front of the swoop. Instead of hanging from a chain, the frame has a sturdy round base to stand on; instead of being made of glass and suspended by wires, the continents are made of real dirt and rock and sand and water, and hover unsupported in their places. All the faces are open, and it's nearly as big as the original; it rather towers over the swoop. There is real tiny grass on the Golden Plains, and real tiny icebergs in the Jeweled Sea. It's... extravagant.

"Hey, Ravkesial, want to see the world?"

"...what did you do?"

But she floats forward and lets Riale guide her to the model...

...and laughs delightedly as soon as she touches a landmass.

Awwwww. "Oooooh."

Gleeful bounce. "Hi Cor! Find anything cool?"

"Yes I did." He lists cool things and where to find them.

"Oooh, nice. And all while I was sitting here with my nose in a book."

Camalirea giggles silently.

"I wasn't gone that long. And you made such a cool thing. Book cooking should be a snap."

"I made a very cool thing and I am immensely proud!"

Ravkesial is still climbing gleefully all over the continents.

Awww.

"It's an impressive achievement," says Telarin. "Manipulating magic inside the book is one of the most difficult things to get right."

"I had the swoop in there, and the magic in swoops is very much about - position and movement and stuff? So I just dug into it until I could see where all the bits went. Anyway I think now I should go get us a couple of rooms somewhere and then visit all Cor's interesting things and maybe a food market or two and go to sleep. Who wants to participate in which parts of this plan?"

"I'll tag along. Up till the sleep part."

Telarin glances at Ravkesial. "I think we'll be staying here until morning."

Camalirea shrugs, gestures to himself, gestures to the other two spirits in an I'm-with-them sort of way, and scribbles a note that says Have fun! and holds it up for Cor and Riale to see.

Giggle. "Okay. See you later!"

And off to see the magical objects of Highpoint!

They are magical!

And they go in the book, along with neat bits of architecture and a pretty street lamp and miscellaneous other items. Riale pauses at the map-pen stall to listen to the inventor gush excitedly about its theoretical underpinnings. Apparently it draws from sources as disparate as self-correcting clocks, self-propelling vehicles, echo stones, and certain kinds of obscure ritual implements.

"Echo stones, really?"

"Yes - an echo stone stores sound and repeats it on command; a map-pen does the same thing with the pen strokes that draw the map. I could make a pen that wrote anything, I just thought maps seemed like an obvious place to start."

"That's really cool."

The inventor beams.

"It really is!" agrees Riale. "And what about the obscure ritual implements—?"

"Oh, one of the late-stage implements for constructing a swoop or a soar is a pendulum that never stops swinging," the inventor explains. "And I adapted partly from the ritual for creating those when I was designing my pens, because in some ways they were closer to what I want than a vehicle."

"Neat!"

"I think the next thing I want to do is make the pens able to change what they have stored, like the really advanced echo stones," he says.

"I look forward to it," says Riale. "Bye!"

As they're walking away from the stall, Riale says to Cor, "You know, making that model of the world for Ravkesial didn't improve my understanding of how to do magic all that much, but I think I've got a better idea of how the previous creator built the system. It's very - hmm - 'elegant' isn't exactly the word... it's - extensible? It's like... instead of building a magic system that does a bunch of specific predetermined things, he built a magic system that you can use to invent things that do things, and in some ways that's less convenient and straightforward, but it means it can grow beyond what he personally thought of. I like it."

"And it doesn't eat anything!"

"And it doesn't eat anything! I would not have considered that an important qualification in a magic system before I met you!"