"Yeah. I can also just make you a bed. They're comfy. Hmm - I bet you'd like to be near the library - do you need to eat...?"

"you can make me a bed if you want! yes, i'd like to be near the library. i don't need to eat but i can if i want. most human food tastes weird."

"All right, time for me to do architecture," he says. "You can come watch if you like."

And he turns into a breeze and descends to the bottom floor of the library and reappears and walks out. There's a corridor there with room for another door; he makes one, and shifts the shape of the castle around it until he can install a cute little spiral stair leading down below the library.

It takes her a bit longer to get there, being unable to turn into wind, but she uses judicious application of flickering speed and incorporeality and gets to where he's working soon enough. She would love to watch.

Veron follows, though he takes noticeably longer to get there. He tries not to shadowstep unless he needs to.

"D'you want your own magic bath?" he wonders. "The ones aboveground all have windows."

"... what for?"

...okay, shadow people don't need to eat or sleep, sure, fine, but do they seriously not need to bathe...? He looks at Veron in case Veron can help resolve his confusion.

Veron will save him. "She can be insubstantial at will, and won't take along anything she doesn't want to. So anything that she doesn't want on her can stop being so whenever she likes. Dirt's also less... sticky on the Plane of Shadow, it, uh. Wants to stay on the ground. A bath would be more for the novelty than practical use, though she might find the dirt here harder to get off than what she's used to."

"you're stuck with things that get on you all the time? that sounds terrible!"

"A bit, yeah. Thus, baths."

"It's a little terrible, yeah. But baths are nice. I'll build you one in case you turn out to like them."

He regards the new staircase thoughtfully and murmurs, half to himself, "It should be pretty..."

"i can try having a bath," she agrees, easily.

"... Would it help your design sense if I brought you to the Plane of Shadow to look around for a bit? See what sorts of things are there?"

"—huh, yeah, I bet it would," he says.

"Your mountain won't explode if you leave, right?"

He laughs. "It will not!"

"Just making sure. Uh, getting there's easier than getting back, we won't pop out on this plane on your mountain. You can probably do all right with that wind thing, but just in case - can you turn yourself insubstantial? You can navigate the Plane of Shadow without it, but everything shadows build isn't built to accommodate it."

"it seems really inconvenient to have to be physical all the time."

"Yyyep. But humans are pretty used to it."

"I can turn into wind, fire, water, and lightning, but I can't do 'completely insubstantial'. Should I build a spell for it before we go? What does being insubstantial look like?"

Saskia demonstrates! She goes from mostly opaque to mostly transparent, a faint hint of Saskia-shaped darkness. Demonstrably, she waves a hand through a wall.

"like this."

"Depends on how long it takes you to build a spell for it. It'll be inconvenient but isn't necessary, you'll just miss out on being able to go indoors in some places. There are still some indoors places you'll be able to see, just not all of them. Whichever you prefer's fine."

"...are there really places that air can't get in and out of? And I can go through windows usually, and sometimes walls if they're thin enough."

"Windows aren't so much a thing in the buildings I'm talking about. No reason, there's no sun, everyone can be incorporeal, and the view mostly isn't. You can probably figure out a way into a place as air if you try, but it might be more a bit more of a hassle thank you're thinking, things are a little..." he considers phrasing. "The Plane of Shadow moves. Mostly the geography, but buildings too, sometimes. The buildings stay still by being built out of things that are very sturdy. Nobody would be accounting for getting air anywhere in particular, because nobody needs to breathe. And that thing that dirt does, where it wants to stay on the ground? Air kind of does it too, it doesn't try to find holes in things like it does on material planes. It doesn't push. So there are a number of factors here that don't lend themselves well to getting places as air. Possibly you could overcome them, but I'm not going to guarantee it."