Chapter Thirteen
At the end of his morning’s search through the stacks, Krais brought a tray of food to the Elder Mage’s study just before luncheon was due to be served. Thassam Koret looked up from his work in the outer office and raised his gray-salted eyebrows. The smattering of age signs in his hair matched the band of white pei-slii edging the black-and-white plaid of his vest and kilt. “Any chance there’s a nibble on that tray for me?”
“None, sorry,” Krais said. “There’s only just enough for the Elder and me.”
“So what did you bring? Is it from the mages’ dining hall?” the aging Second Mage asked. “What are they serving today?”
“It is. Braised riverbeast with fried lotus root, three-onion soup, and a crispy salad of peas, spinach, and water chestnuts in a sour cream sauce. Would you be willing to get the door for me, please?”
“If it weren’t destined for my Elder, I’d steal that entire platter from you. I should take your share as my own, Penitent, and make you get more,” Koret added dryly, rising from his seat. “But I’ll just stretch my legs and open the door for you.”
“I deeply appreciate it. Of course, while you’re up, you might as well stretch your legs all the way out to the dining hall,” Krais added dryly as the stripe-clad mage opened the door for him. “The scents of the riverbeast slow-cooking had everyone headed that way. I think I even saw a few in priestly tagae, hoping to sneak a meal from your hierarchy’s kitchens. You won’t want to be late.”
“I’ll have to take my chances. As soon as I’ve summarized the latest reports, I’ll go.” With that, the Second Mage shut the door behind Krais, leaving him alone with the Elder Mage
“Who was headed what way, to not miss what?” Pelai’thia asked, not looking up from what she was writing. She added in a mutter under her breath as Krais approached. “ . . . Whatever God in Heaven thought it would be amusing to link writing and bureaucracy together in piles of paperwork should be spanked by that new Nightfall Queen . . .”
“Luncheon,” Krais announced. “Braised riverbeast, three-onion soup, fried lotus root, and crunchy salad.”
She nodded along at the description, clearly still distracted, until he said crunchy salad. That snapped her head up. Pelai’thia stared at the tray in his hands like a young hawk brought a fresh kill by a parent, and then quickly lowered the slanted writing section of her desk to the flat position and shifted papers out of the way, all to make a clear spot for the tray, the human equivalent of hopping over and pouncing on the offered meal. “Sit, sit, eat! . . . You can tell me what sigils you found in the Restricted files. But first, food. I love crunchy salad!”
“Duly noted,” he murmured, amused by her eagerness. Sitting down on a stool he drew over, he unslung his messenger satchel from his head, set it at his feet, and reached for the domes covering their meal. While Pelai helped herself from the communal platters, piling well over half the crunchy salad onto one of the provided plates, he passed her a cup of the succulent soup, and lifted his own cup’s worth. “This is my favorite. Three-onion soup. The only thing better is to add those little dumpling wraps with meat inside.”
“I prefer the broth version of that, not so many onions. If I’m having three-onion, it’s all onions; if I’m having dumpling wrap soup, it has to be just broth and dumplings,” she muttered. “And a couple of those green rings from the spring onion tops floating around, for a little crunch and bite.”
“Do you cook much?” Krais asked, curious.
Pelai shook her head. “I can cook, but I tend to have someone else do it. Though I always try to have a little something on hand. Sometimes I feel nausea in the mornings, but a little snack of crackers and cheese will cure it, or some fish paste on toasted bread.”
Hearing that, Krais inhaled a bit of soup the wrong way. Coughing, eyes watering a little, he cleared his throat and rasped, “Fish pastes for breakfast doesn’t make you nauseated?”
She shrugged. “So I’m weird. So what?”
“So just don’t kiss me in the morning with fish paste breath,” Krais muttered.
“Fine, I’ll kiss you before I eat any. So, do you cook?” she asked, curious.
Krais nodded. “You have to learn how when you’re constantly traveling on assignment. We don’t always go where there are conveniently located towns or inns, or even a friendly peasant hut where we could buy a bowl of rice and peas. Gayn cooks really well, of the three of us; I often wondered what could’ve been if he wasn’t so devoted to following in Father’s footsteps. Foren and I can cook just fine; we can make things that are enjoyable as well as edible, but we’re not quite as good at picking out flavors that go together.”
“What, and have a son who was a mere cook?” Pelai asked dryly. At his hard look, she relented. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Her apology dragged a sigh out of him. Rubbing his face, Krais shook his head, tired. “You don’t have to apologize. My father is arrogant, yes. He wants us to be exactly like him. But . . . we’re not. I’m sorry I ever tried.”
“What about your mother?” Pelai asked, curious.
“You mean, does she expect us to be like her?” Krais asked. At her nod, he shook his head. “She thinks being a librarian is a job for women, not for men.”
That earned him a horrified look. “Your mother is a knowledgist? She’s one of those sub-varieties who want to restrict access by something as stupid as gender?”
“No! No, not that,” Krais quickly defended his mother. “She’s all for men having access to knowledge; she’s not a radical knowledgist! She just. . . .thinks women are more levelheaded in temperament, and thus better suited for curating knowledge—and to be fair, Father’s not very levelheaded about certain subjects. Our punishment being one of them.”
“That’s not an acceptable proof-of-reason for restricting men from doing anything,” Pelai told him. “Even if I do believe your father would not be evenhanded in handling the curation of sensitive information.”
“Well, he would, and she does live with him, so she has a somewhat logically biased view,” Krais retorted. “And I’m not saying that this is what I believe, just what she believes. Mother went through the motions of letting us shadow her for possible apprenticeship, but it was clear she was more interested in her sons becoming Disciplinarians, or Painted Warriors, or anything else of the upper hierarchies than a librarian. And your family can’t be perfect,” he added tartly, still feeling defensive. “I’m certain your kin have their flaws, too. Everyone’s family does.”
“The closest they ever got to that was expressing dismay and disbelief when I turned out to be a prime candidate for Disciplinarian studies,” Pelai stated. She dug into the sauce-soaked shredded meat on her plate. “When I told them how strong I’d tested as a mage, they had high hopes of me somehow miraculously being strong and skilled enough to be the next Elder Mage, and were disappointed just two weeks later when I came home and babbled about how I excited was by the chance to become a Disciplinarian. From the way my mother mourned over my choice of career path, you’d think I’d announced I was going to start flogging her. We had more than a few arguments over that when I was a teen.”
“Yet now, ironically, you are the Elder Mage. How do they feel about that?” he asked her.
“They’re going to be a little upset I didn’t rush home to announce it the moment I became Pelai’thia,” she confessed. “I’ll probably have to do all the Family Day dishes. By myself. By hand. No magic.”
Krais arched a brow at her, a chunk of lotus root halfway to his lips. “Are you going to do the dishes by hand, no magic?”
Pelai snorted. “No. I didn’t put my personal life on hold for the last three years, cramming to learn everything I needed to know to be the next Elder Mage, just to have to do things by hand. The Gods gave me magic, so I am going to use it. Responsibly, and respectfully, but these are my energies, and this is my body, and I have the right to choose which means I’ll use.”
“Good for you. I support you,” Krais told her.
That made her blink and eye him. “You know, nine months ago, I’d never have thought we’d be having a conversation like this—any sort of amicable discussion, really. Having you seem so agreeable was a bit strange. But you’re still you inside your head, in your thoughts, I can tell. You’re just not parroting your father’s words anymore. Or your mother’s, if you ever did.”
“I know I did,” Krais dryly reassured her. “But I finally finished growing up on the voyage home. I’m finally to the point where I try to think before I speak—I said try, by the way. I never said I’ll completely succeed.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I grant you leave to be merely human, and not a Patron Deity in disguise,” Pelai replied loftily, waving her hand limply in imitation of the Hierarch, Elder Priest Aleppo’thio, whenever the graying male gave some sort of benediction over his congregation.
Krais snorted with laughter, not quite choking on his food, but almost. Clearing his mouth, he muttered, “Please, not while we’re eating?”
Relenting, she dug into her food, and they ate in companionable silence for a while. When they were down to just scraps—and the last drops of crunchy salad sauce had been swiped up by her finger—Pelai sighed. “I need to get back to all these assignment reviews . . . I’m barely caught up to the Roadworks Mages. It’s summer, so at least there aren’t avalanches in the mountain passes to set watches for, but it is summer, so we have to coordinate with the Firewatch Mages . . .”
“Doesn’t your Second Mage know a lot more of this?” he asked. “Shouldn’t he be doing it?”
“Yes, because my primary focus is handling the Fountain, but as the new Elder Mage, I have to approve what Koret is doing, providing oversight and reassuring the mages in my hierarchy that I both know and value every aspect of our work. These are just the summaries of what’s happening across Mendhi,” she explained, tapping some of the papers set to the side of her desk on the flat section. “But before I can get back to that . . . what have you found in the archives?”
Krais hauled his satchel up onto his kilted lap. “I took copious notes. . . .and . . . there, a summary of the fifteen sigils I researched this morning, replete with sketches. I have more detailed notes on everything, of course. It’s encrypted in Disciplinarian shorthand, which Father made us learn as young lads, to try to prep us for our tests.”
He handed over five sheets of paper, and waited for her to read through them.
Pelai did so, but from her slowly growing frown, not happily. “Krais . . . why did you copy all of these? I already have all of these marks! . . . Well, except for that one, I don’t have that one, at the end . . .”
“You . . . ? Well, you didn’t tell me which ones you already had, you know,” he told her. “You just told me to go down and look up all the rare marks used by the Elder Mages in controlling the Fountain’s powers!”
“I told you to look up the ones I am missing,” she corrected, giving him a flat look.
“And still, my point stands; you didn’t provide me with a list of the ones you do have!” Krais asserted. He stopped himself, held up one hand, pinched the bridge of his nose with the other, and breathed deep. “This is an argument we do not need to have. What we need is either for you to look for the missing sigils yourself—“
“Krais, I don’t have the time for that,” Pelai’thia reminded him, tapping the scores of reports piled on her desk to emphasize her new position. “That’s why I’m sending you. And I can’t tell you what I don’t have because I don’t entirely know what I do and don’t have. I’d have to do the research myself. Even that Jodo fellow said there were runes that were defunct that I might never need . . . Tipa’thia was the one who knew in depth what was needed, not him, or even Anya’thia. These sigils aren’t for public knowledge, so I can’t ask anyone else, and I’m taking a risk in involving you, too. If it weren’t for the demon-summoners who are supposed to be arriving any day, I’d put it off until all of these bureaucratic details are handled. I’d say ‘stuff it’ to the bureaucracy, but there are rules I have to follow. Sending you is the closest I can get to a compromise while still doing my job.”
“I know! As I was going to say,” he stressed, “or we need to have a way for me to be able to quickly and discreetly contact you across the distances between us,” Krais said. “So that I am literally your eyes and your ears. Like that scrying sharing thing you showed me with that other Guardian, only without having to touch each other to share visions. If I could show you what I’m looking at, you’d be able to tell me instantly if I’ve got the right sigil that needs to be researched. I cannot go bothering Jodo Dalek for everything. He knows what the possible ones are, but not the practical ones you need. Just like Tipa’thia was the only one who know, only you can decide that. Thus I must consult with you.”
Pelai blinked a couple times, sitting up and back. “I . . . That’s actually a really good idea. . . . Go looking for that in the stacks, this afternoon. I don’t know where it’d be found . . . maybe the subsection on Espionage Magics?”
“That sounds reasonable. I’ll go look,” he promised her. Digging into the pouch, he asked, “Which one is a sigil you didn’t know? I’ll get you the notes on that one, and destroy the rest.”
Pelai flicked through the five pages, and showed it to him. Krais separated out the relevant notes, took the summary sheets back, and bundled the whole stack of useless writing together. Holding the stack between his hands, he flexed the finger tattooed to make his flesh temporarily heat-resistant, and muttered an incineration spell. Fire flared bright and hot between his fingers, forcing both of them to squint, even to shut their eyes.
A few moments later, white ash crumbled and dropped from his grasp, fluttering all over his lap and the floor. A muttered cleansing spell bundled up all the ashes into a compact ball the size of a smallish quail egg. “ . . . Thank you for giving me access to my magics. I’ll take this mess out and dust it over a flower bed on my way back to the Library side of the Temple grounds,” Krais told her. “If and when I find a good spell to bind our ability to share sight and sound, do you want me to look for different variations, or do you want me to just bring back the first viable one?”
“Several different varieties,” Pelai decided. She started to say something more, but a knock on her door interrupted her. “ . . . Yes?”
Koret opened the door, poking his head and upper body through. “I have more reports collated from the Border Mages for you, Pelai’thia. Do you have room on your desk?”
“No, but I will once I send Krais back with his tray. Krais . . . bring supper here for both of us at six,” she instructed, giving her Second a wry look. “I suspect I’ll still be here until eight or later. Check on Purrsus, too, to make sure he is fed and well.”
“I’ll do that before fetching food for us,” he promised. Slinging the satchel over his head, he tucked the ash-pellet into it, then helped her gather up their dishes onto the tray. Covering everything, he headed for the door. “Koret, did you eat?”
“Not yet,” the aging, stripe-clad mage told him, entering with a thick stack of papers in his hands. “But I’m about to, now that this is ready for the Elder.”
“Then I’ll walk with you,” Krais offered. “The staff promised to reserve seconds for the new Elder if she wanted any, so I should be able to get you something in her name.”
“How sneaky. I approve,” Koret told the younger male. He added over his shoulder, “We’ll see you later, Pelai’thia.”
She nodded, dismissing them both. Krais nodded as well, but her attention had already gone back to the interrupted mountain range of paperwork found in a kingdom dedicated to the Goddess of Writing.
Later came all too soon for Pelai. Still, the interruption to her work ended up being quite delicious. Poached eel in a spicy cream sauce, still steaming hot baked roots slathered in a butter garlic sauce, the last of the leftover crunchy salad preserved in chilled stasis just for the new Elder Mage, and for dessert, frozen berries drizzled in a sweet cream sauce, refreshing and soothing in the lingering heat of the day. With the meal appreciated, she pulled over the summary list of Krais’ research.
He waited while she read for a bit, then offered, “There are two that I think could work very well for our needs. One involves wearing something called a torc, a sort of stiff, arc-shaped necklace set with enspelled crystals. They can record and project, and if enspelled in the complex version, they can be set to show images only to the persons wearing the interlinked torcs.”
“That sounds good. And the other?”
“It’s a pair of linked tattoos . . . so it’s a permanent bonding,” he warned her. “The necklace version can be taken off, which is an advantage, but anyone who touches it can see the images being shared, so that’s the disadvantage. The matching tattoos can only be seen by the other person with the exact same tattoo link, but it can be invoked by one person to spy on whatever the other is seeing.
“There are other advantages and disadvantages,” Krais continued. “The necklace version can physically store images in its crystals, and there’s a variation where you can make the crystals detatchable, and of course it can project those images in a way that anyone can see them. The spells to craft the necklace are in the Restricted Section, but not in the deepest archives. I didn’t go looking just yet to see how long it takes to craft the necklaces, but the Index Hall records indicated it shouldn’t take too long. The tattoo version, on the other hand, is very private since it is only shared between those two people. It is therefore untraceable, unrecordable, and requires authorization from one of the Elders of the Hierarchy to access the accounts of what inks to use and which marks to make under the skin.”
“That is a tough choice,” Pelai murmured, reading through the notes. “What about this one, with the half-mirrored crystal eye-lenses? Sort of half scrying mirror, half reading glasses? Actually, I think that’s what Guardian Callaia uses. . . . It says here they can be enchanted to give different levels of access depending on who picks them up to look through them. Why didn’t you recommend those?”
“I don’t know where this Guardian Callaia that you mention got hers, but the Index books said they’re a crafting specialty of the Jenodan Isles. They haven’t shared the secret of the actual magics involved with the Great Library, just a few of the details of what they can do,” Krais told her. “I made a mark about it and put a note on the back of that page.”
Pelai turned the sheet over and lifted her chin. “Oh, right, there it is. . . . Well, that’s an oversight that’ll annoy Anya’thia to no end . . .”
“With the loss of long-distance Gate travel, unless you have a way to get there and back, the fees for transporting the goods from mirror station to mirror station would cost a couple hundred embosses, if not more. Embosses, not silver seals. I don’t have that much gold to spend,” Krais added.
She lowered the summary to her desk and rubbed her brow. “Technically, I do, but I’d have to justify its use on the budget. . . . Actually, I have a secondary—and much more direct—way to get my hands on two of them. If they’re already available. Guardian Callaia actively guards the Jenodan Isles and the surrounding sea,” she murmured. “But keep that to yourself.”
“Of course, Doma,” he murmured promptly, without hesitation. “I won’t mention it. I didn’t recommend it at first because I didn’t know how to get ahold of that kingdom’s craftsmen. They’re far to the west by months of road-based travel, and by far too much gold for mirror-based, as I said. Easily scores of mirror-Gates would have to be linked.”
“Well, it’s still earlier in the day out west,” Pelai said. “Close the door so no one else can eavesdrop, please, while I see if I can contact her directly . . .”
Sitting back in her chair, she focused, flexed, and murmured a command word. Krais busied himself by quietly putting all the supper dishes back onto the tray. The illusion that arose in front of her hovered just within reach, over the edge of her desk. A moment later, one of the underlings who worked for Guardian Kerric appeared.
“Greetings, Guardian Pelai’thia,” the dark-skinned male stated. She couldn’t remember his name off the top of her head, but she knew his face, and knew him to be efficient as well as friendly. “Do you need to reach the Master today?”
“No, but I’d like to be linked to Guardian Callaia, please,” she replied.
“One moment . . .” His smiling head and torso disappeared, replaced by a pulsing blue field for a few moments. Then it resolved into an image of Callaia, pale-skinned, thick blond ringlets, and eyes either blue or gray behind those half-circle glasses.
“Guardian Pelai? What can Freedom’s Thought do for you?” the young woman asked.
“Greetings, Guardian Callaia . . . and it’s Guardian Pelai’thia,” she corrected. “The ‘thia part is an honorific attached to my name to help indicate my position as the Guardian of the Painted Fountain.”
“Ah. So Tipa’thia was originally Tipa. Clever. I presume, however, this isn’t an impromptu, random cultural lesson?” the younger mage asked in a rather dry tone. Visible from the shoulders up—clad in soft spring blue—and moving among shelves of books, she swept her arm up into view, lobbing upward what looked like a book, if only glimpsed as its spine came into view and left the edge of the scrying field.
Slightly distracted, Pelai wondered who had taught the younger woman what was such an obviously Mendhite Librarian trick for reshelving books without having to climb up tall ladders to do it physically. Shaking it off, she focused. “I need to connect myself with a remote agent investigating something for me, but do so in a discreet way. The Great Library’s records suggest that viewing glasses like the ones you wear could be used to project scrying images—both sight and sound—to a matching pair worn by someone else.”
“Ah. Yes, that could be done, but we don’t usually authorize the crafting of such things. Ones like these,” Callaia stated, tapping the corner of her lens frames, “are readily available because they aren’t linked directly to any other pair. However, they can be easily linked to a standard scrying crystal to record whatever is needed for storage and later replay.”
“No, I need to be able to consult immediately with the person wearing the other pair, as a time-saving feature,” Pelai stated.
“Ah. Well, if I recall correctly, the forging time for linked pairs takes about three weeks,” Callaia stated, her gaze focusing somewhere in the distance while she recollected the facts. “But on top of that, it’ll depend on whether or not the magesmiths at the Glazing Academy have the time to do such things. We’re three weeks away from finals here at the university, so . . . they probably wouldn’t be able to begin for four weeks—with a week for grading final assignments, tests, and papers . . . so you’re looking at two months to delivery. Unless, of course, you paid extra to have someone else take over the grandmaster’s classes while they worked on a rush forging order.”
“I think I’ll pass. I’d like to get my research-by-proxy settled a lot sooner than that,” Pelai demurred.
“Sorry I couldn’t be of more immediate help,” Callaia murmured, and shrugged wryly. “That is, I’m presuming you want them to be twinned viewing lenses, only able to scry upon each other for security’s sake. Now, if you don’t mind anyone being able to ‘eavesdrop’ on the scryings involved, intercepting the scrycasting, I could link up a pair and ship them straight to you by the end of the day.”
“No, definitely not. I’m trying to do two things at once, but it’s very sensitive information. Thank you, though, for the suggestion,” Pelai told her.
Callaia flicked a hand and caught a book coming down from somewhere above and behind her, opening it even as it dipped below the scrying rectangle’s bottom edge. “I’m surprised you don’t have a tattoo or something that would do the exact same thing. Your people seem to place a lot of stock in such things.”
“Would you want to be permanently bound to someone who could peek in on you at any point in time?” Pelai asked dryly. “That takes a great deal of trust.”
Callaia hesitated, then shrugged, but it wasn’t the transparent image of the golden-haired Guardian in blue that caught her eyes. Instead, it was the tattooed male in dark red that sat across from Pelai. He had stiffened slightly at her words . . . but didn’t say anything. In fact, he just blinked a couple times, breathed deep, and exhaled slowly. Quietly. Meditatively.
Like a man who was reminding himself to submit.
I do think I just hurt his feelings, Pelai realized. She blinked her focus back to Callaia’s figure and nodded. “Thank you for the suggestions, Callaia. I’m still working on the need to thwart any demon-summoning ex-priests. I’ll let you and the others know what’s happening as soon as I know it. Have a good afternoon.”
“Have a good evening, Guardian Pelai . . . Pelai’thia,” Callaia corrected. At Pelai’s nod, she gestured and ended the connection.
“That was rather interesting,” Krais murmured, eyeing her not quite warily.
“What was?” Pelai asked him, refocusing her attention on her erstwhile penitent.
“I couldn’t hear any of that,” he explained. “I saw your lips moving, and I could read some of what you were saying, but I didn’t hear a single word of it.”
“Huh?” she asked . . . and then remembered. “Oh, right, privacy mode. That . . . that is actually some very impressive intertwined enspelling. It was all set up a year ago, and I remember now Tipa’thia telling me how she had to translate the magics from scrying mirror magics to controlling tattoo magics. She had it set for privacy, which meant a sound-shield goes up when I use those things . . . unless I’m touching the person I want to share the sounds and images with, like we did last night.”
“Ah. That makes sense. Actually . . . that’s some very powerful privacy magics,” he murmured thoughtfully. “And I’m about to delve back into some very private files in the Restricted Archives . . .”
“Yes, I was just thinking about that,” Pelai agreed. “Tomorrow morning, go track down the tattoo version.” The startled, almost vulnerably surprised look he gave her cemented her decision. “I do trust you, Krais. The new you. I like and trust this version of you. You’re still in many ways the same man you were before, but you’re your own man, and an honorable one. A set of viewing lenses with the privacy settings we need would would take too long to craft. I suspect the torc necklaces would also take that long, so we will go with the tattoo. If you’ll agree, of course.”
“ . . . I’ll make sure to find a privacy variation so that the scrying tattoo isn’t activated without permission on both ends,” he reassured firmly. “If you want, I can go right back into the archives tonight. It shouldn’t take me more than a few hours to find everything. I think.”
“No,” she decided. “That’s tomorrow’s work. Tonight, you get rewarded.”
“Rewarded? For what?” he asked. “I failed to get more than one new Fountain sigil located for you.”
“You still looked willingly, and your report on your findings were all concise,” Pelai pointed out. “Plus, you switched subjects readily, and found all these different means to communicate at a distance with me. So, you will wait while I finish up the current report—you could probably take the supper tray back to the dining hall and come back—and then we’ll go home and I will reward you.”
“What sort of reward, exactly?” Krais asked. “We’ve already had dessert.”
Pelai smirked at him. “I will punish you. With a flogging, a spanking, and I think we’ll test some laundry pins.”
He blinked, nonplussed. “Laundry . . . pins?”
“Your father never used laundry pins on his subservients?” Pelai asked, her turn to feel taken aback and a little bit adrift at his blank look. “The spring-loaded bits of wood that open when you squeeze the ends, and then you can use them to pinch things when you release them? The things that you use to secure wet laundry to a drying line?”
“I know of them, but my father became a Disciplinarian long before I was born, with the attendant pay,” he reminded her. “We’ve always been able to afford having our clothing professionally cleaned. There was no need for laundry pins. We certainly never lived in a neighborhood that hung its laundry out anywhere it could be seen . . . and I was never allowed to play in or linger around those areas of the city that did.”
That made her roll her eyes. “I clean my laundry with spells, and I still have laundry pins, simply for the sensation play of it—trust me, Krais, you’re in for a treat. We’ll start them on the least sensitive body parts. You can apply them yourself so you’ll see how hard they pinch. But first . . . take the tray back to the dining hall, Penitent Puhon,” she directed formally. “And return here to await my leisure as I finish this last bit of work.”
Sighing, he rose and hefted the tray. “Of course, Domo Pelai’thia. I will do exactly as you say, without hesitation . . . though I’m still not sure about using laundry pins.”
“Some of the greatest sensory experiences can be derived from the most common of household goods,” she told him, moving the current status report back in front of her for review. “Trust me. You will see.”