Emma meets a friendly neighborhood architect
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"Makes sense. Magic's more common up here but self-dedication is still pretty rare."

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"Why is everyone so much more interesting than me," Emara grumbles, mostly to herself.

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"I don't know, are they?"

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"Well, apparently the best that can be said about me is business connections," she says. Bitter, her? Never. "You- uh, you're magic, and build pretty libraries, and rescue me from stupid parties. I think you win."

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"I do build very pretty libraries. And I am very magic," he agrees. "But I think you're pretty charming, and I assure you I am not even slightly charmed by business connections."

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Emara's complexion does "light flush" much better than "bright red", but it gives it a good try anyway. "Um." Her well trained social skills are also pretty flustered, but they manage a "Thankyouverymuch." Scrambling for something actually functional to say, her brain supplies, "Though gods only know where I get it from?" This is... not really better. Argh.

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He cracks up.

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...well this sets off Emara, who winds up giggling helplessly with him. "You are breaking my brain," she accuses. "And I haven't even seen inside the library yet!"

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"Well, I can fix one of those things!" And he heads for the library door, beckoning her to follow.

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Well, she's come this far. "I'm calling you Brainbreaker now," she mutters, but follows him inside.

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Inside there is Architecture, and also Books. So many books. Really an amazing number of books. And everything is all softly lit and pretty.

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Emma leans against the nearest wall and just admires for a while. "Yeah," she finally says, "you're, uh, kinda ridiculously good at this."

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He beams proudly. "Thank you!"

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She starts wandering past shelves, idly skimming the titles on the shelves as she goes, but not expecting much to catch her eye. Going by the first few shelves, she's not wrong; they're books on magical theory, and look far too esoteric to be relevant to someone like her, without magic of her own. "So which came first, the, uh, architecture or the dedication? Does your family work in architecture or something?"

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"Oh, the dedication did. I wanted to be able to - do things, you know? And as far as having tangible effects on the world goes, there's nothing quite like building entire libraries from scratch."

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"Makes sense," she nods absently, still scanning bookshelves. (She's made it up to economic treatises, which she gets more than enough of at home.) "That's kinda why I started picking up Riverish? There's, um, really only so many business meetings you can attend and just sit and be quiet before you start collecting new words on napkins."

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"Aw. If I had to sit and be quiet at business meetings all day I'd probably set something on fire. Picking up Riverish is so much more constructive!"

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"Well, uh, that would definitely end the meeting," Emara laughs. "But my dad needed the deals, so."

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"I didn't say I thought it would be a good idea."

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"Maybe not so much, no. Do you speak any Riverish? Or are the boring meetings required?"

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"I do travel sometimes. I know a little of a bunch of different languages. Mostly things that shouldn't be repeated in polite company, I'm sorry to say."

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"Not that I really care about the phrases, since I, uh, have nowhere to repeat them anyway, but... caring about polite company has not really been the theme of my evening."

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He laughs softly. "Fair enough."

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"I tried! And all I got was weird stares and cheese tarts." She pulls out a book that looks interesting; a comparison of self-dedication practices in various rural areas. "This not caring thing has much better bookshelves."

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"I dunno, the cheese tarts were pretty good too."

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