"That's got to be fun. Another reason for me to be very, very happy about having my specific type of magic. I love it so."

"Perhaps you will be more envious after you've had a while to enjoy being a bird."

"I will not mind sharing."

"Hurray! Would you like a chair, too? My magic's is less shareable, but I can do that much."

"I would like a chair if you wouldn't mind. What is so oppressive about being indoors, anyway?"

Zeviana waves a hand, and another tree shifts just a bit, to make a chair. "Well. Remember how I described my magic like opening my eyes and moving my fingers? Being inside is like being deafened, blinded, and floating in an endless void, immobile, all at the same time. It's... Like removing my right arm to go inside and then putting it back on and having it feel strange and other when I do. Familiar, but not. It's hard to explain, I've never had to before."

"So it's not a matter of being near plants, it's a matter of - line of sight?"

"Does it matter what the wall is made of?"

"I think so. It's not the kind of thing that I test, but... Yeah, sometimes are worse than others depending on the wall."

"And a live wall that is made of plants does not count."

"Yes. If it did, if I ever used a tree as a bed or something I'd never be able to sleep because half of my magic sense would be missing."

Loki nods. "What if you grew something quick all over and around a wall that wasn't itself alive?"

"We try something like that with our scarce buildings, and it helps, but the wall still gets in the way. So it's a no to fixing the problem entirely."

"Trellises, fences? So the plants could grow through. It would still let you support flimsier and faster plants instead of having to wait for trees to accomplish anything that needs sturdy infrastructure."

"That would work better, maybe even perfectly, though honestly most of us just hate indoors so much that we're unwilling to even try working on the issue. The living city was the only one a large number of light elves could agree on."

"What will happen when parts of it die, though? Then those parts will be wood at best, no longer load-bearing at all at worst."

"Is your - directionality, good enough that you can test it with one trellis on one side, open on the other three? That's less work and has less risk of leaving you terribly uncomfortable."

"Yeah. It's fine if it's just a side, I can still tell if I feel anything through it. Otherwise we'd all just freak out at anything that isn't a plant. It's having to be surrounded by non-living things, or being cut off in some way."

"So the tests shouldn't be particularly scary and it means we only need to build one trellis. I wonder if Lævateinn can be a saw, I haven't tried it before." She unclips it from her belt and tries; apparently as long as she gives it enough of a handle to make it look almost more like a threatening bread knife than a saw, it will consent to the transformation.

"That's useful. Er - should I show you some trees I haven't worked on for a while like these, or do you want to get the lumber necessary through some other method? I'm a little bit squeamish about chopping down trees."

"I don't have a way to conjure it up out of nothing. I imagine we could assemble a test trellis out of branches without having to sacrifice an entire tree."

"That would be best, yeah. Thank you for paying attention to my sensibilities, this is probably extremely strange considering you don't feel any of them at all."