Into the tent. One wing splayed forward to cover her head and the other hugging her tail tight to her side.

"Well. As I said. I'm big enough that it won't be any more cramped."

She will also slip into the tent.

The night does not disturb them.

Nicole wakes up early, in the predawn twilight, and eats a granola bar type object. And offers some to Alicia before packing up the tent with a light bobbing right above her head.

"I feel like taking a flight and just... Being alone today. Maybe find you at that same place in a week or two? And we can plan what to do next, or something..."

"Sounds like a plan.  You be safe out there."

She dithers, but eventually eats the granola, and then - well, first, she'll visit the shrine just so she knows where it is, but then she'll head back to town and to the library.

Weiya seems to notice something is on her mind and is going to slightly frantically attempt to comfort her! She's so smart, surely whatever is wrong is something that can be solved...

"...oh, goodness, no, no, I was worried that I'd have worried you with the wandering off with a relative stranger!  And I'm definitely a little bit frustrated with this spell I've been trying to make, but I do have a - bodge, a workaround, in mind now, unless and until I find some way of compositing runes or find some sort of thaumic field solver widget from Ancient Tirra, so, that's all good, you know?  Most of what's on my mind is good if I can pull it off.  And not repeat certain known-stupid entreprenurial mistakes once I do have this working."

"...Though, I do find myself wishing I had learned chemistry properly.  Something about the person I spent yesterday nerding with...

"Well, they mentioned some things about a past life that make me wonder if their present one could be better, and that's really all I should say about that because it's not even really my business.  Some things have to be between you and yourself."

"I think a lot of people have trouble being happy. And you can't always help them, especially if trying makes you not happy."

"You're not wrong, but...  Helping, when I can, is fulfilling.  I don't even have opposable thumbs, yet, but I can solve problems.  Maybe even change the world.  It's honestly kind of a rush to contemplate."

Hug!!

"And some people are really happy about trying to help! One person can touch so many others' lives indirectly. It's great, I wish everyone could see things that way."

"...You and me both."

A couple more days pass.

Weiya passes her end of first year certification! And is officially permitted to continue on to second year. There's a moderate amount of pomp. Maybe ten minutes' worth.

Nicole is back at that one cafe, a few days later. Kind of wearing a sulking expression though. So, same as before.

"Oh hey there.  How's...  Stuff?"

"If by 'stuff' you mean my personal emotional processing, it's... Private. If by 'stuff' you mean spell ideas, well, I have some. Have you ever heard of a 'hydraulic press'?"

"I meant spell ideas, yeah.  And, like, if you're getting food and water and shelter alright.  I'm not entitled to your emotions.  As far as hydraulic presses," she uses the English, "I'm vaguely aware of the concept, but you might need to elaborate on its immediate relevance when we've force-spells available to meet our pressure needs.  Or is it something about...  Wait.  Wait, I remember this xkcd...  Something about destroying mountains with weird consequences of fluid pressure...  ...Not sure if that will be immediately workable at temperature, but if just pressure would work then maybe we could pull that off..."

"Well, it's easier to output a strong linear force than a spherical one, yes? And it was only ever approximately spherical anyway, because of how the flat spell diagram spills into three dimension space..."

"True, but how would you prevent things from splurting out the side...?  We don't exactly have precision fittings to work with..."

"Multiple sources. Like, a twenty sided die or something. Or just a cube."

"...What does the shape of the..."

"...The problem is that if we are applying this much pressure to things, they will seek out paths of least resistance to escape the pressure.  Which requires manufacturing tolerances tight enough to make there be no way to escape.  Which requires tools and materials I don't think we actually have.  Now if you're proposing we do that, sure, we could start poking things, but 'a d20' doesn't actually solve that problem?  ...Am I missing something?  Is it just friction?"

"They'd be expensive, but it's possible to do extremely high precision tools, I think? I've seen them advertised by jewelers and smiths, compass and clockwork arrangements for drawing circles."

"Sure, but that's not machine milling, is it?  ...Actually...  Hmm.  Yeah, no, I'm still not sure any of that works for what we'd need of it, but I'm still working on kinetic pressure by magical means...."

"...Wait, are you suggesting that we do linear magical force, or linear mechanical force?

"Linear magical force might actually work the same way I was thinking to solve heat with, because as it gets pressed closer it will be pressed on by more of the beams...  And 'really hot' is easier to script for.  Okay.  Need to do the math for this, actually...  Have you figured out g, incidentally?  Planetary gravity?  Wait, no, because we still don't have good units aside from the density of water being 1 mass per volume SI or cgs...  Or how would...  Gods what I wouldn't give for a copy of Wikipedia right now, let alone Wolfram Alpha...  And there was something about carbon-12 being the reference for...  Oh, but I can't fucking count all of that if I want to try and make wild stabs at determining things from Avogadro's number and I'm only mostly remotely confident guessing that it's about 6.022 times 10 to the 23...  Was it 12 grams of carbon-12?  I don't know.  ...I do think so, but we're not at the point of being able to count atoms anyfuckingway, so that's moot..."

"I think working in local units is going to be for the best. Since we can check them according to local measures. I was imagining a cube with six metal pieces, each being squished inwards with immense magical force and the center heated via magic and pressure. I... Have a vague guess that's how they did it...? Diamond anvils, or something."

"Yes, but we're not working with modern ancient manufacturing techniques, we're working with magic.  So we need to work with the tools we have and not the tools we want to have.  That sort of thing takes technology we don't have and I don't know how to make.  Do you know how to get, like, tungsten?  Because we can't just use any old pressure-vessel!  It's better to make something new to the same specs, than to cargo-cult.  Cargo-culting with this - with the weight of thousands of tons of earth, and the heat of magma - we will end up exploded."