"Job opening...?"

Slightly confused face. Then a blink.

"Oh, you're a Wisperer? Yes, right, we're looking for someone to imbue our bound tool! It's a wonderful piece of kit, but quite heavy on the imbuement... The price you pay for quality, I suppose. It's just that beads are getting a bit too precious to justify using it for most work. But it might actually be cheaper to hire you to just imbue it directly. Depending on your rate. I'm Gaara, nice to meet you, wizard...?"

Verity is going to nod along. Yep, she sure understood everything in those sentences and has all the necessary knowledge! Why would anyone doubt that? (She has at least understood the general gist of it and hopefully the details will make themselves clear.)

"Verity," she completes, smiling nervously, "nice to meet you too, Gaara."

"Indeed, indeed! Well, do you want to go see it right now? Sooner started sooner finished and all."

Another nod, "sure, let's see it now." 

She heads towards a tarp by the side of the room.

"It's a combination bench saw and mortising tool. Good for drilling and grooves too. Have you ever done carpentry? Oh, here, help me get the tarp off? Careful, now."

"No, I'm new to it," and to magic too, although she won't admit that part out loud when she's still trying to pretend she's a local. 

She grabs two of the tarp's corners and helps Gaara carefully lift it off the tool when asked to help.

"Oh, I'm really excited to use the bound tool again but I don't want to ramble on and on forever about it if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you'll pick things up."

The tarp comes off, with the dusting of sawdust that everything in here has acquired, and is bundled up to the side. It's the size of a whole table, a wooden frame, but there's lots of metal, and a few pieces of glass, and a large boxy piece that would be where motors and electrical equipment hide on a modern power tool. There is a shiny sawblade (after Gaara lifts off the protective cover from it) and an almost robot arm-y looking thing with a complicated and slightly vicious looking pointy end. The wooden surfaces have rulers on them, and there are multiple vices to hold things in place. There is a long row of switches and dials. It all looks surprisingly modern and industrial.

"Right! The last wizard we hired complained it was hard to imbue sufficiently, especially when the multifunction arm is on, so yes, I am aware of that. The bead receptacle is over here, so if you just touch it carefully and try to imbue, we'll see if this will work."

"You can tell me about it anyway, it might help me pick things up faster," she shrugs, "I'll let you know if I get tired of hearing about it."

Verity coughs a little bit at the cloud of sawdust that rises but begins examining the machine as soon as the dust has mostly settled. She hasn't seen much woodworking equipment back in her home world but this tool looks... normal. Normal by her standards for it, which are pretty different from what she's expecting from this world. Also, this machine looks intimidating (industrial tools usually do) and she can't quite believe that she'll be powering it. 

"Understood," Verity replies with a nod. She places her hand where she's been told to and, after waiting for a brief moment in case she's actually touching the wrong place, she'll take a slow breath in and begin imbuing the bound tool.

It's the same mental motion she did earlier to charge her little breeze, except this time the copper plate sucks it all up immediately, pulled straight out of her grasp in a slightly jarring way, and then seems hungry for more. Significantly more.

(There's a slight noise not entirely unlike a fridge or A/C kicking on. Some of the dials light up.)

Well, it does look like a powerful tool, of course it needs more energy than the small breeze. Verity will, uh, try her best to keep up with its demand! She doesn't know yet how much energy she can imbue or for how much time she can keep doing but this might be a good test for both of those.

(It's the most familiar thing so far, this magic machine that looks like one powered by electricity and technology, and it's still the weirdest because it almost breaks this world's 'theme'. Which a part of her, still struggling to believe this might all be really happening, insists is very much like something that could happen in a dream.)

With focus and deep breaths she can channel much more imbuement- The worst draw only lasts for ten, fifteen seconds or so, then it seems to taper down significantly. Still a fair bit, but closer to a slow jog or fast walk than a sprint.

"Good, good! This beautiful beast was my dad's, you know, we've got the rotary saw, we've got the mitering blade, the press, and the groove cutter here... It was SUCH a huge pain getting it over safely, you know? But I could never sell it."

She goes through the instrument panel. The circular blade turns on a bit, and then stops. The robot arm thing's pointy bits turn and extend and retract in a few ways. The big box on the side opens up, revealing some kind of hydraulic press arrangement. Each tool activation ticks up the imbuement draw somewhat. It feels like there's a small internal battery, to smooth out sudden starts and stops.

"Cutting thick beams down to size is one of the most time-consuming parts of our work- More than anything else, 'cause you need two people on the hand saw, but this baby will do it in thirty seconds! Colors, I'm getting too excited here. You can stop now!"

Verity looks at the different tools with curiosity, although not with her full attention since she needs to focus on the imbuement. For that same reason, she isn’t listening very closely to Gaara but she’s still interested in her explanation.

When she’s told she can stop, Verity tries to gradually (but not too slowly) decrease how much energy she’s imbuing so she doesn’t stop the tool too suddenly. For future cases, she should ask if it’s best to do it like this or faster, although she’s a bit embarrassed about needing to ask and she doesn’t know if this is something that’s considered common knowledge.

The quiet whirring of the huge bound tool sloooowly winds down. Gaara is grinning, and claps her hands. "Right! How was it?"

"New to me! Surprisingly energy-hungry at first but it wasn't too hard to adapt to, even though I kept almost getting distracted by being curious about all the tools," she admits, chuckling. 

"Oh, good. And it is certainly an expensive and useful piece of kit, isn't it? I look forward to working with you if you can bear it. Uh, not to put too much a rush on it, but I was wondering about your rate and availability for imbuing the tool?

“Do you want us to start now? I don’t have any other plans that might get in the way,” she does need to figure out where she’ll sleep but that requires more thinking than imbuement does, and she’s kind of dreading it.

"It's getting on towards evening. We can start now, I suppose, if I rearrange some other work... But I want to get the rate agreed on first. So there's no confusion or hard feelings, right? I'll offer you ten bead-tani an hour, paid in Taniar standard smallmid talkbeads. So, one of those per hour unless the value of talkbeads changes noticeably."

"Sure, that sounds good," she nods. Honestly, she's still too new to this currency and is just hoping she's got the correct idea of it and isn't being tricked. (Yes, she looked at all the advertisements earlier but that doesn't guarantee anything, they might all have had embarrassingly low wages on offer!) She has had no reason to distrust Gaara so far. 

Gaara frowns, looking more concerned than annoyed. "Well, if you say so... Uh, do you happen to be in trouble of some sort? Tell me to mind my own business if you want, but it's just... I try to be neighborly even though Covehold is getting harsher, you know?"

"Yeah... I'm pretty new to this area, does it show much? I'm still getting used to it," Verity looks away and chuckles awkwardly. Did she say something wrong? Was it a test? Ahhh-

Her look changes to a bit of pity. "Fresh off the ship?"

Gaara thinks one came in today. But there's never that long a gap between them in summer.

Fresh off another planet! But, since she’s not going to say that to avoid getting called crazy, she will nod, again.

“And freshly disoriented too”, she adds, trying to lighten the conversation.

"Right. Hmm. Okay. Covehold is pretty overwhelming at first, huh?" Gaara rubs her forehead, wiping off sweat. "Do you have a place to sleep and food for tonight and tomorrow yet? Any friends or fellow travelers looking for you?"

"I- uhm-," it's not her fault that she suddenly appeared here but it feels embarrassing anyway. "No, I'm traveling alone. And, uh-, do you have any recommendations?", by which what she really means is that no, she doesn't have things figured out yet. 

Gaara takes a deep breath and looks up to the ceiling for a moment. "I won't pry into that series of unfortunate events, unless you want to talk about it. But I'll lose my new employee if I don't help out, won't I?" She snorts. "It's unfortunately late. I can give you two options right away- I'll let you sleep on the floor with a spare pillow and blanket at my place for the night, and share some bread I have that's gonna go bad soon, and gratefully if you cool it down some, or I can walk down to Khosho's bunkhouse and pay for dinner and a bunk for the night, and take the cost out of your pay tomorrow. I do not want to particularly pressure you into either decision, if you don't feel comfortable with one or the other. Or go out the door and look for something else, or heck, I'll find a couple hours' work for the bound tool now and let you out with beads to seek your comfort alone."