"Hm."  Can she be done with small talk now, can they go back to magic talk.  "Oh, were you among those who wished Secluded Grimoire this afternoon?  I fear I retired rather suddenly..."

And unless anyone interrupts with something more pressing, Khalida will happily swap spells and compare notation systems and talk magical theory for the rest of the evening, until people start drifting off to bed.  (Her party has gained and lost several rounds of shirts and other clothing, Noor yowling protest and moving to balance on top of Omar's head at one point when her usual perch on his shoulder was disturbed, instead of moving to the table.)

...and then she continues looking over her notes long after they've settled into bed, until Tariq finally rolls over, flings a blanket over her bedpost-Light, and informs her that all three of them are eating on her Endure Elements and she had better be able to cast tomorrow even if she doesn't care about keeping them awake, and also the bloody books will still be there in the morning.  She grumbles halfheartedly back that he's a pigheaded tyrant, sets her notes carefully on top of her satchel by the bed and nestles into her usual spot under his arm.  

Surprising no one, she pulls her blanket over her head and goes back to sleep after Tariq gets up the next morning.  (Omar wakes earlier, but his step is light and steady enough she can sleep through it by now.)  Eventually, though, she wakes reasonably rested from a confused dream about a judgy sphinx, and after locating the necessaries she can settle in with her spellbook. 

It's a beautiful piece of work, like all spellbooks are, the labor of many hands combined to make something greater than any could alone, a fitting support for the precision demanded by spell diagrams:  smooth creamy paper in a painstaking binding, the covers of red leather tooled with an abstract pattern of vines and petals, corners reinforced in brass and a cunningly wrought lock on the closure.  As a prosperous father's gift to his favorite daughter, indulgent but not extravagant, her next-younger sister's flute had cost twice as much.  The real gift and the real extravagance had been the lessons.  With her spells in it, the book alone was probably worth more by now than her mother's wedding jewelry. 

She closes her eyes and takes a long breath to center herself, opens to the first page and starts on the scaffold.  Prestidigitation, in her teacher's hand, deceptively simple in structure because if you hang it right the careful folds shake out half a dozen different ways for half a dozen apparently completely unrelated effects.  Detect Magic, in her own too-precise childish printing, and Light and Mending, more old friends, looping and weaving and tucking away and taking down the scaffold and on to the next, patterns furling and unfurling in her mind's eye.  Endure Elements, as familiar by now as the path from her house to the temple, and again and again, quick fingers flying across the scaffold in the same pattern.  She can spare a spot for Secluded Grimoire, it's not strictly necessary but it's beautiful and it did save their lives, you don't need it until you really need it.  Noor can stay behind at the fort if they really have to go out after the camel today.  Not as much choice for her second-circle spells but they make up for it in glorious intricacy.  She has to go more slowly here, doublechecking the scaffold before she starts feeding in power, not just from the added complexity but because she only has a year or so of practice.  Glitterdust for today's oh-shit complement, since demons are apparently immune to fire, and Locate Object and Bull's Strength, which there's probably some use for in the fort if they don't go back out again.  

And then, much too soon, she has to descend from the realm of pure geometric form into the everyday world of drafts and stone and sore feet and Worldwound Stew.  Although it's well past dawn even in this northern clime by the time she emerges into the corridor, quite possibly breakfast has been and done and cleared away already.

Meals are served on something of a rolling basis; they have very large pots but the fort is, when full strength, large enough to need several batches and they don't all cook concurrently. She can get a stew ration.

Oh good, she wasn't about to complain but she would definitely have been privately cranky, her own fault or no.  She puts the stew away fairly quickly and then goes to find someone who looks like they know which patrollers have some Elements to Endure today.  Or her party, whichever she locates first.

The person she's meant to report to is over there and has her Endure Elements some people and then wants her on dish Prestidigitating duty. "If," he says dryly. "you don't have other pressing appointments."

Is he... annoyed with her for sleeping late?  Hinting that the commander or somebody is interested in her?  (And if so, is he annoyed about that or giving her a warning?)  Judging her for not sticking with her party? 

She buys time to assemble a polite sentence by rolling up her sleeves and retying her scarf so the ends don't drag in the dishes - she's wearing it loose today instead of turban-style, it keeps her ears warmer - and gives him a bright smile.  "I am as yet unaware of any, and should one arise I expect it can find me here as well as anywhere."  There, that ought to be a reasonable reply to at least several possible meanings? 

Khalida pulls the little Prestidigitation knot to the forefront of her mind and settles in to work, keeping an eye out in case he has further directions or cryptic comments.  Tug, push, release, 'Dish' stays here and 'Not Dish' goes elsewhere, catch the spellform before it dissipates, guide it back to its correct closed form as the tension eases, clean dish on the pile, tug, push, release...

She might catch a couple mutters but there is maybe a rule about not hassling wizards and/or visiting adventurers about their sleeping habits or something. One feature of the rolling-basis meal service is that there are dishes to do this to All Day Long.

Okay, yeah, if it's about sleeping late that's honestly pretty fair and maybe the best subtext it could have been, since sleep is obviously important for a wizard and she can just demonstrate reliability some other way.  (Why is everyone here so hard to read...)  Dish dish dish.  Well, if it had been that the commander or the First Arcane or whoever was interested, that could have been more useful, but whether it was strictly better would depend on whether half the rumors about Chelish men are true... on the other hand, depending on which half... no, focus.  Second pass to catch a stubborn bit of dried rice, covert glance around to see if anyone spotted that, dish dish dish.  It's not even like they're going to be staying here that long anyway, they're leaving in two days, unless there's better food in some officers' mess somewhere there's not a lot of favors that would be much use over two days' time.  Dish dish dish.  And then they'll trudge through the snow to one fort after another (snow lost all its mystique about half an hour after the trap misfire), and eventually get to wherever-it-is where they can earn enough money to get passage on a ship back home, where they can continue... earning enough money to just barely get by, but where they speak the same language again.  Dish dish dish dish dish.

She can have her lunch ration of stew right where she's sitting courtesy of one of the cooks.

She accepts the stew with a small smile and a careful Taldane thank-you and pauses in her dish duties to eat it, stretching her fingers between bites and rolling out cricks in her neck and back.  There's something comfortably meditative about dish duty, over and over again the same spellform, the same tug and push and release and catch, the same tiny victory of mortal knowledge over the forces of decay....  She'd thought she could be a laundry wizard, when she left her father's house, and it wasn't the laundry that was the problem, it was the everything else.  But here in the warm kitchen around people all busy with their own work, this is what she thought it could have been like... not all day every day, maybe, if nothing else you can't hold another spellform in your head while working with a different one, but she could be happy like this-

"There found you!" Tariq booms from behind her, and she jumps and drops a dish and has to switch to Mending to put a chip back in the rim.  

"Fucking hells, Tariq, stop sneaking up on me," she snaps in Osiriani, opening out the familiar lines and angles with just the right push of arcane energy to start them oscillating around and eventually converging on Dish As It Should Be.

"Like I was even trying," he smirks, shaking melting snow out of his clothing and stamping it off his boots, "not my fault if you can't spot a cart before it runs you over."

The cook glowers at Tariq. "Why are you in the kitchen?" she asks.

"Find wizard!"  He's cheerfully impervious to her glower.

Right, Khalida was being rude, switching back to Osiriani in front of her hosts when Tariq was bothering to use Taldane. "Well, thou hast found me, and now I must remain another ten minutes because thou'rt amused when I jump."  She rolls her eyes at him and pointedly nudges an oscillation that was widening instead of dampening, although it didn't actually need nudging and it's just going to look to him like she moved her hand slightly away from the dish.  

"Shoo," says the cook to Tariq. "She's on dish duty, you're not."

"Aw, sweetheart, no harm," he says to the cook, slinging an arm around Khalida's shoulders in an affable gesture that nevertheless indicates 'here is a large man who doesn't intend to be moved.'  

"We haven't got to let men in here any more."

Oh now that's interesting- that must be an Iomedae thing, given the 'anymore', but if it's actually being enforced... she should not test this theory on her party leader, she should try to do the soothing deescalating thing.  "A moment,  Tariq?  Was it something urgent thou sought me for?  Is Omar with thee?"  Presumably waiting outside, if the kitchen is some Chelish sort of womens' quarters Omar would be the first of the three of them to pick up on that.

Glower.

"Done practice!  Omar and bowmen, done soon."  Good, he's in a mood to be convinced and save face today, this doesn't have to turn into another stubborn-off.

"Thou'st not yet eaten, then?"  She reaches around her spell to hand him a dish off the clean pile.  "I've just finished but I'll join thee once I complete this?"

The cook would like him OUT OF HER KITCHEN.