It had taken some digging through the information network to figure out that the smith named Ember, who knew how to make enchanted objects, generally spent his time in Orion. It was some distance away from any of the established nodes the Hive possessed, but it wasn't as though Jinyi had never ventured this far before--he had, in fact, been to this place once before a long while ago.

Jinyi flew from Ursa to Orion on shimmering cosmic wings, then let them dissolve away as he landed gently. He made his way to the Throne at a deliberate pace. He had made sure that every detail of his appearance was in order before departing to ensure he made a good impression. To those who knew him, his appearance may have seemed oddly bare--most of the organic silk of his 'robes' had been cut off by Jinyi himself rather recently--but he had made sure the cuts were clean, that the silk that remained draped nicely and symmetrically, and that his chitin was free of chips (no pun intended) and imperfections. And he had come bearing greeting gifts. He wasn't sure what Ember liked, so he tried to bring multiple possibilities. Four bags of Dontas lay arranged in a biodegradable box, similar to a thicker version of the material used in the bags. Also in the box was a set of ornately-filigreed goggles, with a protective layer over the eyes, that Mother had crafted cycles earlier for her entirely harmless gifts to the Gembound. Jinyi thought it might be useful for a smith. At least, based on what he imagined smiths did, which was spend a lot of time around fire, things that glowed bright with heat, and sparks. Perhaps he could also sculpt something with organic polymer on the spot, or promise something else, maybe along the lines of what Halcyon had suggested in their conversation.

When asking a favor from someone, after all, it was always good to show your sincerity.

At the door of the workshop--Jinyi was pretty sure this was the right workshop--he checked over his appearance once more and knocked with a smooth pipe-organ "Hello?"

"I'm looking for Ember," he added to the door.

@Ember

Ember's work area was... primitive. Loved, clearly. Well-used, but--primitive. Not far from the Throne, it had been built oddly: as though someone had been following clear instructions from someone else with far more knowledge. The pit kilns were barely more than holes in the rock; the forge kiln created from the ceramics baked within those had been made somewhat crookedly. The anvil was clearly something that had been reworked repeatedly. But all the same, it seemed to function, and the few items around attested to the owner's skill--in particular the battered wooden chest floating slightly off the ground, and the whetstone that was glowing with faint warmth.

Ember himself had been a casualty of the caves' slumber; he'd been whiling away the cycles not working, but sleeping in his chrysalis. Even though he'd woken a couple weeks ago, his emergence now was the stuttering confusion of someone who'd just rolled out of bed--and landed wrong.

"Hi? Hello--err, that's me, I mean. Ember. I'm Ember. Hi--I said that," he chastised himself, as he stumbled in from beyond the far side of the little shop. The walls were curved around the place, as if hand-placed, but didn't fully enclose it; the various doorways were little more than gaps in those walls.

He spotted Jinyi, paused, then took a breath and offered a wolfy sort of smile. "-Can I try that again?" he asked, with warm humor.

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Ember scrambled into view with awkward but cheerful greetings. Jinyi took quick note of his appearance: white and symmetrical, similar to the shapes preferred by Order, and a friendly demeanor that seemed promising. His workshop, too, seemed promising with the various items that likely had magical properties, though like Ember things seemed just a little off-kilter. The Drone's attention jumped to the scattered manner in which tools like the anvil and bucket were arranged, but he pushed down the urge to straighten them. (Sadly,) this wasn't what he was here for today.

The dragon-wolf himself seemed pretty good-natured, in the way that the happier, more kind-hearted neutral Gembound were. Jinyi was happy to return his smile with his own broad-brushed impression of a grin. "Sure. Hi, I'm Jinyi. I'm looking for Ember."

@Ember

Ember grinned, black lips peeling upward, and then steeled it away with an overly serious little cough. He drew himself up, a caricature of pure professionalism.

"Ahhh, yes, that would be me. Welcome, as you can see I am free at the moment. What can I do for you?" Immediately he relaxed again, grin reappearing with a bashful tint, as if he knew how silly he was being. "Thanks. Better 'first' impression, I hope."

He moved to one side, a wing peeling out to gesture Jinyi inside in welcome. He made space--important, given his size--and lowered himself to his haunches with a relaxed expression, waiting.

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As Ember redid his introductions, Jinyi found himself getting distracted by his own thoughts again. It was gratifying to observe the way Ember smiled so easily. This is the way everyone should be able to live, Jinyi thought, rather than having to bear any pain and destruction. His task was to befriend the Gembound, with ensuring smooth Dontas production as the means to that end, and he'd shared the chips with all kinds of creatures. While he strove to always be warmly professional, he found that he didn't have to try hard at all to mirror Ember's warmth here--it radiated from him almost like the way emotions became contagious within the Hive. What a change from that Valkhound in Eridanus.

"Thank you for the warm welcome, Ember. Yes, I'm impressed," Jinyi assured the dragonwolf with a smile as he stepped inside the workshop. Probably among the best first impressions he'd had from anyone outside the Hive. "I also wanted to make a good first impression, so I brought something for you." He set the box he was carrying on the floor between them and gestured to its contents. "There's some snacks that I made--they're called Dontas chips--and a pair of goggles crafted by my family. I thought they might be useful for a smith. Or at least a cool-looking accessory!"

He waited for Ember to examine the gifts, if he wanted, or to ask any questions about them--as the sole customer service agent for the Dontas Factory, Jinyi was always happy to answer. Then he continued: "So, I was looking for you because heard that you knew a spell to enchant objects with a certain magic permanently. I was wondering if you'd be able to teach me...?"

"I'm trying to make some gifts for my family," he added, "and I thought an enchantment would be the perfect finishing touch." Again, he did not have to work to add the warmth of familial love and enthusiasm to his voice. Though he chose his words because he thought it would be easier to befriend Ember if he shared this, his sentiments were completely genuine.

@Ember

Ember's expression changed at once, to curious and interested, even a little awed. It remained unspoken but his features said it plainly enough: 'gifts? for me?!' He gave the chips a sniff, and likewise lifted the goggles carefully in his claws to look them over, examining the materials and so on.

Then he glanced up, mind catching up with the conversation. He started to nod along lightly, as if confirming that yes, he indeed could enchant stuff. But he started to look distracted, if briefly, halfway through. Confused. Jinyi might not realize, but it was his nose--so shortly after snorting at the Dontas--picking up on an oddity: Jinyi's scent. Or, total lack thereof. That was a weird one. Everyone had a smell, no? But Jinyi... didn't. Still, Ember figured it probably wasn't polite conversation to ask someone why they didn't have a smell. He'd met weirder. He turned his mind back to the conversation again, and nodded again, this time in easygoing agreement.

"This is too good. What're the goggles made of? I can definitely use them," he answered, genuinely grateful. 'Squinting really hard' wasn't exactly good OSHA compliance for a blacksmith's eye protection. Ember looked around, and gestured to a hunk of smooth stone at one side of the room. It wasn't immediately clear, but this did serve as a chair. "I haven't seen you around, so I guess you've travelled a bit? You can sit, if you want. It's... a rock, but it's not too bad." A sheepish grin flashed Jinyi's way. "Yeah, I can do that. I mean--enchant things. Teaching magic's... harder, and it is magic. But I can explain how it works, maybe show you?" he offered, with a questioning glance up. He was moving to the whetstone, gesturing to it. "This one's enchanted with some fire magic. Keeps it bright, warm. But you can enchant with any magic that you know. You start by sort of... preparing it with magic, to take on another kind of magic. If you don't know the magic you want to stick on, you can still prepare it, and let someone else put the spell on it. Can I ask, do you know what you want to make?"

He paused a beat, thinking, and then quickly explained. "If you don't have the magic, maybe it's something I can do. If you do, I can try to show you how. But it's... taxing. You can only do so many before you have to kinda rest, sometimes for a whole cycle or two. So if I'm going to demonstrate, I'll want to do it with something worthwhile."

He hoped that explained the background of it all, at least.

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Was it his imagination, or did Ember look slightly confused halfway through Jinyi's sentence? He didn't think he'd started rambling, or said anything particularly weird. But then it disappeared as if never there, so the question fell from Jinyi's mind as he focused on what Ember was actually saying.

"I'm so glad you like them!" he exclaimed. "The goggles? The frames are metal--brass--and the lenses are glass. Oh yeah, I came from Ursa! It's quite the scenic route from there. Thanks," he added gratefully, taking the seat offered. He'd flown most of the way, but he'd still take any opportunity to save his joints some work with all the crumbled structures around to climb over. Jinyi was not built for large amounts of physical exercise.

'Prepare' an object with magic? That sounded pretty vague, but Jinyi tried to imagine what it would be like. Maybe it was like some of the Hive's spells, which infected the ground with Order and kind of 'prepared' it for more Ordered magic being cast there? "I was thinking of a healing spell, or a spell I know that kind of strengthens everything your friends do around it." He stood again, following Ember to the whetstone, and extended a hand to feel the warmth radiating from it. "Huh, interesting."

The enchantment being taxing part was new to Jinyi, and the chromatophores on his face darkened thoughtfully. "I didn't know that. How much do you make, normally, before you rest?" He'd have to be careful not to overextend himself, then. Luckily, patience was something the Hive was good at. "I thought maybe I could enchant something for you, since you're teaching me this. If you have anything you need 'prepared' with this magic, or I could make..." Jinyi trailed off. He'd wanted to conjure up some organic polymer and shape it into something cute to demonstrate that he could make an object to enchant if Ember wanted, but instead found himself locked in increasing horror as his fingers began to soften, stretch, and almost drip as they turned into the glue-like substance.

"Um," he began, his voice pitching higher as an exaggerated D:> painted itself onto his expression. "I- I didn't- that wasn't supposed to happen." With his other hand, he tried to gather the rapidly organic-polymer-ifying substance and shape it back into how his fingers were supposed to look like. The results were a bit bulbous and misshapen, and he continued to try to squeeze it back into shape. It kept bouncing back. Infuriatingly. "I was going to make something. With magic."

Well. Maybe this wasn't the greatest first impression as far as "I can make a magic item for you if you teach me how" went. He glanced at Ember with a helpless smile. "Um. Can I try that again?"

@Ember

Ember had noted that the stranger wasn't exactly soft fluffy organic in the way that he was used to. Or scaled, or anything like that. He'd been vaguely wondering if it were tied to the lack of odor.

But none of that was really important. He'd met all sorts of strangers, and while Jinyi was on the weird end of the scale for sure, he seemed nice and that's all that really mattered. The... thing was, though...

Ember'd never seen anyone just start to fucking melt before.

He stared, freezing up in absolute horror, suddenly certain that Jinyi had misfired some magic so terribly that he was going to collapse into nothing there and then. Just die right in his workshop. Any thoughts he'd had of combing through the magic he knew for something that fit Jinyi's request were gone, forgotten in the snap of almost-melting fingers. Metaphorically speaking.

But the stretching stopped, and then Jinyi was trying to prod his own fingers back into place, and Ember--swallowing hard in a way only comic characters usually do--tried to calm down. If Jinyi wasn't freaking out, then--maybe it was... maybe it was something that just happened to him sometimes??

He forced the most terrified grin onto his face, and nodded weakly. Jinyi had given him a do-over; offering one in return was only fair.

"Uh, sure. Of course. If... are you okay?" he asked, eyes flicking from Jinyi's odd face down to the misshapen fingers.

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Having mostly been focused on his melting fingers before looking up, Jinyi only caught the tail end of Ember's expression of frozen horror before it morphed into an extremely forced grin. He looked down at his hand self-consciously; was it really that ugly? He'd tried his best to make it match the other one as much as he could...

Oh, of course. Ember was concerned for him. "Don't worry," Jinyi tried to reassure him, though to be honest he himself could also have used some convincing. But at least his hand was mostly solidified again now? "It doesn't hurt. I- I think it'll be fine." Come to think of it, he didn't really know why it hadn't hurt. It seemed like it probably should have (although he was grateful it didn't)--were his nerve endings just too confused by this freak phenomenon that they didn't know how to react? At least he hadn't actually lost any appendages; although in theory he could repair them, what if he failed that just as badly and ended up melting away both his hands?

Jinyi shuddered. Best not to think about that too much before he scared himself into messing up his next attempt as well. He held his breath as he formed organic polymer in his palms--not made by melting his fingers, this time--and began to shape it. He only let the tension in his joints bleed out when it had taken on a recognizable form as a simple impression of Ember's figure, horns, wings, and all, and begun to harden. "See," he smiled nervously. "I can make something like this to enchant, maybe. Or if you have something you'd already like to enchant, maybe I can try my hand on 'preparing' it to accept magic?"

@Ember

Ember cleared his throat, the forced smile relaxing just a bit as he did his best to give Jinyi the same "do-over" he'd been given. "That's a cool magic! I've never seen that, not with--not like that." He wasn't sure what the material was, even. "Seen gemstones formed, but this is cool." He reached out a claw, trying to give the shape a gentle tap with the curved, smooth back of it, just to see what the material was made of. "I can try to prepare this one myself, and you can get a feel for what that's--like? Maybe? Or, uh. Here. -Do you need a light?" he asked, grinning a little.

He kept his claw hovered, waiting for permission to cast the spell before he actually did it.

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