Aiden's smile widens as Shandara chuckles. He doesn't say it, but the observation is clear in the flash of his eyes - he has never heard her laugh before. But he lets it pass without making a song and dance about it.

And he could make a song and dance about it.

"The way I see it, that transparency trick is yours anyway. It seems fair at least to share that keeping the greater veins intact helps. Maybe you can end up doing quick commissions tracking the veins, and marking on the ends of each length where vein 'a' corresponds to vein 'a' at the other end, or something like it. But that's up to you; it may hardly be worth the time. I ought to tell Victor at least about the splitting, at least. Share what you will, according to your judgement. No one could ask more."

Dinner, when served, is a good quality meal - Aiden explains with some pride that Maria, his housekeeper and cook, worked for a very monied family indeed, and he feels particularly chuffed to have her around. It's the setting for the eating that's unusual. The upper floor of the house is smaller than the lower floor, but divided up as it is into bedrooms, bathroom, living space, worship space, and a number of other closed rooms that were not part of the impromptu tour, there's no space given over for a drawing room. The kitchen has a bench suitible for two or three people to sit and eat comfortably enough, but with two apprentices coming in from the barn, two visitors, Aiden himself, and Maria if she was feeling brave enough to join them, the space simply didn't exist. It wasn't the first time this problem came up, however, and a solution had been born from Aiden's creativity.

Stepping out of the kitchen window onto the sturdy shingles of the roof, the carpenter opens a locker bolted to the chimney. Inside are a number of simple but comfortable chairs with legs collapsing on scissor hinge so they can be packed flat away into the locker. Folded put, a comfortable canvas seat awaits a willing rump; but oddly, the back legs of these chairs seem to be much shorter than the front, and the feet of both cut at a slope. The mystery is quickly solved; they set nicely against the sloped roof, flush up to small wooden rail that prevents them from ever risking a slide down the slope. Thus, dinner at the Fiddle and Saw is an open air affair; sitting on armchairs on the roof beneath the early evening sky, with the surussus of life in the district and the calling of the night birds. Elevated from the street itself, some of the 'denser' smells of this less affluent district are abated, and most of the time it's clear, cool evening air and the smell of the meat and vegetables on the serving trays cut to sit across the lap of those watching the Stormdrains wind its way into the night hours.

Spoiler: OOC:
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I'm fulfilled with this scene! Thought I'd give that little capper because Aiden's lack of a dining room was kicking around in my brain, though. Aiden will sand up those wand blanks for Shandara, too - seconding Cliff and Markel to the work, it shouldn't take terribly long and the enchantress will be free to enact the next step in her plan for the wands!