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Potion day was indeed an interesting day! As his apprentice had tended, he'd been awake for most of the week before, scribbling increasingly arcane and incomprehensible mathematics down. The less sleep he had, the less mired he found himself in piddly little details, like resources, legalities, moralities, cost in lives or unmitigated ecological disaster. Buzzings at the back of his mind at best, as his brain sharpened to dizzying heights of possibility. Zasha had begun calling it his 'madness place', as mundane reality fell away. Sometimes his notebook was too far away and the idea was right in his mind, so he'd find a way to scribble on anything to hand. Scraps of parchment, his own notes, the table, one of his signs, at one point a handy quhar. That last one had wandered off before he'd finished. Apparently he hadn't bothered writing the last of that equation down (or couldn't find it, which amounted to the same thing).

This posed a worrisome issue in this instance, as apparently he'd made something that he hadn't also detonated. After several hours solid sleep, head clear, he could... mostly read some of his most recent notes? They gave him a decent idea of what on The Heights was in this batch of flasks. His 'prentice found him peering at them, occasionally scribbling some more mundane maths and muttering to himself. "No no no, can't be that. Transmutative, not a bottled Evocation. Maybe it's an adapted Abjuring? Likely harmless on its own, but the situationals- Oh! Sorry, Zasha, didn't hear the tent flap!"

He set down the book and turned to the taller local girl, managing so smile both warmly and worriedly. "Thank you for the blanket last night. And the packet of hardtack nearby. You, er, wouldn't happen to know how long I was working this time? Seem to have lost track of the days..."

Despite his sleeping on the floor of the wagon, Aire seemed no worse for wear than usual. His hair, by mysterious processes involved in his care routine, had changed again. When he was lucid, as in the present moment, it was simply a fat, messy braid of orange. It ate combs, but that was about as far as it went. The further he got from sleep and sanity, however, the more floof it semed to have. Last night, Zasha might well have heard whispers around her teacher that were not from his mouth. "...I do remember a quhar. Don't recall what it was doing in the lab, though.

Wait, how did I write on a quhar?" He took the slate and paper, looking the equations over with a considering frown. Offhand, he wasn't quite sure how this fit in the obvious gap. They did not necessarily go in linear order, as he'd learned after a memorable week burnt blue. Before he got lost in the stream of his own thoughts again, his head shook, and purple eyes were pulled back to Zasha's. "Thank you twice, sincerely. This narrows down what's in those flasks to three possibilities. Either a temporary polymorphic overhaul, a nervous system simulant, or..." He squinted at a smudge in her handwriting, and checked it against the slate, "or personal levitation. Could be any of them."

"Was it the sort with the paraffin, then...? He had, at one point, done some work with dyes and pigments, but his master had gently taken those away after turning the tent an ugly mottling of blue and brown. Later, this had been revisited, to see if one could write on difficult surfaces. Apparently his efforts had bourne fruit! ...But as chalk? The fuzzy ginger head shook. If I try pondering every illogical thing done in my madness place, nothing gets done this month. And supplies aren't free! ...Nor is food, I suppose. "Voices? Was I doing impressions?

No, focus! Need to check which potion we have on our hands. Tested a little bit, and they all seem one batch, so they ought have the same effects on the body." He still wasn't quite at home with magic. It was just that little bit alive, that little bit unpredictable. Honest alchemy had uses for it, of course; made for an excellent variable, but under the inspired fugue Aire seemed to differ in method. And mysterious potions, while intriguing, were not something to be sold or even dumped off.

The mathematics, at least, were clear. As were the tests the foreign chymist had already run. These would do no harm to earthling physiology on their own. And there was the deadline to consider. Their sales day quickly approached. If ever a time arose to cut corners... Slender hands reached down and hefted one deep flask. "Bottoms up? They're safe for us."

That one question sparked a whole thoughtful ramble. From someone more organized or aloof it might have been a lecture, but this was Aire. Mostly he was just thinking out loud. "Mmn. I've thought about it, and I ran into issues with free will, chemical and humour balance of the brain, and...well for lack of better term, damage to the soul, the pattern of living energies that animates a body. At best, I've found several aphrodisiac compounds of varying strength and side effects. Even if it worked without serious mental damage, you'd have fundamentally changed the person affected, which rather defeats the whole point. Unless you just meant to possess someone like the object of affection, which..." A small shudder ran down the slender chymist's spine. Even his unfettered state of mind had tossed the idea aside. For practical considerations, perhaps, but the very fact said something.

The hint, fortunately, sailed right over Aire's head. Considering the implications, that might not have helped his assistant in her efforts. "No, at that point, there are artisans who could design a simulacrum or golem to taste. Bit eccentric, but generally less objectionable." Unless you brought it to full sapience, but that's a whole other kettle to boil. he took a deep drink of the fluid. Tasted... light. A little sharp on the tongue, not wholly pleasant, but the aftertaste left the mouth feeling clean.

Aire thought about it, watching his former 'prentice for changes, and nearly missed that her shadow no longer touched her feet. Perhaps she wouldn't either, at first, as he'd always been the shorter of the two. But her feet no longer rested on the floor.

Undeniably true, some deeper impulse reveled in explosions, the wash of heat and pressure, the roar of torn air. Alchemy had given him an outlet he never knew necessary, introduced him to a great love. Before this, the maths were all to do with building, sustaining, what pressures stone and steel might withstand. Important tasks, and his parents learned their children well in this universal tongue. But day after day after day of the same shapes, weights, measures and goals, to Aire, couldn't be more boring!

Alongside his love of making things go BOOM was the thrill in discovery, the chance to test what wisdom he had against the unknown and tease out a scrap more knowledge. Like right now, for instance: he'd never done up a flight potion before! As he directed his attention from feet to the top of the tent, the foreign ginger drifted up with it. He blinked, purple eyes widening before his face sank right into the hot canvas. Though they were no longer anchored as harshly to gravity, inertia still held true, as did their delicate sense of balance. Thus, he went drifting back downish, blinking and bemused. "You know, I think there might be some kinks in those equations."

He drifted down, soon adapting to this lesser binding of gravity and turning to his 'prentice. The wry grin he wore suggested that even the high-strung chymist could look at himself and laugh. "It doesn't normally? Apparently means 'attention' or 'care' in old Belrean." Luckily the tent wasn't all that large, so, with care, one could propel themselves along the top or sides. Depended on position.

"Misplaced decimals might account for it, yes. Surprised we're still relatively sedate on our dimensional axis with neither traction nor torque to drive our motions. If we were to loosen those up just a touch..." Again, without concious thought, he began to drift towards his writing utensils. This time, however, he noted and stopped himself just shy of the table. "Responds to directed over unconcious impulse, then, but the unconscious still influences the vector. We've still got the maths, thanks to you, so we should be able to replicate this! Just need to know how long this batch lasts."

Slim fingers clicked sharply. "...Oh! That's how we might market this!" The mussed redhead drifted back up to the top of the tent, setting both thumbs to right angles with the forefingers. With these, he framed a bit of canvas, a rectangle at first. Then a triangle. "Sails! The winds are fairly predictable across this patch of desert, so a traveler could take a pition, raise a sail and catch the wind, no?

No need to increase the flight speed granted by the potion, not when the world is willing to do the work for you! Doubles our need to determine the duration of effect, and it'll need a braking mechanism, but some rudimentary anchor will do for that. There's already a few uses for controlled levitation like this! One more, thank you, Zasha!" With that, her master? Teacher? Partner? ...Aire drifted back down and hugged the girl, possibility still swimming behind his eyes.

It was going to be an interesting sales day.