(Continued from part 75 --- still Usruldes, on the beach)

"How are w...we going to get all this soda ash back to Fosk?" Emily asked. "W...won't it slow us down? We made a lot."

I looked at all the canvas bags I had packed with the ash of rotation’s worth of seaweed fires. "Can you get the iodine and the other stuff, I forget what you called it, out of the ash here so we aren't hauling the excess around?" I asked.

"I need sulfuric acid for that, and it takes a pile of blue, green, or w...white acid rock and a dedicated laboratory facility to make it," Emily shrugged. "I don't have that here on the beach. The closest I have to a useable facility is the compounding building at the Healing Shrine in Aybhas or the Extractor's Building at the Shrine of Giltak."

* Emily, what is it you need out of the soda ash? *

"Iodine and Bromine. Do you know w...what those are, Ud?" Emily asked the air since Ud was mindcasting from somewhere else. She did that a lot because of her immense size.

* Aylem, do you know what those are? *

"Not specifically. I know they are chemicals used in our previous world. Iodine was used as an antiseptic. I don't know what bromine was used for."

* Use this as practice, dear, for the new magic I taught you. *

"Hmm," Aylem pondered. "Emily, do you mind if I snoop a little in your mind? I can extract the chemicals from the soda ash if you do but I need to borrow your knowledge to do so."

Emily looked a little nervous, “I th...think I can do that.”

Aylem smiled with encouragement at Emily: “Can you think about iodine: what it is, what it's like."

"Alright," Emily's thinking face appeared. "It's a halide, so it's on the halide column of the periodic table. It's a shiny black solid that melts just a bit above the boiling temperature of w...water. It has a funny smell somewhere between hot metal and salt. It's used as a topical antiseptic. It's used as a photo-sensitizer for photographic plates, which is why Usruldes is so interested in it."

"You're going to make a camera?" Aylem was intrigued.

"Yep," Emily smiled a very smug self-satisfied smile. I could feel that thinking about the camera had distracted her from her nervousness.

"That's so posh!" Aylem was excited. I had no idea what posh was until I applied the charm of tongues to the word.

"Okay, I think I have a good idea of iodine," Aylem asserted.

* Hold up, darling. What are you going to put it in? *

"Oh." Aylem's eyes opened wide. "Oh, dear."

* That's what I've been trying to get through your thick head. Slow down and think the whole process through. *

"Yes, mother," Aylem scrunched her head down and pouted. I had to laugh since it reminded me of my time learning magic with Ud.

"What sort of container does iodine need, Emily?" Aylem asked.

"Usually dark brown glass with a Teflon-lined cap or a Teflon-film wrap between the bottle threads and the cap."

"What's Teflon, Emily?" Aylem asked.

Emily made a wonderful fish face. Her eyes might have had a chance to pop out, it was such a good fish face.

"Why the face?" Aylem asked.

"Teflon was invented by Dupont I think around the beginning of the Second World War. It was not common at all until after the war. Then it got used all over the place." Emily's fish face disappeared to be replaced by what I was calling the evil genius face. "Teflon was wonderful until they pulled the original off the market in 2015 for being too toxic when heated too hot. That was a problem because its most popular use was for no-stick pots and pans. Two quick swipes with a soapy sponge and the Teflon-lined pot or pan you were scrubbing was clean. You see, things don't stick to Teflon, not even all the fried-on bits from frying in oil in a frying pan. Teflon was great."

"Can you describe and visualize what a Teflon cap might be like?" Aylem asked patiently.

"Teflon is polytetrafluoroethylene. It's a polymer made of long strings of carbon atoms, and off of each carbon were two fluorine atoms, so it looked like this," Emily hopped out of her chair, jumped off the porch to the sand, and drew a picture of one of the chemical strings with a stick. "The final product had a cloudy white translucency to it and kinda felt like hard paraffin but without the stickiness."

"Hmmm," Aylem concentrated and an amber-colored clear bottle appeared with a black cap on it. Emily walked over to it, took off the cap, and inspected its insides.

"This looks and feels right," Emily grinned. "Awesome!"

"How much iodine do you think there is in your soda ash?" Aylem wondered.

"I have no idea," Emily shrugged. "I've never separated iodine from scratch before. This is a first for me."

"Hmm," Aylem concentrated again and popped out of her trance suddenly.

Aylem frowned. "Emily, there are two things in there that are very similar and one would be solid but the other feels like a liquid on its own, but other than that, they are almost the same in feel."

"I bet the liquid that's similar is the bromine," Emily got her thinking face in place and switched to English. "I'm sure you might remember this from chemistry class. Bromine is a syrupy dark brown liquid. It's one row up in the periodic table from Iodine. They're in the same column on the periodic table because they are both halides. Iodine's heavier. It's got 53 protons and the stable form has 74 neutrons. Bromine is lighter. It's got 35 protons and has two stable forms, with 44 and 46 neutrons. The distribution between the two forms is close to fifty-fifty. Does that help?"

"Emily," Aylem peered at her with narrowed eyes and continued in English, "you have all that chemical stuff memorized?"

Emily looked surprised at the question. "Of course I do for the elements. I memorized the periodic table when I was 12. Most people memorize it in high school. Didn't you?"

"No, most people don't memorize it in high school," Aylem said, shaking her head. "You see, there are these things called reference books---I'm sure you've heard of those---and you can look things up in them so you don't have to memorize stuff like the periodic table. They're quite handy, you know." The sarcasm was a bit thick.

Emily's face fell a little, "you never memorized the periodic table?"

"Emily, I never took chemistry. I was training to be a bookkeeper." Aylem smiled at the fish face Emily was making, and then rolled her eyes. "You are such a boffin."

"A boffin?" Emily looked befuddled. "What's a boffin?"

"You know, a boffin!" Aylem pointed, leaned over, and bopped Emily on the nose.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Emily switched back to Fosk.

I cut into their conversation. "Emily, the charm of tongues informs me that a boffin is someone who is educated in science. It's an English word. You both speak English but you do not know this word?"

"I do not but I don't think that's odd," Emily's thinking face came back out. "Aylem died ten years before I was born but slang changes with time, so it could be a time-shift thing. It could also be the difference between British English and American English, which do have vocabulary divergences and very different slang."

"Your countries weren't close to each other?"

"Not at all," Aylem jumped in. "There's an entire ocean between England and America."

"When you were listening to us speak English, couldn't you hear the difference between our accents?" Emily asked.

"No, they sounded both incomprehensible to me without the charm of tongues, and when I used the charm, they sounded the same."

"Unbelievable," Emily shook her head. "So, a boffin, eh? I think you just called me a nerd."

"What's a nerd, Emily?"

"A mekaner." She stuck her tongue out at Aylem.

"Well, Miss Boffin," Aylem rolled her eyes and then waved her hand in the air theatrically. Another clear amber container appeared along with a strong penetrating odor. Emily's nose wrinkled and she ran to the second and twisted the cap on. I realized the motion must have closed up the bottle since the pungent smell stopped instantly.

"Hey, this bottle's got stuff too," Emily hefted the first bottle and looked into it. She sniffed the air and then picked up the cap, brushed the sand off, and put it on the bottle. "Now all we have to do is get them home without breaking them." Her grin of glee was infectious.

"Wow, real photographs," Aylem grinned back.

"They'll be on glass or copper plate if I get it to work. I have to give it some thought to make the jump from silver-plated on glass or copper to light-sensitive silver compounds on paper, but glass or copper shouldn't be too hard."

"Glass? You made glass?"

"No," Emily sighed with a grimace. "I only have about a quarter of a bell's worth of stamina before I fall over with exhaustion right now, so I am no longer allowed to do any hot work at the furnaces at the Giltak shrine in Omexkel. I taught Raoleer how to do glass but there isn't any plate glass yet."

"Well, you just need to make a phonograph instead," Aylem declared.

"Already thinking about it," Emily grinned even more. "You know, there's a priest artificer at Omexkel that has a working crystal version of an audio recorder but you have to have magic to use it. When I saw it, I figured I could do the same thing with something like Edison's wax cylinder."

"Say, Aylem," Emily was suddenly serious, "can you do that container and extraction thing with any element?"

"Probably, so long as I have an idea of what the final product is like from what you're thinking. I can probably make some compounds too, so long as I have a good idea of what I want to make."

Emily smiled to herself, "awesome."

"You scare me when you smile like that, Emily," I said.

---

Emily, on the beach

* Come out to the porch, little Emily. *

The invitation roused me from my late afternoon nap and I stumbled out to the porch. Instantly, I was lifted into the air to look upon Ud's ten glowing eyes on her cephalothorax.

"What's up, Ud?" I asked, floating in the air. It was rather fun and the view was great.

* I want to see this on you *

One pedipalp held up what looked like a sleeveless hoodie.

* Let's try this *

Suddenly I was wearing it, except the hoodie part was now rolled and tucked in to make a stand-up collar.

* Excellent, it fits, not that I doubted any of my abilities in weaving. That's made out of my web, Emily. It will stop a pointed weapon or flying object from penetrating though it won't prevent any blunt trauma injuries from being struck. It will also keep you cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold. Last, and this is really for Aylem, it will prevent you from a fatal fall. It's washable and it will never wear out. One last thing, while you are within ten hands of my undershirt, Aylem's charm of reunion that she cast on you will not work. That should help you if you decide you need some time away from your Cosm friends. *

"She what?" This was not welcome news.

* She cast it on your when you first met. I doubt she ever saw a need to tell you. I'm afraid she had grown too accustomed to having her own way as Queen by the time you two met. When no one was brave enough to tell her no when she needed to hear it, it was easy for her to forget other people have their own needs that are more important to them than her own desires. I hope she grows out of that bad habit of hers. Consult with me if she doesn't. Tell your friend Lisaykos this too."

"Thank you, Ud. All of this is quite thoughtful of you. I do have one question for you. What happened to the bottles of halides that were in front of the cottage? They're not here anymore."

I could feel amusement in Ud's answer. * Usruldes left a note for his mother tied to the bottles and I left them on the south balcony of the Shrine of Mugash. Lisaykos will store them for you so you won't have chemicals to worry about as you travel. *

* Now Emily, this is important. I have one last thing I need to convey to you. You need to eat approximately 10 percent more than your current intake. You need to work harder on this. You are dangerously underweight. You will recover from your current malaise faster if you eat more. There I am done nagging you. *

"Yes, mother." I tried not to be annoyed but it got old rather fast.

* Good. * One of her pedipalps came up behind me and messed up my hair. * If you ever want some beach time, just drop in, little Emily. You do not need to come with any of my former students. You will always be welcome here and you can bring a friend or two. I enjoy the company and I believe you would never bring a bad guest. *

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