While I've been giving an impromptu chemistry lesson, the harvesting and processing of the dandelions has continued. And, I now have a good-sized barrel of raw latex, and nowhere near enough vinegar to curdle it.

"Look." I say, kinda wishing I hadn't brought this whole thing up in the first place. "I'm happy to answer your questions, but it would probably be better if you gave me a few days to write down the basics. But, for now, I'd like to focus on the rubber."

"Nnh, Okay. But." She holds up a finger. "You have to tell me everything you know, please." She begs. "It sounds like your culture has a much deeper understanding of alchemy than I could even imagine."

"Mhm, in some ways." I'm not sure how magic plays into this world's version of chemistry, so I find myself being somewhat hesitant. "Despite a multitude of fantastical devices being commonplace, we didn't really do magic. So, I'm sure your understanding of that aspect of alchemy completely eclipses anything I could offer."

"Maybe so." She nods. "But, it sounds like your understanding of the basic elements and how they interact eclipses anything we know. But, I can be patient. For now, show me what this rubber stuff can do. Uh, one question. Why is it called rubber?"

"Oh. Uh, one of the first people to play around with it used some to rub away pencil marks. I guess the name just sorta stuck." I explain. "Alright, the raw liquid is either treated with acid and rolled into sheets like this, or treated with ammonia to keep it from clotting on its own. Either way, they both need sulfur -amongst other additives- and heat to make the finished product into something more useful."

"What is made from the liquid used for?" She asks, curious.

"Protective gloves, mostly." I answer, not quite willing to tease her about prophylactics. "They dip hand-shaped forms into the liquid latex which forms a film. A quick bake and the glove are then blown off the molds with a puff of air. They then get dusted with cornstarch to keep them from sticking to each other and to make them easier to pull on."

"That sounds interesting." Edsel says, rejoining us after finishing the chimney. "But, I want to see these tires you were talking about. I've nearly got the first bicycle completed and, after riding on that -what did you call it?- rickshaw of yours, I can see that I'll want something to smooth out the ride."

"I thought it was fine." Melanie interjects. "I mean, I've had much worse carriage rides than that."

"Yeah, but that's all thanks to those thick cushions I added." I counter. "Without that, or a rubber tire to cushion the wheel itself, every bump would be transferred straight to your backside. Thankfully for my backside, the streets here are very clean and smooth. Even so, I would still like some rubber tires."

"Heh." He chuckles when she looks at my backside.

"Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near the amount of lampblack I need for even a single tire, so these won't last very long." I explain while using magic to mix some of the sulfur I pinched from the workshop into the rubber sheet. "Also, these are going to be solid rubber, which means they'll be a bit on the heavy side, but I'll work on that later."

"Work on it how?" Melanie asks without taking her eyes from the mixing rubber.

To explain, I create a diagram of a modern pneumatic tire and inner tube. "This is what I'm used to, but I'll probably just go with an airless tire like one of these for simplicity's sake." A couple of the more popular airless designs get added to the page before I hand it to her.

"May I?" Ed asks and she hands the drawing over. "Interesting. You use an air-filled inner section to press the tire into the rim?" He looks to me for confirmation.

"Yup." I nod. "You see this part here? It's usually made from steel cable for strength, but my bowstrings should be more than good enough."

"The same one that a beastkin wasn't able to fully draw back?" He laughs. "Yeah, that should do."

"That reminds me, I should set up a target range." Meanwhile, the rubber feels like it has mixed enough, so I extrude it into three molds made from the magically modified wood I'm so fond of. The excess going to make simple cubes. "Alright, the dough's ready and now it's time to bake." I chuckle at my joke.

"What kind of temperatures are we talking?" The alchemist's interest hasn't waned, even though she can't see anything happening right now.

"No hotter than a hundred-sixty degrees, they usually use steam for this part." While I, on the other hand, have just repurposed my baking spell.

That's not the only magic I'm using, though. I've found that since it started as a natural material, and is already filled with my magic, I'm easily able to keep track of the process. And, I can just feel when the vulcanization process is complete.

"Now, I just have to de-mold these and give them a quick bath to cool 'em down." I proceed to do just that. "Hmm? They're a bit softer than I'd like, but that's what the lampblack is for. And, they should be fine once they're stretched onto the wheels."

"May I?" Melanie asks, so I hand her and Ed each a tire, and a couple cubes. "Oh, it's still warm, but it's much firmer than that sample you showed me the other day, and there's no tackiness. Though, I am wondering what are the blocks for?"

"I plan to save one as a keepsake, but the rest are for testing purposes. Heat, cold, sunlight, tensile and compressive forces; I'd like to have a good baseline for how each formulation holds up. Just because I know how to make rubber doesn't mean I know all the ins and outs of it."

"You remind me of my master." A wan smile crosses Melanie's face. "He would always take a systematic approach to every new concoction."

"Is there any chance I could get a couple of these?" Ed asks while playing around with the tire.

"Sure, go ahead and take this one." I pass him the last tire. "I just need a bit more vinegar before I can make some more."

"Nnh, there's a little in the shop, but we didn't use it much." Melanie offers. "But, I know who makes it and we can easily get a discount."

"Oh, I can make the vinegar myself, no problem." I wave her suggestion away. "I need the practice working with bacteria anyways, but you can help me distill the alcohol... Or, better yet, I can try modifying my draw water spell to work on alcohol directly."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I wish I had your talent with magic." A soft sigh escapes from Melanie. "You talk of modifying a spell like it's nothing when most people have trouble just learning one in the first place."

"Mhm." I shrug, not sure how to respond. "I had an excellent teacher, but I've been told I also have superb mana control. Whether that is innate, or if it's the result of the path I took to learn magic... That, I couldn't tell you." It's hard to beat having a god implant the knowledge directly into your soul. "Magic just wasn't a part of daily life where I came from, so I don't really know."

"Harsh training?" Edsel must have seen more in my face than I wanted to share. "Never mind, it's none of my business."

"No, it's alright." I shake my head. "That... just wasn't the best period in my life." Death? Afterlife? Prelife? Whatever.

"Well, I should go finish up your bathrooms." He can obviously tell that it's not something I want to discuss. "That trick Apricot showed me means I have more than enough mana left to finish that shower and take care of the downstairs bath."

"Thank you." I reach out with my magic and remove the fixtures. "I've moved everything out of your way. Can you do the downstairs in that white quartz too?"

"No problem." He nods and walks back inside.

"Want to head back to the workshop?" I ask Melanie. "It'll probably take me a bit to adjust that spell, and I wouldn't mind learning more about how your lab equipment works. Most of it looks similar to what I'm used to, but quite a bit was completely unfamiliar to me"

"That's fine." She leads the way back to the outbuilding. "You mentioned dandelion wine, you're not going to distill that, are you?"

"Oh, no." I shake my head with a laugh. "That would be a waste. The chocolate making process requires fermenting the beans in the pulp of their fruit, so I've got a bunch of alcohol that isn't exactly fit for drinking. I figure distilling it to make white vinegar is probably the best use for it."

"Well, I suppose since we're distilling, we should start with the alembic." She shows me a brilliantly polished copper still. "I'm sure you're used to the basic model, but this one has been enchanted to help with the process."

"Oh?" Leaning close, I peer at what I initially took for decorative lines. "I see a couple heat runes, but I'm not sure what this one does." I point to the script circling the base of the cooling neck. The neck itself has one of the heating runes, this likely disperses or redirects the heat away from it.

"Good eye." She nods. "That one blocks water from getting through into the neck. It's not perfect, but with that, we can get a much cleaner distillation in a fraction of the time. You won't need it for making vinegar, but that's one of my favorite time savers."

"Nice." I pause for a moment. "Actually, do you have some pure, or nearly pure, alcohol? It would probably help me get a better feel for the spell."

She hands me a bottle, and I spend the next twenty minutes trying to get a magical handle on the ethanol while she introduces me to the more esoteric elements of her lab. She has a few moments of sadness, clearly remembering moments with her deceased master. But, for the most part, she's filled with the joy of someone reunited with something she thought lost.

By the time the tour is done, I've gotten the hang of drawing alcohol instead of water. I don't know if it's because I'm in an alchemy lab, or what. But it wasn't until I started thinking of the molecular structure of ethanol that the spell stuck. This makes me hopeful that I can use the same trick to manipulate other liquids.

"Your lab is amazing." I tell her sincerely. "I'm not sure I understood even half of it, but you do, and that's good enough for me."

"Heheh." She laughs. "I shouldn't be, but I can't help but feel just a little glad that you don't know everything."

"That's fine." I smile and laugh along with her. "Though, I hope you won't be too upset that I've already cracked the spell."

"Of course you did." She shakes her head with a smile. "I'm only surprised that it took you that long."

"Mhm." I don't have anything to say to that. "I think I can use it for vinegar too, so I'm going to try a small batch. Not sure if it'll be more efficient this way, but it feels like I'm saving a step."

I retrieve one of the smaller barrels of cocoa booze and it almost instantly starts to stink up the lab. Unlike alcohol which tends to rely on a single strain of yeast, vinegar is produced by several types of bacteria, with different ones taking over as the acidity rises.

"What is that stench?" Ed asks from just outside the lab. "Don't tell me that's the wine you were going to make."

"No, leftovers from chocolate making." I answer distractedly while focusing on a single cup of the stuff.

I can't just push a broad-spectrum bacterial growth, or who knows what will happen. Sure, the alcohol probably killed off the worst stuff, but I'm not going to risk it. So, I'm trying to isolate the different bacteria while drawing vinegar out of the cup right to my nose.

"Sorry, I was focused on not turning this into poison." I say after casting cleanse on the contents of the cup, just in case. "Good news though, the spell works on vinegar just as well as it does alcohol."

"So, you're going to turn that rotgut into vinegar?" He raises an eyebrow.

"That's the plan." I pull Blackthorne to my hand and aim it at the barrel.

All the right bacteria grow and reproduce at a truly insane rate, turning the questionable alcohol into vinegar. I draw the vinegar out almost as fast as it is produced; pure acetic acid goes straight into another slightly smaller barrel I prepared by filling it ninety percent full of water.

"I think that's about all I'm getting from this for now." I say after filling a second and most of a third barrel; that one, I just drew off the extra water to bring it up to ten percent vinegar like the others. "I'll have to try experimenting some more later, see if I can't squeeze out a bit more. But this is plenty for now." I cleanse everything, including the smell in the air, after putting the barrels into storage.

"You already modified that water spell to work on vinegar?" The earth mage looks impressed.

"And alcohol, and theoretically and liquid I know well enough." I tilt my head to one side. "Though, I think I'm going to stick to buying ammonia for the time being." The alchemist and I share a laugh, but Edsel just looks confused.

"It's made from urine." Melanie informs him after a small bout of giggles.

"Uh-huh." He shakes his head with a dubious look on his face. "Well, as fun as watching you do alchemy is bound to be, I'm going to head back. Your bathrooms are all done, and I'm running low on magic again."

"Oh. Thank you." I bow my head to the man. "But, hold on a moment. Melanie, if it's alright with you, I was hoping we could swing by the guild house and see about getting this place certified. Or, at least find out what we need to do to bring it up to code."

"That works for me." She nods. "You already demonstrated the basic process, and I want to see what difference the lampblack makes. This will give me a chance to source some."

"Well, that'll save me a bit of a walk." Ed leads the way outside. "I was never much of a horse person, so I'm hoping to get this bicycle finished soon."

"Just be careful when you first try riding, they aren't as easy to use as I make it look." I say while mounting the pedicab. "Most people have someone run behind them, holding the seat upright when first learning to ride."

"Umm." Melanie interjects. "I know it's right in view of the gate guards, but is the workshop going to be safe."

"Oh, yeah. It's fine." I reassure her. "I plan to ask Rozelle to help me install some protective enchantments, but for now I've fused the door and window shutters into the walls. No one's getting in there without an axe, and even then it'd probably go dull before they made any real progress."

"Really?" Edsel seems interested. "You know, I might just happen to have an axe on me. Mind if I give it a go?"

"Knock yourself out. Heh, nice trick." I chuckle when he pulls out a long-handled blacksmith's hammer and shapes the head into a hatchet.

"Gods! What is this wood?" He pants out a minute later after chopping for all he's worth, but only opening up a small hole.

"Oak." I answer with a shit-eating grin as the hole fills itself in as all the wood chips meld back into the wall. "I just twist it in on itself while compressing the fibers together. I had to figure that trick out just to make arrows that wouldn't shatter after being fired from my bow." I hand him an arrow that weighs a good deal more than it looks like it should.

"Huh? I know a couple beastkin that might be interested in this." He says while hefting the arrow.

"Keep it." I say when he goes to hand it back. "I've got hundreds, and it hardly takes any effort to make more. Beside Amelia would probably shoot me if I passed up a chance to make more coin. I'll even give you a commission if you drive some sales my way."

"Heh." He stores the arrow with a laugh. "No guarantees, but I'll show it off next time I see them."

***