While Kiela is absorbed in a spellbook on enchantment and garlic, a grumpy scaled dockworker named Fenerer enters the shop, frightening Caz into fleeing to the garden. Fenerer mocks the shop's limited offerings, demands lemon jam (impossible without a greenhouse), and predicts the shop will fail. Kiela suppresses her irritation, withholds mention of the remedies, and lets him leave empty-handed.

In the garden, Caz excitedly shows Kiela that their experimental cactus has become ambulatory, running around shouting 'Wheeee!' Kiela worries they may have accidentally created a sentient being but leaves Caz to befriend it. Back inside, a kindly older woman named Halio arrives, buys three jars of jam, and shares that her grandmother's magically conjured spring has dried up. She explains that islanders once practiced minor homespun magics until imperial sorcerers and laws displaced that knowledge, much of which was never recorded.

Halio's story sparks Kiela's resolve to research how to restart stalled magical springs, suspecting it would be easier than creating new enchantments. She begins narrowing down relevant spellbooks.

At sundown, Larran arrives to check on her first day. Kiela hides the books and asks if he can build a window counter (an idea from Bryn) in exchange for a tree-strengthening remedy. While he builds the counter, he chats about his merhorse Amarin trying to befriend a seal, and Kiela slips in questions about Caltrey's failed magical springs and the dry town fountain. Distracted by her research plans, she rushes Larran out with the pine cone remedy, missing his apparent attempt to invite her to watch the sunset. Caz sighs that she is hopeless.