The Mage's Berth

Elias's berth is what happens when a life-mage rents human quarters and treats the walls as spell paper. Every surface — deck plate included — carries chalk geometry, star maps, and notes in three scripts only he still claims to read. A red-string board above the desk links bounty marks, gate timetables, and grocery lists with equal paranoia.

The bunk is low, unmade, buried in books. A lantern and a candle do most of the lighting because Elias says overhead LEDs "flatten the weave" (Talyra says he forgot to pay the bulb invoice). The porthole faces aft — stars only, no garden view — so he can't watch Talyra's beds and get jealous of the mana density.

The dead potted plant on the desk is canon: assigned from the garden, neglected, kept as guilt totem. Scorch marks on the bulkhead are not from cooking. Ivan made him pay for the fire-suppression cartridge.

Small rectangular cabin — dark wood desk cluttered with open books, glass vials, candle. Red-string map wall above: pinned papers, sketches, interconnected strings. Walls and floor covered in white chalk sigils and diagrams. Low unmade bunk left, books stacked, hanging lantern. Circular porthole aft showing stars. Exposed pipes, grimy plates, no overhead light — lantern and candle only.

₡40–₡120/week — candles, chalk, vellum, replacement fire-suppression pins. Spikes when an experiment eats ship metals (charged to Elias, theoretically).

Elias — lives here, engineer's berth off the engine trunk; chalk and schematics share wall space. Talyra — inspects fire marks, confiscates banned reagents, leaves tea during brownouts. Ivan — refuses entry unless the candle is out; once slept on the common-room couch after "the spoon incident."