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Here is a house.
It is pretty and trim and green-and-cream and really ought not to be able to hold itself up like that, and yet here it is, somehow defying the laws of architecture. It is surrounded by a neatly bordered garden of ornamental and useful plants of all sorts: here vegetables, there herbs, there spell components, there rows of flowers.
There is a sign out front. It says only: Magic. Not, Beware, Magic or Magic Emporium or anything like that. Just: Magic.
Sitting on top of this sign is a cream cat with smoke-dark points of color on each paw, his ears, and his face and tail.
All in all, you could be forgiven for thinking that a witch lives here.
thaumobabble
thaumobabble
"This will take me about two hours to make it safe to pick up and put away, or I could destroy it right now," Bella finally announces. "Do you two object to waiting that long?"
thaumobabble
"Hang onto it until I got home, and then study it!" says Bella cheerfully. "There's no good way for non-wizards to learn about wizard spells, but the best way is to take apart the staffs and see what's in them. The next best way is to marry a wizard and pretend to be deaf so he'll talk to his friends in front of you, and some fine books on wizard magic have been produced that way, but I do not care for the methodology."
thaumobabble
"All right then," says Bella cheerily, and she settles in to work.
She wears her spectacles the entire time, flicking occasionally between lenses, and performs an eclectic series of procedures, occasionally swearing at the staff under her breath. At one point she produces what looks like a piece of another wizard staff and waves it in a detailed pattern through the air. Something that makes her sneeze convulsively is involved a bit later on.
Finally, about two hours later, she whips out a few yards of red cloth, wraps the wizard staff in it, and stuffs it lengthwise into her right sleeve. "All right!"
She wears her spectacles the entire time, flicking occasionally between lenses, and performs an eclectic series of procedures, occasionally swearing at the staff under her breath. At one point she produces what looks like a piece of another wizard staff and waves it in a detailed pattern through the air. Something that makes her sneeze convulsively is involved a bit later on.
Finally, about two hours later, she whips out a few yards of red cloth, wraps the wizard staff in it, and stuffs it lengthwise into her right sleeve. "All right!"
thaumobabble
"So," says Bella, "has soapy lemon water stopped working, then? I keep expecting them to find a way around that; perhaps they finally have."
calendarofcrime
"A bucket of soapy water with lemon is useful only against things in need of a good scrub," she says, "of which wizards are by far the most threatening. A sword protects against more dangers and is less awkward to carry."
thaumobabble
"Better if you want them dead. Not as well if melted for later respawning will do," Bella points out.
thaumobabble
"Troubled about them? Not really - not in either sense - not specifically. Troubled about - death. It's awfully permanent."