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.
"Maybe I'd see the appeal if I didn't need enchanted moccasins just to walk five steps without falling on my face," laughs Bella.
"I don't think I can witchsleeve a gauntlet," says Bella. "Besides, remember how I'm woefully forced to specialize?"
"Not necessarily armor," she says. "But something you could wear to make you less clumsy? Yes!"
"On top of the moccasins? Because you'll notice I haven't fallen so far. Although admittedly they only do walking. I still knock things off counters and tables more than I like, and running's basically out of the question."
"I have making a pair of matching gloves on my to-do list, but admittedly it's been there for more than a year," says Bella.
"But then there's all the stuff in between, too," she says. "And armour's good for that. Well, I guess somebody who wasn't me could probably convince a dress to be good for dancing in, or something."
"A dress would be the thing for that - shoes are traditional, and they do extend past my feet or I'd be tripping anyway on account of uncooperative knees or center of gravity, but traditions don't always line up with what's easiest or most sensible to do."
"I," says Tony, "could make anti-clumsy armour that you could do just about anything in."
"Including have big baggy witch sleeves which can't have anything between them and my arms?" asks Bella.
"Then instead of mistaking me for a witch, they could mistake me for some bizarre witch-knight hybrid," giggles Bella.
"I wonder if there are any actual bizarre witch-knight hybrids who'd be annoyed with me for impersonating them without paying guild dues or knowing anything about swords beyond which end is which."
"Oh, no, witches are very laid-back about that. Besides, even a lot of bonafide witches can't tell that I'm not one. They stop at the robes and the cat and the pointy hat and the garden, same as everyone else, four times of five."
"If you get any of it from witch-knights," says Sherlock, "you may send them to me."