"Wind, grant me lift! Wind, give me flight! Moon, raise me up and make me weightless!" She is of course completely magicless so that does jack and shit.

"Oh, good idea," says Maya. "We could call upon the same element in different ways and see if that stacks at all?"

Juniper tries the long version, since Sadde is now testing whether the tiredness has anything to do with anything. Up she goes.

Tyler tries, "Wind, grant me lift. Wind, give me flight."

Perhaps the two different ways of saying it will stack.

Theo tries the moon part.

Maya: continues to time everything!

Sadde lands before any of the other three do. Juniper's version lasts more than Sadde's did, which lasts more than Tyler's, which lasts more than Theo's. Furthermore, Juniper's version lasts more than Theo's plus Tyler's.

"So it's nonlinear, and it's apparently better to try to use a large spell than many small ones."

"Unless it varies between different spell types – which presumably exist – or perhaps different things stack differently, but yeah."

"Hopefully it's not as complicated as that."

"Well, if it varies between different spell types I think it's reasonable to say that in general it's nonlinear."

"Yeah, but for the 'large spell vs many small' bit, it might end up working differently with some small spells – maybe they bounce off each other in some ways if you get a good combination." She shrugs. "It's still nonlinear, though, yeah."

"Okay, and we can explore the specifics of that later, what was next?"

"I have kinda a huge list of things to try," says Maya, then she looks through it a bit. "I think we were going to try symbols and stuff next, see if they affect things since the bear says that guy used paper thingies, and we should possibly see if they do it – if they do it at all – by passively being in the area, or if you need to call on them, or hold them, or what."

"We do need to hold the cards and call on them to use them..."

And the butler suddenly appears. "Oh, is it dinnertime already?" He nods. "It's dinnertime, do any of you want to eat?"

"Uh, yes please?" says Theo. "Are we eating in, um, the dining room then or can we just eat and continue stuff here, or…?"

"Might be better to eat at the table, Mum wants to meet everyone else."

"Oh– right, yeah," he says.

So up Maya gets from her place over by the laptop. She brings her notes with her, in case the parents are curious about things.

A woman who looks like a grown-up more serious version of Willow is at the table. "Hello, there. I think I'll need introductions."

"I'm Sadde."

"And I am Cerberus, guardian beast of the seal," says Kero, coming out from wherever he'd been hiding.

Gasp. Oh, wait, not gasp, Maya knew about him– it? Whatever.

"Hi there!" says Jess. "I'm Jess."

"Theo."

"I'm Tyler."