"Which ones are peach?"

"The ones with the little spirals!"

Carinna takes a spiral pie and bites it.

"Why wouldn't boys want to be witches?" asks Kiawen.

"I don't know, I just can't think of any I've ever met who did. Which means there's probably not lots, even if there's some."

"Huh. I guess most not-fire witches at home are girls. Not anywhere near all, though."

"It's something about the way the magic works, in Alethia."

"But most magicians are boys. Not by as much, I think. Bella's best friend is another magician and he's a boy. So I wonder what you'd get if you counted all the magicians like they were witches? I mean, they mostly sort of are."

"I have no idea," says Helen.

"Apparently there are entire worlds without magic."

"I talked to somebody from one! I think so, anyway, if they have magic it isn't very practical. She said they can't even stack rooms, there."

"Stack rooms?"

"Make them be all in the same place."

"Alethia magic can't do that either," says Helen.

"What can it do?"

"Things," she shrugs. "Mostly subtle things. Making sick trees healthy, lighting fires, stuff like that. Sometimes bigger stuff, though, like flying," and she gestures to the branch on which she sits.

"Chronicle witches ride broomsticks too. Except Bella doesn't like them. She has flying armor and a flying carpet and she can just plain fly."

"Alethia witches ride cloud-pine," says Helen. "It's a special kind of pine. Amariah made her palace be a giant one. And because my daemon's so big, I can ride her, but I don't know of anybody else who can do that with theirs."

"Broomsticks on Chronicle can be made out of anything. They don't even really have to be broomsticks. You can make flying laundry baskets, if you want!"

"...Flying laundry baskets actually sound a lot more stable," she muses. "I mean, if it was a big enough basket. You could sit in it. Falling off of cloud-pine branches isn't a huge widespread problem or anything, but something basket-shaped has more of a sense of... snugness to it."

"Yeah, it's only they're not very aerodynamic, and hard to steer."

"I can imagine!" she says. "Maybe if it was more... boat-shaped? Like, I don't know, a flying kayak."

"Oooh, flying boats," says Tanalin. "I want a flying boat! I'm gonna ask Tony to make a flying boat."

"That sounds like fun! It could have sails! You could sail around in the clouds!"

"If she makes it big enough for more people, we could sail around in the clouds!"