"I mean, I guess I could get mugged? But I'd have to be in a bad neighborhood or something and even if I took a semester of - weapons? Seriously? Okay, a semseter of knife-fighting, then I couldn't probably beat off a mugger, it'd be way safer to just give him my purse and cancel my credit cards and write off the fifty bucks. If I didn't have magic, I mean, now I could just teleport away and be like 'dad come arrest this mugger'."

"...yeah, okay," says Celo, "I'm seeing it. In my world, though? Magisterius University has a weapons policy. As in, unless you have an exemption, you have to carry a magical weapon ready to draw if you're on campus and not indoors. And if you stray off the warded paths at night the school's not responsible if you get eaten by a ghoul or whatever."

"Eww, ghouls. We don't have those. Wait, someone made a policy that requires an alt of Bella to carry a sharp object, seriously, that doesn't sound very safe, she's okay chopping carrots but not if she has to walk around at the same time."

"Oh - Aether has boots to help her with the walking around part," he says. "And obviously she's got all that handy Bell magic now. But yeah, the weapons policy kinda failed her there."

Lexi snorts. "But yeah, I guess if there's ghouls and stuff all over it makes sense to try to teach people how to not get... ghouled. What do they do, do they eat you?"

"Yep! It's pretty nasty," Celo says cheerfully.

"Anyway we don't have ghouls, just humans. And Devices but they are not instigating a crime spree on Earth, I don't know about other places."

He snorts. "Yeah. Brill's info is a little out of date there."

"No kidding, what is it with Bells and older men?"

"We're all really hot?" suggests Celo.

Lexi snorts. "I'll grant you don't look centuries old, not a one of you. What would that even look like, I don't know."

Celo giggles. "Yeah, the kind of people who live to be centuries old aren't usually the kind who'd show it."

"Exactly. I'll probably just look seventeen forever, I think seventeen is a good look on me."

"Huh," Celo says contemplatively. "I never thought about it, but I could change how old I look now, if I wanted. Nymphs don't really age; I've looked this way since the first time I came out of the ground."

"You just sprouted whole?"

"Pretty much! I mean, I don't literally grow these bodies like plants," he says with a gesture at himself. "They just kind of... happen. Not exactly appear, it's not like a teleport, more of a process than that, but not anything observable and definite like sprouting."

"These? Are there like four of you walking around?"

He giggles. "No, but when one of me dies, I grow another one. Nymphs are like that. To actually kill us you have to burn our fields and probably salt 'em too."

"Oh. Well, that probably won't happen in the Enchanted Forest, that place is made of friendly fairy tales and really big trees."

"I've heard!" he says. "It wasn't that likely at home either, but it's way less likely now."

"Does that work funny with torching?"

"Probably. We keep meaning to go talk to the torching expert about it, but we haven't done it yet. It's not hugely urgent."

"I guess, if your field is safe in Happy Fluffy Land and you already do a thing just about as good."

"Yep!"

"Nymphs are like unicorns and vampires and stuff, there's stories about them at home, but all the stories are about girl nymphs," Lexi muses.