Snuggle. Sigh. "I love you."

Snuggle and wishing she could say it back.

Annie doesn't seem to have expected anything of the kind. "So where do artifacts come from?"

"The going theory is that the Ancients created them with lost sorcery."

"How ancient is Ancient? Why was the sorcery lost?"

"Oh, in this case 'the Ancients' refers to a specific civilization that died out millenia ago."

"...and nobody knows what happened to their sorcery?"

"It died with them."

"Huh."

"No one can read their records, they don't have a convenient Rosetta Stone."

"...um."

"The Rosetta Stone is an artifact that contained a message written in both Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Greek writing which a brilliant French guy used to figure out how to read Ancient Egyptian."

"That's interesting but not what I was um-ing about, if they left records - in a language -"

"Not very much, but there are ruins--oh. Oh."

"So, I should probably be a sorcerer?"

"Sure as hell sounds like it!"

"While I am acquiring this power do I get sympathy cuddles?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I should be okay."

So adorable. "I'll start asking around."

"How hard will it be to find someone?"

"Probably not too hard but most people are going to want to be really sure you know what you're getting into first."

"Well, I should probably know more than I do, but - my pain tolerance isn't anything special but my ability to sort myself out again afterwards might be?"

"Makes sense. And I'll hold you the whole time, I promise. I mean unless there's an emergency or something, but aside from that."

Eeeee~ "How long is the whole time?"