"...How much do we get to know about spells before we cast them besides what they're named? I wasn't paying attention and now I've seen the ice lance icily lance."

"It varies. Usually something--vaguely intuitive, by which I mean it is a vague intuition."

"About how often do you go out bad-guy-fighting? Is there a large supply of bad guys?"

"There is a worryingly large supply of bad guys. Usually not more than once or twice a month with more once than twice."

"...where are all the bad guys coming from? Isn't there a finite supply of ancient artifacts, is it more often sorcerers or something? Or other magical girls?"

"It's more often sorcerers."

"Doing what sorts of nefarious things?"

"Can I answer that question when we're not in public and I don't have to worry about accidentally traumatizing someone else on the bus?"

"Okay."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Snuggles.

Snuggles! "D'you want my life story?"

"Sure!"

"So I'm from Noregr, I was born in a little nowhere town but my parents divorced when I was a baby and my mother moved me to a big city which is where I mostly grew up. Fairly uneventful schooling, went to the local university, was going to study artifacts - I wanted to do statistical analysis on how they happen, the way artifacts on my world happen is if someone dies their favorite possession may become one and the features of the artifact usually have some relationship to the person's characteristics - but they don't let you in the artifact department without getting mindread, because the artifacts are strictly controlled and dangerous, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do instead but I had a while to decide. And one day I was tricycling to school and got hit by a van and then, well."

"I'm sorry. About getting hit by a van if nothing else."

"Well, at least one of the artifacts did healing."

"Yeah. Doesn't mean getting hurt didn't hurt."

"Yeah. Although I was really adrenaliney and also distracted by being too warm and blind and deaf. ...I think I might also not have a sense of smell now."

"Does stuff still taste normal?"

"Yeah, seems to."

"Well, if you can't smell things at least it's a magically convenient kind of not being able to smell things."

"I'm guessing it's captured as, like, 'ranged senses', and if I put something in my mouth that doesn't count as ranged anymore?"

"That seems arbitrary but coherent."

"Artifacts are like that."