"How about, erm..." She gets her phone and looks some stuff up. "Straight from the horse's mouth? Hand over fist?"

"What's a horse?"

"...an animal," she giggles, and finds a picture on her phone to show it to her.

"Animals are weird. Anyway I understood the expressions. But they are silly."

"I agree that they're very silly, it's why I picked them. Plain speak is just plain cheating."

Promise giggles.

Mortal grins.

"Anyway, hmm... I think I'm out of low-hanging fruit for the moment."

"Okay."

She emails herself some notes then says, "So, how about some food and then sorcery science?"

"Sounds good. What's the sorcery science going to be?"

"Off the top of my head: how harmonics affects various types of sorcery in more detail, whether I can associate harmonics with anything else humans know about how the world behaves on my own, and how stuff behaves around gates."

"There's books on the first question."

"Ooh, I want them."

"Then when there's a library run we'll look for some."

"If I'd known this I'd have asked Yellow to see if he can find books on that. Actually, I should have asked him to see if he can find books on sorcery in general, it is in fact pretty relevant!"

"People totally write books on sorcery! That's how most people who learn sorcery do it!"

"I mean, yes, I knew that, it's how I learnt it and sort of a very early link in the causality chain that has led to this moment."

"Then I don't know how this didn't occur to you."

She shrugs. "I dunno, I guess I somehow failed to associate 'library, the place where Yellow can post an ad for turning people into sparrows' with 'library, the place where we can get books.'"

"What I hadn't known was that there was systematic exploration of the effects of harmonics on sorcery, most of the books I read either took it for granted that 'I'd learn how to deal with it' or said that I should go with trial and error," she explains.

"Well, it's not an introductory topic."

"Do they have any idea why sorcery doesn't work in the mortal world, then? I'd been under the impression it wasn't known by anyone but maybe I'm just ignorant."

"No, that's a genuine mystery as far as I know."

"How about... tears? Anyone know how those happen?"