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It is a lovely Saturday morning. Feathered children are watching cartoons; furred adults are eating brunch; scaled teenagers - one scaled teenager in particular, actually - is arguing with the proprietor of a magic shop.
"How did these items get made if there's no way to learn magic? Are the magicians homeschooling their children and not writing any books? How did you learn?"
"Half this stuff is antiques," says the shopkeep. "Look, asking me a dozen times isn't gonna make the answer more to your liking. I don't have Hogwarts in the basement, deal with it."
"But where do you get the stuff that isn't antique - who made the Avalon itself? - isn't anybody panicking about the medallion supply? -"
"Kid, nobody knows how to make medallions."
"But some people apparently know how to make luck charms and protection amulets!"
"I'm not going to give out my suppliers' personal information. I wouldn't do it even if you weren't annoying."
"There have to be books -"
"Does this look like a library to you?"
maybeso
maybeso
"It's convenient enough for me weekends and afternoons. But not summers or some holidays; I visit my dad."
asteptotheright
"Understood. I'm available...most any day of the week, actually." He smiles wryly. "As my sister is so fond of reminding me, I don't have much of a social life outside of her."
maybeso
"Okay. Well, my social life being similarly impoverished, does 'daily' sound good until we've worked through this thing?" She waves Runecasting.
asteptotheright
"Four sounds fine. I'm available at arbitrary times on Saturday, but not until after eleven on Sunday."
maybeso
"Let's just make it four daily unless it turns out to be really tempting to sit in the park for six hours at a time spellcrafting, in which case it can be earlier weekends."
maybeso
May looks at her watch. "Oh, look at that, it's after four, we're late."
She grabs Imaginary, Extinct, Hiding and 500 Historical Figures and also Avalons Around the World and puts them in her lap under the magic books. Roll roll. At the till Kanimir gets the top two volumes to pay for.
She grabs Imaginary, Extinct, Hiding and 500 Historical Figures and also Avalons Around the World and puts them in her lap under the magic books. Roll roll. At the till Kanimir gets the top two volumes to pay for.
asteptotheright
He also buys the other copy of the dictionary for himself, of course. That's just good sense.
maybeso
"Thank you," May beams at Kanimir when she receives her books. "It's nice out - well, it's technically indoors, even outdoors - we can study in the park?"
maybeso
"I don't mean to ditch you," May adds to Jaromira and Daphne. "If you want to look over our shoulders I won't object."
asteptotheright
"I admit I'm slightly curious what precisely is wrong with your legs, but I'm also aware that that might be a discourteous question, so I apologize if it's unwelcome."
maybeso
"Nothing's wrong with my legs in particular. My diagnosis is so vague you could drive a really clumsy monster truck through it, but it's probably neurological, and it'd affect my arms enough too if I decided I wanted to try wheelchair basketball but thankfully doesn't affect my handwriting or ability to brush my hair or anything like that. I could probably get by without the wheelchair if I were really determined and masochistic, except in wintertime - and since I have to have one to get anywhere in wintertime, I bust it out whenever I feel like it."
maybeso
"Yep." Ah look, one of those park chess tables, unoccupied by chess. May rolls up to the side of it rather than transfer onto the bench, and plunks down the magic books and a notebook produced from the bag on the back of her chair. "All right, let's see what runecasting is all about."
maybeso
"I hope we don't read at radically different speeds."
It turns out May reads very fast but also believes in heavy notetaking. Runecasting (as she notes, due to it being what the book says) is about drawing designs and then saying things to the designs in foreign languages. It is important to use foreign languages or you'll overpower the spell and maybe die; it is important to say the entire thing you were going to say or you will "eat" the spell and maybe die; it is important to draw the design right or you will fuck up the spell and maybe die. Side effects of fucking up spells and not dying include turning into a critter, possibly a novel kind, if you were not one already - or, if you were, becoming a new sort of critter and disconnecting from your medallion and thereafter being (technically speaking) "a monster".
It goes into quite a lot of detail about how runecasting is really dangerous and you probably shouldn't do it without supervision.
"Pfft," May says when she gets to that part. "Yeah, no problem, we can run down to the Hogwarts the magic shop guy keeps in his basement and get supervision there, it'll be easy."
It turns out May reads very fast but also believes in heavy notetaking. Runecasting (as she notes, due to it being what the book says) is about drawing designs and then saying things to the designs in foreign languages. It is important to use foreign languages or you'll overpower the spell and maybe die; it is important to say the entire thing you were going to say or you will "eat" the spell and maybe die; it is important to draw the design right or you will fuck up the spell and maybe die. Side effects of fucking up spells and not dying include turning into a critter, possibly a novel kind, if you were not one already - or, if you were, becoming a new sort of critter and disconnecting from your medallion and thereafter being (technically speaking) "a monster".
It goes into quite a lot of detail about how runecasting is really dangerous and you probably shouldn't do it without supervision.
"Pfft," May says when she gets to that part. "Yeah, no problem, we can run down to the Hogwarts the magic shop guy keeps in his basement and get supervision there, it'll be easy."