"The Iliad, lately."

"First time through?"

"No, I've read it before. The Odyssey, too."

"I love old literature. Mostly Anglophone, but I like stuff like that too. Got to wait a few centuries for all the stuff that doesn't really resonate and age well to filter to the bottom and then skim off whatever's on top."

"I think there's certainly something to be said for stories that provide excellent social commentary for the time they're written but don't generalize well, but in general I completely agree with you. Before I discovered magic I was going to learn Ancient Greek and Latin to fill the time so I could read the originals. I suppose I'll probably still get to it someday, but I don't need to fill my time anymore."

"I suppose it would be more aesthetic to cast in Latin or Greek," May says, and then she quiets and smiles at the waitress as their food arrives, then continues presently, "but the delay isn't worth it, I think."

"Oh, yes. But with any luck we'll get around to everything worth getting around to, someday."

"Oh yes. Just once I want to stand on a dramatic bit of terrain in witch robes and chant in Latin to make the wind do my bidding or call a lightning strike. While being photographed, of course."

"Casting from scrolls written out in heavy, dusty grimoires--oh, I just had a thought. The book said a spell could determine between different marking methods. It might be possible to make multiple-use scrolls by tracing over the runes with several different types of writing implement."

"...Or one of those pens with several nibs!"

"How close do you have to be to a scroll to cast from it? Does it have to be flat? We could roll up scrolls, seal them inside sticks, and sell wands with given numbers of charges."

"I bet it doesn't have to be flat! Oh man, that's a great idea. We'd want to pick spells with short easy incantations for that, though, it'd be a lot of trouble if people exploded themselves with our merch."

"...Easy incantations and a waiver warning them very sternly that magic is dangerous and messing up a spell can kill you so don't screw around with the words, I think."

"Yeah. It's like selling... chainsaws, flamethrowers, that sort of thing."

"At least the results of being horribly irresponsible despite copious warning to the contrary are only likely to do grievous harm to the irresponsible individual. That much one cannot say for chainsaws."

"I mean, you could inconvenience people by turning them invisible when they didn't expect it, but yeah, as long as we're careful what we sell."

"I doubt we can completely eliminate the possibility that people are going to use our products to behave like assholes, but we can prevent the most obvious offenses. And ban anyone we hear about behaving like an asshole with our products."

"Yeah. ...Or, instead of driving that ignoramus out of business, we can make it his job to actually work retail for us while we do research and production."

"We might not be able to do that until we've driven him out of business. It probably wouldn't be that difficult to find someone with retail experience who doesn't have a reason to have a grudge against us."

"We had one conversation, I'm not sure if we've escalated to 'grudge', but yeah, we should check in case he dislikes us enough to turn down suppliers."

"Oh, I think I was thinking something different. If we drove him out of business and asked him to run a shop for us, he would have a reason for a grudge."

"...What I meant is, he doesn't make any of his own stuff. If we make wands, we can let him figure out who to sell them to and how to package them," she explains. "If he doesn't dislike us too much to do business with us at all."

"Right, I get that now, but the first time you said it I thought you meant opening our own store and hiring him to run it for us."

"Oh, no. If we were going to start ground-up like that I'd want to hire somebody else. His only advantage is already having a place and customers."

"It's probably a better idea to start out as suppliers for other peoples' shops, whether or not we open our own eventually."