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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
asteptotheright
He resists the urge to cup his cheek and grin like a loon. Instead: water. He fills the grooves in the tablet, wipes off what little excess escapes, refills the teacup and sets it on the tablet.
maybeso
"...I'm not sure how to record myself without accidentally casting," she says. "I guess I can just... try... not to? No big disaster if I accidentally boil it."
asteptotheright
"Possibly I should have waited to fill the tablet until you were done recording," Kanimir acknowledges. "But no particular harm done, no."
maybeso
"It'll be good to know, anyway. And then if it does boil I can try again from farther away."
maybeso
"Yes, but if it turns out I can't just not cast by trying not to, then I want to check how far I have to be from scrolls before practicing an incantation, you see?"
maybeso
May grins, then fires up her recording, makes sure it works by saying "testing" and getting it to play that back, and then starts over and reads the water boiling incantation.
The water does not boil.
She plays the recording back, and it continues not to boil.
"Okay, so I can not cast by trying not to cast and recordings don't work."
The water does not boil.
She plays the recording back, and it continues not to boil.
"Okay, so I can not cast by trying not to cast and recordings don't work."
asteptotheright
"If you can not cast by trying not to cast, there might be a difference between a recording of trying-to-cast and trying-not-to-cast. Not that I'm optimistic, but it's possible."
maybeso
Meanwhile, she boils the first one while recording a second attempt at the incantation. Sleeve over her hand, she picks it up off the tablet once it's down to a simmer and sets it aside. She dumps the used-up water out of the tablet and uses what Kanimir brings her to refill it, then puts the warm but not boiling cup on the refilled diagram. She plays the recording.
It does not boil.
"Recordings don't work," she says, and she writes that down.
It does not boil.
"Recordings don't work," she says, and she writes that down.
maybeso
"Yeah. Human intervention - er, personal intervention - to draw, personal intervention to speak. But not necessarily very much; we can trace, we can refill the wax with water over and over. Neither maximally convenient nor maximally inconvenient."
asteptotheright
"To be honest, I think magic is a point in favor of there being a deity of some kind, benevolent or not. Physics as a system is self-contained enough for it to make sense as a spontaneous generation; magic seems more arbitrary. But then, people thought that about the natural world before they learned better; I certainly don't consider it proof."
maybeso
"Yeah, between magic and the angels and demons I'm not sure I can call myself absolutely an atheist. But I do maintain that if there are one or more deities they are inadequate in scope of power, in managing same, or both."
asteptotheright
"Fair enough. I wonder if you could print a spell, if you did it differently than xeroxing it. Making a stamp, for example, I bet that would work given that the wax tablet does. You'd want to be very, very careful inking it, though."
asteptotheright
"I don't know off the top of my head. I wonder if we could find a mundane phone book anywhere around here..."
maybeso
"Are those made of carbon paper...? I'm not sure I could reliably double-check runes against a lot of text, anyway."
asteptotheright
"...No, I mean to look up the kinds of places that would be likely to carry it. Stationary stores or office supply stores--I don't know where you can buy carbon paper but I have some guesses that it would make sense to look up."
asteptotheright
"Given how many unconventional ideas we've had it wasn't unreasonable to assume this was one of them."