"Yes, I approve of a lower risk of getting accidentally smote. I expect Jaromira will still want to check everything, since there's the chance that something harmless and useful to you could have negative side effects for someone else, but frankly even if only you did all the casting I would expect this to speed things up quite a bit."

"Yeah. It's possible I can handle other people's castings too if I'm nearby, maybe only at touch range? We could see if I can stop you from boiling things, if you bring your tablet tomorrow."

"I might want to re-carve the tablet a bit before then--repeatedly boiling things on wax is starting to warp it a little bit, I'd like to straighten out the edges. Actually, I think I'd like to get something a little more resilient than wax at some point. But for now a little bit of maintenance will keep it workable."

"It's probably not necessary to put the kettle on it."

"Jaromira actually found a recipe for a simple plastic on the internet that should be more durable than wax even aside from the heat thing, so we're going to try that. But perhaps with a different spell, to start; I must admit a slight sentimental attachment to the object with which I cast my first spell."

"Frame it. We can put it in our school or ruling-the-world headquarters or whatever."

"Someday museums will want it as a historical artifact."

"Of course they will." She kisses him on the cheek.

"Are you confident in Jaromira's ability to keep secrets from Daphne?"

"I don't expect her to keep any of her own secrets from Daphne, but I'm confident that she could keep your secrets from her."

"It's not - I don't mind being a dragon, or some unfactionated firebird or probable-human knowing that I am a dragon. I just don't want this to turn into a chain of a lot of people being really totally trustworthy up until someone thinks that I'm going to kill their hiding sphinx friend or relative because they don't trust that their friend's boyfriend's brother's friend's sister's friend or whatever says that it's okay and this is a nice dragon, and in such a condition of uncertainty they'd better kill me first. I probably should have asked you if you were comfortable keeping secrets from literally everybody before I said. Although given the timing I bet you could have guessed."

"I can keep secrets from Jaromira in the short term. I don't know about the long term, I've never tried. I expect she'd be more comfortable with it if she believed you'd be alright with her telling Daphne at some point in the future if and when you trusted her more, but I also expect she'd do it regardless."

"And then who will Daphne want to tell?"

"I don't know that she'd want to tell anybody. She and Jaromira have friendly acquaintances in the supernatural world, but they're not close to anybody here but each other and arguably us. And it would hardly be relevant to her mundane relatives. Personally, I'm in favor of telling them and swearing them to secrecy to anyone else specifically because they're assisting us with the magic project; no one else is, and it wouldn't be as relevant to anyone who wasn't. And I did say 'if' and when," he shrugs, "and it could be that a prerequisite to trusting her is being sure that she wouldn't tell anyone you hadn't personally vetted and approved. Jaromira isn't impatient, but there's a difference between being asked to keep a secret indefinitely and being asked to keep a secret forever."

"Alright. I can definitely keep a secret from her in the short term. ...I can't promise that it won't be obvious to her that there is a secret, but if she knows it's not my secret she won't pry."

"Frankly, a wyvern who never takes significant midform let alone fullform but definitely does have scales is a dead giveaway the moment you know there is a secret."

"...If you really were a wyvern, the wings-for-arms thing would be sufficiently impeding to dexterity that I doubt my sister would think much of it that you're never in midform. If I come home acting like I have a secret and I tell her it's not mine and I act as gleeful as I'm not sure I can refrain from because all this is awesome, her first guess is likely to be that we had sex and either you didn't want to tell anyone because reasons or I didn't want to tell her because teasing."

"We don't know that I have any awesome powers yet. I may not. What we do know is that it's very easy to lose critter lineages in medallioned families, there could be sphinxes around who hate my guts and are just as likely to have awesome powers, and I may have just permanently failed at infosec that might be preventing me from having magical assassins after my blood."

"...If she guesses, she won't tell. Not anyone. Not if I ask her not to. She may not be as happy as she could possibly be not telling Daphne but she won't." He puts his hand on hers. "I don't think she will guess. And I can not tell her, if it matters to you this much, and if she guesses anyway, she'll come to me before anything else and I'll tell her it matters to not tell anyone and she won't."

"Okay."

"...I don't expect you to trust her as much as I do. But I do trust her, and--I care about you. I don't want you to get hurt. And she knows that, and knows that it would break something if she did something that got you hurt. ...And I can keep it down to normal levels of magic-is-awesome-May-is-awesome-the-world-is-awesome if I try, I think."

"Okay. Just - hold it down to letting her think we had sex until we know if I even have cool powers and we'll go from there."

"Yeah."