"Yes, it does seem like the sort of thing best approached after we've more magical achievement to our names than boiling water with a spell copied out of a book."

"Just a bit."

"But better to have thought of it and written it down for later than not. It isn't as though we aren't going to have impressive magical achievements in the future."

"Unless we kill ourselves botching a spell. Anything we're not copying verbatim from the book probably needs to be double-checked, then again after a night of sleep to be extra sure."

"Granted. That...might actually be a valid reason no one's accomplished some of the things we're planning, if they're not confident of surviving excessive spell design."

"Yeah. We'll be careful. Safety first."

"Yes. Jaromira might change her mind about wanting to learn the system proper if I explain the safety concerns, come to think of it; another set of eyes checking things over is safer than not and she would be upset if something unfortunate happened to me."

"Yeah. What would you do if you got turned into a critter and we couldn't get you a medallion quickly?"

"Move to an Avalon, get all-but-financially cut off from my father and prioritize medallions higher than I otherwise would have, I suppose."

"This Avalon, I assume?"

"Unless he decided to try to coerce me into moving to another city so there was less of a chance of his social circle finding out what had happened, I suppose."

"Oh, you mean at some point you'd tell him. You didn't say."

"If I was no longer human and couldn't hide this, I couldn't keep it from him forever if I wanted to. He doesn't really care what's going on with my life, but every now and then he feels the obligation to check up on me, and he would notice eventually if I moved out and attempted to cut off contact."

"For some reason my brain jumps automatically to 'fake your death' in this situation but that's probably just me being weird."

"Being legally dead would be more inconvenient than telling my father, and if I weren't legally dead he would find out I was faking."

"A lot of people who are stuck in Avalaons don't legally exist. They have setups to handle it. My parents are fine and I told Ren everything and will tell Charlie once I can prove it instead of just making bizarre statements of reptilianhood over the phone, but if I didn't and my medallion stopped working..."

"Given that I already legally exist, I suspect it would be more convenient to continue to do so and claim to have a rare, debilitating and contagious illness that means I can't show up in person to things. Also, if my father believes I'm dead, it would be harder to access his money than if he wants to ensure I'm not tempted to let anyone he knows know what happened to me."

"Fair enough."

"And given that real estate in Avalons is expensive, that would be more of a concern than it currently is. What would you do if you became a kind of critter with no medallion?"

"If I sprout six extra legs or something and have to go around like that all the time... well, it might depend on whether any of them have properly opposable thumbs, since that would be important for most of my runecasting-related ambitions. The nice bugbear lady might help me get my excess feet under me, I could try teaching adorable monster children school or something."

"...Oh, I hadn't even considered the possibility of lacking opposable thumbs. That would be terrible."

"I have claws. They're pretty dextrous for claws, and one of them per foot could be described as a thumb, but holding a pen would be hard."

"If it came to that I'm sure Jaromira would be willing to take dictation, so it's not like it would put an end to ambitions, but that would...slow it down, yes. Even if one's feet were as dexterous as one's hands, it would surely be harder to see the paper to write on."

May points her left foot at him. It turns shoeless and blue and clawed and scaly.

"Not as dexterous as a hand," he concludes.