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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?"
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maybeso
asteptotheright
"In any case, mistakes are as likely to end up with us dead as transformed. So we had better avoid it regardless."
maybeso
"Yes, it'd kind of counter the project of becoming immortal. Extreme caution's the word."
asteptotheright
"If we figured out medallions and resurrection that would make the rest of spell development go a lot faster," Kanimir muses.
maybeso
"If we knew who to resurrect, it would, anyway. And we'd have to do it without reigniting the extinction war. ...Or do you mean because then we could be irresponsible with our spellchecking?"
maybeso
"I guess. Although I have no idea how uncomfortable turning into a kind of critter you wouldn't have been before, or dying of botched spell, might be."
asteptotheright
"I'd be willing to try, if the obvious problems could be reliably patched. It really would make spell development easier, and if it's prohibitively unpleasant, well, I don't try that again. Although it wouldn't surprise me if it was possible to hire people who wouldn't mind acquiring the ability to turn into an interesting and novel kind of magical creature to test spells for us; some people have high pain tolerances or unusual reactions."
maybeso
"Possible. But we're kind of limited in our ability to advertise and it's academic until we have a working resurrection."
asteptotheright
"Agreed." He gestures to the notebook he's been scribbling in. "This whole notebook is full of ideas that are unlikely to be relevant in the near future but which I would prefer not to forget in case they become so in the future."
maybeso
"Yes, and magic."
She looks at the teakettle. And says in a loud stage whisper, "Yer a wizard, Kanimir."
She looks at the teakettle. And says in a loud stage whisper, "Yer a wizard, Kanimir."
asteptotheright
"I certainly hope I don't stop being this amazed by magic but if I don't get more calm about it eventually this could have a deleterious effect on my efficiency."
maybeso
"Yeah, there is that. We could work on something now but we don't have the materials for more fun with scribing materials or my spreadsheet for trying to spellcraft; any ideas?"
asteptotheright
"We could try deriving runes, but that seems inefficient before acquiring the unabridged version of the rune dictionary...on the other hand, it would be good practice for later, and if we don't have any better ideas for right now it wouldn't hurt."
maybeso
"Yeah, it's worth knowing how to do. What meaning do we need more of?" she asks, digging graph paper out of her bag.
asteptotheright
"I'm sure 'permanent enchantment' is something we'll be using a lot in the future, for enough different things that we're likely to want more of it than of most other things."
maybeso
"Makes sense. Okay..."
The dictionary has an index by meaning. May looks up runes with the permanent enchantment meaning, draws eight of them at random out on graph paper (consulting the textbook for arrangement and proportion guidelines), and starts carefully drawing the lines between them according to the bizarre principles of derivation to construct a new rune in the middle. This all takes about thirty minutes; she's being very careful.
The dictionary has an index by meaning. May looks up runes with the permanent enchantment meaning, draws eight of them at random out on graph paper (consulting the textbook for arrangement and proportion guidelines), and starts carefully drawing the lines between them according to the bizarre principles of derivation to construct a new rune in the middle. This all takes about thirty minutes; she's being very careful.
asteptotheright
Kanimir watches carefully. He doesn't expect her to make a mistake, but "better safe than sorry" is more salient now than usual.
maybeso
May appreciates it.
She does misalign her ruler once, but catches it before she gets very far, erases the mistaken line, and otherwise proceeds methodically enough.
And her rune matches a ninth one that's already in the dictionary. "Ha. Well, that was redundant, but at least I know I did it right? I guess I could go through the entire other-meaning-checking and quantity-checking procedure too and be able to check that against the dictionary too. Or do you want to do it?"
She does misalign her ruler once, but catches it before she gets very far, erases the mistaken line, and otherwise proceeds methodically enough.
And her rune matches a ninth one that's already in the dictionary. "Ha. Well, that was redundant, but at least I know I did it right? I guess I could go through the entire other-meaning-checking and quantity-checking procedure too and be able to check that against the dictionary too. Or do you want to do it?"