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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
maybeso
"Okay."
This part takes even longer; she redraws her derived rune on a separate sheet and, via elaborate constructions that she has to read every step of from the textbook, gets four meanings' "pure symbols" derived correctly and one wrong. She checks her work, goes back and does it right, and then confirms that there are no other meanings.
Then she gets to do math. It's all arithmetic, but it's tedious arithmetic; presently she has ratios of the "new" rune's meaning strengths relative to the average of the target meaning's strengths in the deriving eight. These she gets right on the first try, with the help of her school calculator.
This part takes even longer; she redraws her derived rune on a separate sheet and, via elaborate constructions that she has to read every step of from the textbook, gets four meanings' "pure symbols" derived correctly and one wrong. She checks her work, goes back and does it right, and then confirms that there are no other meanings.
Then she gets to do math. It's all arithmetic, but it's tedious arithmetic; presently she has ratios of the "new" rune's meaning strengths relative to the average of the target meaning's strengths in the deriving eight. These she gets right on the first try, with the help of her school calculator.
asteptotheright
Kanimir uses a different set of runes with the relevant meaning, but otherwise he does the same thing as May. He avoids making any mistakes, mostly by double-checking things possibly even more neurotically than is strictly necessary. And--
"I don't think this one's in here," he says, pleased, flipping through the dictionary.
"I don't think this one's in here," he says, pleased, flipping through the dictionary.
maybeso
"Ooh. Maybe it won't be in the unabridged either and we can have our very own rune."
maybeso
"If there were a functioning magical institution of any kind you could patent it."
asteptotheright
"That seems impractical, given how easy it would be for someone else to divine it independently. I think requiring that people exhaustively check the patents list before using new runes wouldn't be an improvement to a magical institution."
maybeso
"Yeah, I was just being silly. You can't check against the book so I'm going to double-check you independently, start to finish." She duplicates his starting set and arrangement and repeats the process.
maybeso
"All right, that's promising, we probably didn't do anything horribly wrong! Now we have this rune. I'll put it in my spreadsheet when I get home."
And her stomach growls.
"Weeeee have been sitting here for hours, let's go get curry."
And her stomach growls.
"Weeeee have been sitting here for hours, let's go get curry."
asteptotheright
"Yes, let's."
The curry place is, as advertised, accessible, and the smells wafting from the doorway are delectable.
The curry place is, as advertised, accessible, and the smells wafting from the doorway are delectable.
maybeso
May is quite practiced at getting her chair into the back of her car and then leaning on the side of the vehicle to get to the driver's seat and then doing the whole thing in reverse to get out of her parking spot. She orders butter chicken and dal.
asteptotheright
Kanimir orders lamb vindaloo and rice, because he mysteriously stops being a white person in the presence of curry. And a mango lassi, because those are amazingly delicious.
maybeso
"So does Jaromira know where we are and rue her missed opportunity to stuff you into a tux...?"
asteptotheright
"She knows. I don't know how much ruing is going on, but that is why she decided to convince me to make the teacakes myself."
asteptotheright
"I was mostly joking on the tux thing. It's possible she'd try to find excessively fancy outfits for us if we were attending some sort of event for which they would be customary, but for a curry shop it would simply be out of place."
maybeso
"Oh, this offer extends to me too? If we go someplace fancy I'd probably take her up on it, I'm out of the habit of caring what I wear."
asteptotheright
"She wouldn't try to stuff you in something more fancy than the situation called for as a joke, even facetiously, the way she might plausibly do to me, but if you don't have anything suitable I'm sure she wouldn't mind providing." Beat. "I predict blue."
asteptotheright
"If she found something in a blue dragonscale pattern--wyvernscale, I suppose, but there's not a lot of difference on that level--I suspect she would acquire it for you without the prompting of a specific event."