"So what have you been doing lately, besides magic?"

"...Mostly magic. But Ren drove me out to the middle of nowhere Saturday night and I flew around in the dark. Since it could take so long to work out invisibility, you know? And there's been school, my French teacher is delighted that I'm suddenly so interested in the subject and has been very helpful about refining my accent and translating obscure vocab for me with more finesse than the dictionary has. And... that's about it, unless you want to hear that I got around to watching the Merchant of Venice movie that came out last winter."

"No, mostly I was trying to change the subject away from Daphne's mildly depressing issues."

"Ah, fair enough. Well, the movie was pretty decent. But flying was better."

"I can imagine."

"Sadly, I do not think I had better try to carry you."

"Not that that isn't an amusing mental image."

"Little bit. It'd look like I was planning to feed you to my nestlings."

"...I'm honestly not sure whether that mental image is disturbing or adorable."

"The nestlings would be adorable and their eating habits disturbing, I think."

"Yes, probably. Please don't feed me to your nestlings."

"I don't have any, worry not."

"...Every witty response I can think of to that one sounds dramatically inappropriate, even in my head."

"My fault for bringing up nestlings. What have you been up to besides magic?"

"Schoolwork, detangling emotions with my sister, baking, in the one case, carving the wax tablet, unless that counts as magic, and reading."

"Carving the wax tablet completely counts as magic. Reading what?"

"The Iliad, lately."

"First time through?"

"No, I've read it before. The Odyssey, too."

"I love old literature. Mostly Anglophone, but I like stuff like that too. Got to wait a few centuries for all the stuff that doesn't really resonate and age well to filter to the bottom and then skim off whatever's on top."

"I think there's certainly something to be said for stories that provide excellent social commentary for the time they're written but don't generalize well, but in general I completely agree with you. Before I discovered magic I was going to learn Ancient Greek and Latin to fill the time so I could read the originals. I suppose I'll probably still get to it someday, but I don't need to fill my time anymore."

"I suppose it would be more aesthetic to cast in Latin or Greek," May says, and then she quiets and smiles at the waitress as their food arrives, then continues presently, "but the delay isn't worth it, I think."

"Oh, yes. But with any luck we'll get around to everything worth getting around to, someday."

"Oh yes. Just once I want to stand on a dramatic bit of terrain in witch robes and chant in Latin to make the wind do my bidding or call a lightning strike. While being photographed, of course."

"Casting from scrolls written out in heavy, dusty grimoires--oh, I just had a thought. The book said a spell could determine between different marking methods. It might be possible to make multiple-use scrolls by tracing over the runes with several different types of writing implement."