"Ah--yes, you have a fascinating magic system and I have abundant resources with which to house people with human needs. You're quite welcome to stay arbitrarily long. The angel did reply, she's interested in coming and meeting you."

"Delightful. I would be happy to continue trading magical knowledge with you, if you have the means to acquire lots of inks - I think of them as mostly pretty expensive but it's possible they are less so now - I can try diagramming some spells for you and we can see if you pick them up. And you mentioned there were books I could learn your magic from?"

"Yes, I can show you where. What kinds of inks?"

"The ones I know the precise composition of use powdered gold and silver for the pigments. And one uses pearls I think, but I don't have many spells that use that and they're all advanced. Other than that it's a dark red and a light blue and an orange and a violet. I am pretty sure any inks of those colors will do, but the color has to be pretty close, it can't be off by too much. I can probably look at a computer and get you hex codes or something. Paints might work too."

"Specific colors shouldn't be a problem. Gold and silver are non-trivial but well within my means. Pearl falls into either the former or latter category depending on if there are any requirements as to what kind of pearl."

"Well before this instant I did not know that there was such a thing as kinds of pearls, so maybe get some of the former and if everything else is working I can test it out?"

"There are tiny round pearls and there are large irregularly-shaped ones."

"If they are made of the same stuff they are probably interchangeable as far as inks are concerned. Some spells require you to consume or destroy materials as part of their casting, I think those would actually care which kind of pearl."

"Why?"

"Not particularly well-understood. A lot of material components are symbolic, but why the symbolism of swallowing pearl dust and a live carp cares whether the dust came from one or many pearls is a mystery. Actually, it's possible in that particular case it doesn't, everyone experimenting on a more pleasant and convenient identify spell seems to fixate on the live carp."

"Reasonable priorities."

"Conspiracy theorists - by which I mean one conspiracy theorist with whom I was personally acquainted - claim that dragons are actually incredibly intelligent beings secretly guiding the path of mortal civilization, rather than being giant fire-breathing magpies as common wisdom suggests. His evidence for this is that dragons often destroy libraries to hinder technological progress and our understanding of magic. This does happen, but I think it's because major libraries tend to be in prosperous cities. All of which I say to explain why there's a lot of magical theory we don't understand and a lot of good things within our reach that we haven't accomplished."

"That sounds...frustrating."

"Very. I'm going to fix it."

"Good."

"Kendra seemed to think I was being overly ambitious when I said I would take over the world. You are either humoring me or find it much more plausible than most would."

"I didn't survive for nine centuries by making assumptions about what people can't do."

"...Purely hypothetically, if I threatened to destroy you right now if you didn't make some costly concession, would you? I'm not going to, I like you and I'd have to be much more confident that I could actually win a fight with you and I'd have to actually have something I need from you that would necessitate that, but..."

"I also didn't survive to nine centuries by taking everyone at their word."

"Fair enough. Uh, change of topic - I swear I am not hitting on you, you're forty times my age and I'd like to think I'm more sensible than that - how are you so pretty? Is it genes or vampirism or magic, because if it's the latter I'm going to want that spell, apparently it's easier to take over countries if you're attractive."

"Genes, sadly."

"Damn. Those sound harder to acquire. I am sure if it ever seems sufficiently useful I can figure out magically-induced prettiness. In the meantime, shall we go over more magical theory? I can't actually teach you any spells until I have ink, but I can do diagramming 101 so that will go faster, or more pure theory stuff. And I'd like to learn more of your magic though if you'd rather direct me to your books and go off and be introverted and misanthropic that works too, I just don't have any introductory books on me and I suspect language is not one of the things your magic does well."

"It does not do it well. Fortunately I've been practicing for over eight centuries so I can do it anyway."

"Regardless, I lack introductory material. Should I cover diagramming now or would you rather wait until I have a more readable example?"

"It might be more efficient for you to study my magic system for the moment."