"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."

"Excellent, I suspect I am not the world's best teacher and I prefer studying anyways. Do you want to teach me, or be misanthropic and introverted and point me at books?"

"The latter."

"Enjoy!" She follows him to books and then takes them elsewhere and pores over them.

And he introverts misanthropically.

After a few hours one of the blood donors interrupts them with the news that the angel showed up.

She marks her page and prestidigitates herself more presentable in case angels care about that and goes to meet an angel.

"Hello!"

She gives a deeper half-bow than she did on meeting Kanimir.

"...Hello. I am not entirely sure how to address an angel. Kanimir said that you and the god you represent are less likely to find me heretical than the angels and gods where I am from?" That was probably not the smartest opening line, nice going Lotus.

"I don't know what the gods where you're from are like but we're not likely to mind any miscellaneous heresy."