Come on wuss it's just a door | Glowfic Constellation

"No, thanks. I'll get out of your hair. Thank you for listening to me ramble."

"You seemed to need it."

"A bit, yes." She smiles at Jensal. It's genuine, and also kind of tired. "I'm going to get back to work. I'll let you know if I come up with anything."

Nod.

And off she goes, back to work. She writes an explanatory letter to Ehail.

The most pressing problem is the one involving baby dragons dying. She - isn't actually sure it's dragon magic. Just mostly sure. Almost entirely, completely sure. But she has to check. She can check while also working. She calls up her line representative, and asks to be kept informed of the fate of the dragon babies whose fates she predicted. Then she gets to work trying to invent a spell to see where dragon magic comes from, and where it goes after a dragon dies.

She gets a letter a few days later.

The one she thought would die has done so. The other is still kicking.

She looks at the letter, buys herself an extra box of chocolates when grocery shopping the next day, and gets back to work. She can't put off her job indefinitely, the one that earns her money instead of possibly saving lives. She goes to it, and she casts spells that are really rather petty in comparison to that other thing she's doing. She doesn't flinch at the first couple that want a spell to let them conceive, she nods and casts the spell and collects payment and tells them to have a nice day. And during the breaks between clients she works on the thing that matters quite a lot.

She collaborates with Ehail, and they go over her notes, and together they figure out a way to scry the dragon magic reserve.

It's a variant on the spell that lets wizards look at the wizarding reservoir, the one Sand Dusk Chanters think is God.

The dragon magic reservoir is... smaller.

Yes. Yes of course it is.

Emptier, too, she expects.

I think, she writes to Ehail, That we'll do more if we invent a conception spell based on the reservoir. As in, a dragon cannot conceive with another dragon unless there is enough magic for the dragon to live. Without any chance of death or shrenhood. That way the number of babies dying and in pain from esu is capped while we work on solving everything else. For example: shrens.

Ehail writes back. That sounds like a good idea. I guess if it's a spell conception it also means they don't have extra siblings beyond the one there's enough magic for.

Yeah. Which will make clutch sizes significantly smaller, but I don't think anyone will complain, considering, she agrees.

So. To work on that.

They do. Progress is made. Avet gets into the habit of setting alarms to remind herself to manage bodily functions such as eating and sleep. Lots and lots of letters are exchanged.

And then the spell is invented. Avet informs her line representative, and explains how the spell works.

Her representative wants to know if it's relatively easy to cast or if people wanting to use it will have to come to her personally.

It isn't very complicated. It's just a conception spell. She mails several copies of instructions to cast it to the line representative and sincerely asks for them to be distributed to every possible dragon. She will provide more copies if required.

It only takes a few days for there to be a formal order by the dragon council that dragon couples attempting to reproduce form an orderly queue and then visit one of the listed conception spell providers until they get a successful result. (She's on the list.)

Avet is vaguely offended that they didn't ask if she wanted to be a listed conception spell provider, but she would have volunteered anyway, so she doesn't make a fuss. She provides conception spells when asked, and continues to write to Ehail.

They've distributed the spell and there's a formal order out that dragon couples use it, she informs. So that's taken care of. I don't know about you, but I'm doing a happy dance.

Now, on the subject of shrens -

And it's back to work.

Avet doesn't see an obvious way to fix shrenhood. This isn't surprising, it's a subject a lot of wizards have looked into and come up empty. But she felt she had to check, because no one invented the conception spell, and so she no longer trusts dragon wizards that aren't also named Avet. After a lot of analyses, it becomes clear that shrens are incapable of permanently holding provided dragon magic from the reservoir. They have a hole. With it in place, all extra magic provided spills right back out into the dragon magic reservoir. The hole cannot be patched without killing the shren, at least not by any obvious method Avet can see.

But really, she writes, curing shrens is a minor problem in comparison to preventing esu. And I think that it's possible we could temporarily give a shren the ability to fly with a sustained spell. What do you think, should we try it, or is it too dangerous?

It wouldn't be hard to find a volunteer, Ehail says, which isn't really an answer, is it.

Avet is kind of used to this, actually, Ehail is sometimes bad at answering questions like these.

A lot of shrens would risk death for the chance to fly? she asks, catching the drift.

I don't know how many, but some.

... Okay. Well. I'm willing to try the avenue if we're careful and we check our work twice and we have an adult volunteer to test it before we let it near the babies.

Jensal's probably going to be better at finding a volunteer than I am.

I'll let her know, she agrees, and once that's mailed she teleports to the Esmaar shren house and knocks on the door.

Jensal, as usual, gets the door.

"Hi. Have you heard about the dragon conception spell yet?" she starts off with.

"It filtered down," says Jensal blandly.