"Then we shouldn't tell Ata," he says. "But I'll be careful."

"Why? He'll worry, if it's dangerous, and say no, but I'll be careful and safe."

"I'm - planning to take a very conservative approach, because everything I know about wizardry comes from a world where no one was really experimenting with it and everyone who did cutting-edge research knew way more than I do to start with. I am concerned you will not be able to manage a conservative approach. And wizardry's known for flashy destructive spells like fireballs, but there's also ones that do things like subtle arts, there's spells that do things to souls, spells that go between planes and mess with time and - and I'm not going to try to invent any of the awful ones but I have never invented a spell before and I'm not sure you can be careful enough, you've never had to be that careful before -"

"How can I show you I'm careful enough?"

"I don't know. It might take a long time."

"I'll just invent wizardry on my own. And not be careful at all."

"Then you will probably wind up getting horribly injured by a cantrip and your father will find out and at least you won't have summoned a demon."

"Will too."

"I take you seriously enough," she says, "that if you tell me you meant that, I will have to go tell your father everything I know about wizardry and exactly what he has to figure out a way to stop you from doing to prevent you from getting anywhere near it, because if you summon a demon and you get anything wrong it will torture and kill people until a Vala personally stops it, starting with you."

"Good."

"I promise."

"Good. Magic isn't dangerous like running out of the castle and getting lost would be dangerous. If you ran out and got lost you could eat random plants because this is paradise and if you couldn't find water you could call out with osanwë until somebody heard you and then you'd get scooped up and the worst thing that would happen is that your father would worry and you might eventually be a little nervous about it too. Burning off your leg with a cantrip would be the safe way to make a mistake with magic."

"I promise I won't do anything that might get other people hurt. Ever."

"Thank you."

"I think the Valar would stop a demon really really fast, though," he says, "they really really don't like people hurting."

"It'd probably go a lot better here than the same thing happening on my world. But that's not saying much."

"I just want to learn wizardry and I hate not being able to do things because people are scared."

"Yeah. But people being scared aren't always scared for irrational reasons."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She pats him on the head.

"I'll just write the books. While you study wizardry."

"It'll be so nice to have more books to read than a backpackful of textbooks."

"What kind of books do you want?"