"I don't have enough background to know what time frame would be reasonable! Anyway, I could have shown up a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now for all you knew, there was no known reason to hurry on my account."

"Fair enough."

"Am I just lucky in where I landed, or did you have some clever way to be notified when mysterious lost humans sleepified dickhead elves?"

"You're mostly just lucky in where you landed. We do keep an eye out for rumours that might be halfbloods or humans with magic, and I might've heard about you and come to rescue you later, but instead the driver came right to our castle because we were the closest major settlement."

"Okay. I can wake the guy up, if he's still sleeping it off, I overcast the spell."

"Probably better if you don't go near him again, less risk of giving him evidence you still exist. I wonder if it would be a good idea to illusion a different face on you, actually, for when you're out and about."

"Makes sense. I don't know how long he'll sleep on an overcast spell, though, it might be dangerous if he's not getting water? I don't know how elves work."

"I can keep him healthy with lifecraft and if he sleeps through too much of the day I can try to wake him up myself."

"Okay. I can always turn invisible again and unsleep him surreptitiously if that doesn't work."

"I'd have to cover you with a sound illusion too, otherwise it'd just be really obvious that there was an invisible person there. And I'm not perfect at those when the thing I'm hiding is less stationary than a room with four solid walls."

"Still, seems like a bit much to leave him asleep for six weeks or whatever for being a member of the species, and I really overdid the spell." Sigh. "Could try to invent an inaudibility spell but I don't already have one."

"How's inventing spells work? Is it learnable?"

"Yes. I don't know if that extends to people from other worlds but there's no obvious reason it shouldn't. I can cheat pretty outrageously on it though."

"Oh?"

"The big problem with spells is that all the spell components do a lot of different things. So you find ones that mostly do what you want, and then you cancel the extra, and then you cancel the extra of the extra, and so on, more layers the more oomph you need the spell to have. I can just touch the spell while I cast it and it won't do anything I don't want it to, but if I want to publish them for other people I have to be as careful as anyone else."

"I see. That does sound handy."

"Yes. Also, most people have to cast in a non-native language. Using your native language overpowers the spell - any imperfections in the cancellations, and there are always going to be at least tiny ones, are magnified, and you wind up with people sleeping for days. I usually cast in French when I'm working in front of people, but for the same reason if I'm alone or no one will know what I'm doing anyway I can use English."

"Interesting. I wonder whether magically obtained languages count as native or otherwise for the purpose."

"Don't know, but I'm the person to attempt to safely find out, aren't I?"

"Evidently so!"

She flips through her binder. "Things I can allow to overpower, notice they're overpowered, and fix without serious consequences... I could see if I stay invisible for longer than expected but that'll take hours..." Flip flip. She flips back to her used invisibility spell to go over it in pen.

"It's also possible there's things you can fix easily with my help that you couldn't have otherwise," he suggests. "Although maybe not, I don't know what you've got in there besides sleep and invisibility."

"I have those and light and fire control and fire suppression and water boiling and water control and water purification - uh, I was on a sort of magic experimentation camping trip, when I appeared here - and earth shaping and a first draft of teleportation that works for me if I know where to go but I wouldn't trust for anyone else yet."

"What happens if you overpower water control...?"

"Uh, it goes where you tell it to but too hard or with too much water doing it at once, I guess? I haven't tried that yet."