"Even if it doesn't, between Matt and me—and maybe Willow—we could probably sustain you."

"Hopefully," he agrees, again. "Unless my feeding habits are messed with by the moon, or I get more hungry as I get 'older', or something annoying like that. Not particularly helpful to think of scenarios where it'll fail without any evidence of it, but– yeah."

"Pretty much, yeah—what moon is it even."

He shrugs. "Looked like nearly a full moon last I saw it?"

"It'd be just like this silly system to have relevant stuff related to the moon."

"Maybe we'll get werewolves soon," he sighs. "I'm really looking forward to that." Eyeroll.

"I wonder if you'll be natural enemies or something."

"That would be frustrating, but I think it'd probably be just like a thing for this system to do – make us inclined to viciously savage each other if we're anywhere near, something stupid like that."

"It really would. Let's make sure to keep you away from any werewolves we happen to run into if we can."

"It might do something like make sway worse between us, too." He shrugs. "It seems like a good precaution to not test immediately how the different magics interact, yeah."

"It seems like a good precaution to start being more cautious in general with magic testing."

"Yeah. I'm not really sure how cautious we need to be in general overall, since me being around and not, like, in a desert, feels sort of like we're testing things already – I seem mostly okay around people under conditions of 'not in sunlight' and whatever this level of hunger is, but I don't know if all the annoying things that might make that harder to cope with have been tracked down yet, like thresholds and sunlight and presumably-but-not-actually-checked open wounds, so: I'm not sure."

"Oh, open wounds, that's a thing we definitely do need to check, hmm."

"They're noticeably different when I'm feeding," he says, "but I don't know if that generalizes to when I'm not. It probably does."

"What is, open wounds?"

"Yeah, things like cuts are noticeable, at least when I'm feeding."

"Noticeable how?"

"They smell more strongly," he says. "Because blood."

"But only when you're feeding?"

"I haven't tested it while not feeding," he says. "Which is why I suggested testing it."

"Ah."

"I didn't test it while feeding, either, but I sort of retroactively notice it, so, y'know, same thing."

"Yeah."

He continues driving.

And eventually they arrive at his place.